| 1. |
- Bager-Sjögren, Lars, et al.
(författare)
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Firm growth and survival, from a 14- year perspective: A cohort analysis
- 2017
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Ingår i: Frontiers of Entrepreneurship Research. - : Entrepreneurship at Babson at Digital Knowledge at Babson. - 0740-7416. ; 37:16, s. 358-363
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This study examines whether early growth is important for the short- and long-term survival and development of new firms. For this purpose, we use registry data for a specific cohort of Swedish firms that tracks their development until their exit, or up to 14 years, at which point only 8% of the firms remain. We find growth to be clearly associated with increased survival of the firms, that the number of employees (in the previous year) is positively correlated with survival in following years, and somewhat surprisingly, that subsidiaries face a significantly larger hazard of closure than independent firms.
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| 2. |
- Bornhäll, Anders, et al.
(författare)
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Sleeping gazelles : High profits but no growth
- 2014
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Ingår i: Frontiers of Entrepreneurship Research. - 0740-7416. ; 34:17, s. 1-16
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Among 104,231 limited liability firms in Sweden with at least two employees during 1997- 2010, almost 10% did not hire new employees in any given 3-year period despite having high profits. Nearly half of these firms continued to have high or medium profits in the next threeyear period, but still no growth. Regression analysis indicates that these firms were not randomly distributed; rather they were small and young, did not belong to an enterprise group, and operated in local markets with high profit-opportunities. We conclude that it might be more beneficial to focus policy towards these firms instead of towards a few high-growth firms that, having just grown exponentially, may not be best positioned to grow further.
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| 3. |
- Bradley, S.W, et al.
(författare)
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Searching wide or deep? : absorptive capacity, slack resources and the role of external search in small firm growth
- 2011
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Ingår i: Frontiers of Entrepreneurship Research. - 0740-7416. ; 31:15
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Firms often conduct external search for new opportunities, but not all search leads to growth. Integrating traditional explanations of search from behavioral theory with biological foraging models, we explain how absorptive capacity together with financial slack influence breadth or depth of search. Our findings from 291 small Swedish technology firms indicate that higher absorptive capacity increases search. Absorptive capacity had a stronger effect on breadth of search than for depth of search. We find that only depth of search leads to higher growth for small firms. Further, financial slack strengthened the absorptive capacity and search depth relationship of search relationship, but weakened the relationship between absorptive capacity and breadth of search. The findings are consistent with foraging models that account for resource availability.
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| 4. |
- Dimov, Dimo, et al.
(författare)
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Entrepreneurship and Psychological Disorders
- 2014
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Ingår i: Frontiers of Entrepreneurship Research. - : Babson College. - 0740-7416. ; 34:4
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Entrepreneurship research has largely attributed positive entrepreneurial outcomes to positive psychological characteristics using theories and empirical associations grounded in mean tendencies. As such, entrepreneurship represents merely a context for general psychological theory rather than an arena for developing unique psychological theory. We venture outside the realm of the ‘normal’ and instead sample extreme individuals at the tail of the distribution. We explore the efficacy of using theories about abnormalities, examining the potential positive effects in entrepreneurship of otherwise negative psychological deviations. Specifically, we explore the implications of ADHD and autism.
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| 5. |
- Kim, Phillip H., et al.
(författare)
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You’ve got talent: Breaking the ‘Barriers to learning’ From early Entrepreneurial Experience
- 2015
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Ingår i: Frontiers of Entrepreneurship Research. - : Digital Knowledge at Babson. - 0740-7416. ; 35:3
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Entrepreneurship educators and practitioners alike often embrace the principle that experience automatically translates into improved performance in subsequent ventures. This experience- performance connection is not without any scientific basis: Research on learning curves points to a positive relationship between the two constructs, such that greater entrepreneurial experience should have a positive bearing on future performance. However, deeper investigations into this linkage have revealed more nuanced connections, such as the non-linear trajectory of entrepreneurial learning curves and the role that talent plays in translating experience into performance. As such, our research aims to uncover the specific barriers early-career entrepreneurs encounter, and to assess how and why entrepreneurial talent mitigates the negative transfer of learning. We focus on early-career entrepreneurs because their shorter careers help to both limit the unobserved heterogeneity from incomplete labor histories (often associated with inquiries into older populations) and make the initial impact of entrepreneurial experience and talent easier to identify.
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| 6. |
- Lackéus, Martin, 1974, et al.
