In the heat of the game: Analogical abduction in a pragmatist account of entrepreneurial reasoning

We draw on Searle's philosophy of language to distinguish between “opportunities” as intentional content directed towards a preferred future that entrepreneurs aim to fulfill and opportunities as conditions to be met for their satisfaction. We maintain that studying the former requires adopting a player stance rather than the analyst stance that prevails in the current literature. We build on pragmatist conceptions of truth and imagination to elaborate on the player stance and propose analogical abduction as a mechanism for conceiving and fulfilling “opportunities”. We develop a pragmatist process model of entrepreneurial reasoning that balances the two stances, and derive action principles for entrepreneurs from it.     

The ambitious entrepreneur: High growth strategies of women-owned enterprises

During the last two decades, researchers have sought to develop categories of entrepreneurs and their businesses along a variety of dimensions to better comprehend and analyze the entrepreneurial growth process. Some of this research has focused on differences related to industrial sectors, firm size, the geographical region in which a business is located, the use of high-technology or low-technology, and the life-cycle stage of the firm (i.e., start-up vs. more mature, formalized companies). Researchers have also considered ways in which entrepreneurs can be differentiated from small business managers. One of these classifications is based on the entrepreneur's desire to grow the business rapidly. This is the focus of our study.To date, the media have paid considerable attention to rapidly growing new ventures. However, still lacking are large-scale research studies guided by theory through which we can expand our knowledge of the underlying factors supporting ambitious expansion plans. Some research has identified factors that enhance or reduce the willingness of the entrepreneur to grow the business. Factors include the strategic origin of the business (i.e., the methods and paths through which the firm was founded); previous experience of the founder/owner; and the ability of the entrepreneur to set realistic, measurable goals and to manage conflict effectively.Our study attempted to identify the strategic paths chosen by entrepreneurs and the relation of those paths to the growth orientation of the firm. The entrepreneurs sampled in this study are women entrepreneurs across a wide range of industrial sectors. Recent reviews of entrepreneurship research have suggested the need for more studies comparing high-growth firms with slower-growth firms to better delineate their differences in strategic choices and behaviors.Our study sought to answer the following questions: What characterizes a “high growth-oriented entrepreneur?” Is this distinction associated with specific strategic intentions, prior experience, equity held in previous firms, the type of company structure in place, or success factors the entrepreneur perceives are important to the business? Do “high growth” entrepreneurs show greater entrepreneurial “intensity” (i.e., commitment to the firm's success)? Are they willing to “pay the price” for their own and their firm's success? (i.e., the “opportunity costs” associated with business success and growth). Other relationships under investigation included different patterns of financing the business' start-up and early growth. Do “high-growth” entrepreneurs use unique sources of funding compared with “lower-growth” entrepreneurs?Eight hundred thirty-two entrepreneurs responded to a survey in which they were asked to describe their growth intentions along nineteen strategic dimensions, as well as respond to the foregoing questions. Some of the strategic activity measures included adding a new product or service, expanding operations, selling to a new market, and applying for a loan to expand operations. Actual growth rates based on sales revenues were calculated, and average annualized growth rates of the industrial sectors represented in the sample were obtained. This study showed that high-growth-oriented entrepreneurs were clearly different from low-growth-oriented entrepreneurs along several dimensions. The former were much more likely to select strategies for their firms that permitted greater focus on market expansion and new technologies, to exhibit greater intensity towards business ownership (“my business is the most important activity in my life”), and to be willing to incur greater opportunity costs for the success of their firms (“I would rather own my own business than earn a higher salary while employed by someone else”).The high-growth–oriented entrepreneurs tended to have a more structured approach to organizing their businesses, which suggests a more disciplined perception of managing the firm. In summary, results showed the group of high-growth–oriented entrepreneurs, labeled “ambitious,” as having the following distinctions: strategic intentions that emphasize market growth and technological change, stronger commitment to the success of the business, greater willingness to sacrifice on behalf of the business, earlier planning for the growth of the business, utilization of a team-based form of organization design, concern for reputation and quality, adequate capitalization, strong leadership, and utilization of a wider range of financing sources for the expansion of the venture. The purpose in uncovering these differences is to enable entrepreneurs and researchers to identify more clearly the attributes of rapid-growth ventures and their founders and to move closer to a field-based model of the entrepreneurial growth process which will help delineate the alternative paths to venture growth and organizational change.     

Digitally immersive,international entrepreneurial experiences

This study explores how entrepreneurs acquire international experiences within physical and digital business environments, and how these experiences influence the way international opportunities are recognised and exploited. Based on multiple case study evidence, including in-depth interviews with international entrepreneurs from 16 small virtual service firms, findings suggest entrepreneurs who interact with digital technologies in a responsive way in international settings may promote the emergence of a new type of experience: “digital internationalisation experience”. This new type of experience, in turn, contributes to enhanced idea generation and opportunity confidence that enable international entrepreneurial exploitation.     