(författare)
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Venture Creation Programs: entrepreneurial education through real-life content
- 2011
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Ingår i: Frontiers of Entrepreneurship Research. - 0740-7416. ; 31:9, s. 343-
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Tidskriftsartikel (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Principal topicStudents with the intent to be self-employed require more action-based approaches to entrepreneurial learning, in comparison to traditional methods (Mwasalwiba, 2010). Action-based pedagogies potentially allow for learning from highly emotional critical incidents in the venture creation process, provided that action is paired with reflection activities (Cope and Watts, 2000). The aim of our study is to investigate a specific type of action-based education programs – higher education programs providing entrepreneurial education utilizing active creation of new ventures as the primary learning vessel. The purpose is to better understand the structure, components, impact and learning outcomes of these programs. Thus, the paper asks the question: What are the defining characteristics of a venture creation program?MethodBuilding from previously conducted research reviewing entrepreneurial education programs in Northern Europe, a definition for venture creation program (VCP) is proposed as entrepreneurship or business educations at a higher education level with the on-going creation of a real-life venture as their primary learning vessel and thus part of formal curriculum. Using this definition, a study is designed to identify and investigate potential VCPs from the regions of Europe, North America and Asia-Pacific. Through literature, verbal reference, internet resources and snowball sampling, a population of VCPs are identified and then interviewed via telephone in order to further assess applicability relative to the proposed VCP definition. In addition, a website is created as a receiving point for programs self-identifying as VCPs. Documentation and interview data of the initial population is then used to compare and contrast characteristics, methods and practice of the programs relative to the definition and to each other in an attempt to identify defining characteristics of VCPs.Results and implicationsThe results show that VCPs are rare, and of those found, the majority are newly established. Some reasons for this scarcity and novelty have been identified, related to obstacles such as design complexity, legitimacy difficulties and resource requirements when establishing and facilitating VCPs. The results suggest that it could be beneficial to complement the initially proposed definition with a definition based on three constructs cognition, affection and conation as proposed by Gibb (2005) and Kyrö (2008). These insights have the potential of aiding both researchers and practitioners engaged in developing entrepreneurial learning and entrepreneurship education.
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| 7. |
- Ljungquist, Urban, et al.
(författare)
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At the Edge of Entrepreneurial Orientation : Identifying Impediments of SME Growth (Interactive Paper)
- 2008
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Ingår i: Frontiers of Entrepreneurship Research. - Babson Park, MA : Center for Entrepreneurial Studies, Babson College. - 0740-7416. ; 28:13
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Entrepreneurial orientation (EO) is often assumed to underpin firm growth and the concept is frequently scrutinized on several levels of analyses: Founder, firm, corporate setting and industry. Although many firms may find that EO is underpinning firm growth, for instance in innovation and creativity activities in multinational firms, its application most often is limited to particular departments or teams of employees. Moreover, in further inspection of the concept, it might be relevant to ask whether EO always is facilitating firm growth, or whether it under some conditions even is inhibiting growth. In large firms, the hindering probably is an isolated phenomenon in some divisions and departments. In small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs), larger amplitude is expected, due to the more concentrated context, and therefore the hindrance may be devastating, in that growth of the whole firm is halted. This project focuses empirically on SMEs and theoretically on innovation processes; the latter are assumed to carry the artefacts of the limitations of EO. A firm’s core competences are likely to be applied in the processes, and therefore their inclusion is important. The existence of core competences in SMEs is a blind spot in previous research. Therefore, we adopt Prahalad & Hamel’s (1990) criteria for core competence identification and add a customer verification procedure (Ljungquist, 2007) to fit the SME context, for one reason due to the large dependency of the business environment.
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| 8. |
- Politis, Diamanto, et al.
(författare)
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Exploring the mindset of university entrepreneurs : Do they have a different resource logic?
- 2008
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Ingår i: Frontiers of Entrepreneurship Research. - Wellesley, Massachusetts : Babson College. - 0740-7416. ; 28:4
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Principal Topic: Universities are today increasingly acknowledged as powerful drivers of innovation, job creation and economic growth. To promote and support university-based entrepreneurship there has been a tremendous increase in the supply of entrepreneurship courses and the creation of business incubators. As a result of this development there is an increasing group of entrepreneurs that have been educated or fostered in the university context, and who often continue to develop their new ventures in close interaction with the university. The principal research question we ask in this paper is whether university entrepreneurs have a different resource logic compared to entrepreneurs that start up their ventures independently of the university and its surrounding innovation system. Resource logic is in the paper defined as a set of ideas for how to secure and use resources in the start-up process, and we link this concept to three streams of research that can be related to the resource logic of entrepreneurs; effectual decision making, bootstrapping orientation; and personal networking.Method: The empirical study was designed as a questionnaire survey. The questionnaire was sent out to two groups of entrepreneurs resulting in responses from 182 university entrepreneurs and 209 non- university entrepreneurs. The hypotheses are tested using parametric and non-parametric tests in SPSS.Results and Implications: In line with our hypotheses the results suggest that university entrepreneurs to a larger extent have a mindset that favours both effectual reasoning and the use of bootstrapping. When it comes to use of network contacts the results were however contrary to our hypothesis. In sum, our findings add to our knowledge about the extent to which the close connection to the university has any significant influence on the resource acquisition behaviour of university entrepreneurs once they start an entrepreneurial career. The paper develops and uses the concept of “resource logic”. On the basis of this concept the paper provides general implications for our understanding of differences in the mindset of entrepreneurs in the start-up process.
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| 9. |
- Wiklund, Johan, et al.
(författare)
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Why do life-goals and entrepreneurial motives matter for people purshing the establishment of new ventures?
- 2014
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Ingår i: Frontiers of Entrepreneurship Research. - : Babson College. - 0740-7416. ; 34:4, s. 111-124
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Despite the observation that initial motives for launching a business vary greatly among entrepreneurs, the implications of this variation has received virtually no scholarly attention. In this paper we examine how differences in entrepreneurial motives, and the extent to which they are congruous with qualitatively different life-goals, affect people pursuing the establishment of new ventures. This is an important complement to prior entrepreneurial motivation studies, which have studied a limited set of motives and a small range of outcomes. Our research allows for the full range of people’s life-goals and motives for pursuing entrepreneurship to be studied.
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