The network of relationships between the economic environment and the entrepreneurial culture in small firms

In this article we maintain that the cultural evolution processes of small firms are strongly influenced by the type of relationships that they establish with the economic environment.In the first part of the article, the main points of the discussion are set forth. Here, the theoretical debate is presented and the existing relations between the entrepreneurial culture and the interaction of firms with their economic environment is analyzed. In the second part of the article, the methodologies adopted for the statistical analysis are explained, and the results of the empirical analysis are presented. Finally, in the third part the implications for practitioners, industrial policies, and future directions in research are discussed.The importance of openness to change in the entrepreneurial culture is a basic assumption in this study. It is well known that in small and medium firms, entrepreneurs often demonstrate “a resistance to change” that limits the firm's competitiveness. In some observed territorial and industrial contexts this resistance to change is determined by a cultural entrepreneurial homogeneity. This homogeneity is a result of the similarity of the social, educational, and entrepreneurial experiences of the subjects observed. Indeed, the entrepreneurs studied had, for generations, received the same education, lived in the same area, and come from the same social setting. This entrepreneurial culture is typified by distrust of innovation and discontinuity, which leads these entrepreneurs to favor already proven solutions and initiate the behaviors of others, rather than take innovative actions. Principal component analysis has been used to identify the influences that various factors, within and external to the firm, have in the forming of an entrepreneurial culture and thus on the openness of entrepreneurs and firms to learning. In the sample, a trade-off emerged between tendencies to homologous behaviors and the spirit of initiative. Through cluster analysis we identified categories of entrepreneurs with a different propensity to innovation regarding established firm routines. “Learning entrepreneurs” belong mainly to industries that serve the final consumer while “bounded entrepreneurs” tend to specialize in commodities more often for export.The implications of our results might interest new entrepreneurs who can include this element when analyzing the viability of new ventures. Small, already operational firms, can evaluate opportunities arising from export processes or might adjust their position on the production filiére to be closer to the final market.This empirical analysis should be reapplied to firms in areas with different environmental characteristics or to production filiéres where the relationship between customer and supplier is different, as for example in high-tech-industries, so as to verify whether the intensity of the relations with the market differs according to external factors or the technological intensity of the industries examined.     

Innovation and risk-taking in a transitional economy: A comparative study of chinese managers and entrepreneurs

This research was set in the People's Republic of China. As former socialist China moves from central planning toward a more market-driven economy, improved knowledge about the new environment and firm decisions within such an environment has significant implications. For organizational researchers, such a transition represents a genuine shift of paradigm, and thus offers a unique opportunity to test existing organizational theories and develop new ones. For multinational businesses seeking business opportunities, they have to compete or cooperate with these Chinese firms, whether state-owned or privately owned.Motivated by a deep curiosity in, using the language of Williamson (1996), “What is going on there” behind the “bamboo curtain,” and underpinned by a strong conviction that organizational researchers have much to gain as well as to offer by focusing on transitional economies, I undertook this study to examine characteristics of a regulatory environment and the impact on innovation and risk-taking among Chinese managers and entrepreneurs. I collected original primary data that represents managers from large state-owned enterprises (SOEs) and entrepreneurs from small privately-owned enterprises (POEs) through personal interviews and a survey. Significant differences were found between managers and entrepreneurs in their reported environmental characteristics, strategic orientations, size, and firm performance, indicating that managers are not as innovative and are less willing to make risky decisions than entrepreneurs. Being smaller and faster than SOEs, entrepreneurial firms have adopted some strategies that distinguish them from their larger and more established competitors. Speed, stealth, and sound execution allow entrepreneurs to harvest first-mover advantages and thus increase their chances for survival in a turbulent environment.     

New to the game and questioning the rules: The experiences and beliefs of founders who start imitative versus innovative firms

This paper examines how founders' work experiences and beliefs about an industry's prevailing practices influence the degree of novelty exhibited by their firms. Our results indicate that extensive experience in the core of an organizational field constrains individuals into acting as “imitative entrepreneurs,” essentially reproducing established routines even if they question their legitimacy. In contrast, founders with greater experience in the field's periphery are more likely to act as “innovative entrepreneurs,” as are those who more strongly question the ethicality of prevailing practices. Doubts about the functionality of established routines are not sufficient, on their own, to provoke acts of innovative entrepreneurship.     

The Need for International Intellectual Entrepreneurs and How Business Schools Can Help

Abstract

The development of “international intellectual entrepreneurs” addresses a vital topic. The societal want for speedy enhancement of material living requires the increase of the number of “active” intellectual entrepreneurs. Those who produce products and services through use of the internet that drives the growth of technological knowledge. Furthermore, these persons must be capable of commercializing their skills and internationalizing their activities. A new competitive landscape is taking shape. The new information highway, the internet, is driving the technological revolution and rapid globalization. A characteristic of the revolution is the emphasis on knowledge for competitive advantage. An information and communications rich organizational environment is emerging. The widespread diffusion of technology is unstoppable. This, coupled with globalization, is producing hyper competition and a blurring of industry and product/service boundaries. In such conditions, intellectual entrepreneurship arising fromuse of the internet has much to do. Furthermore, the points made in the article apply as well to the development of “global” intellectual entrepreneurs.     

Argonauts and Icaruses: Social networks and dynamics of nascent international entrepreneurs

Drawing on Bourdieu’s theory of practice, we consider internationalization as a process of field crossing and apply this framework to nascent international entrepreneurs. The analysis of 37 interviews with French entrepreneurs, managers, and support providers in China allows identifying two types of international entrepreneurs: (1) “Fallen Icaruses”, unable to incorporate and exhibit a global habitus and who fall back to the home field, and (2) “Global Argonauts”, incorporating and exhibiting a global habitus and who proceed with internationalization. Our findings show that social networks can be hostile to newcomers and that incumbents in those networks first assess newcomers’ “compatibility”. We posit that the success of international initiatives by entrepreneurs depends on their ability to cross and fit into different “fields”, and to develop various forms of social relationships in those fields.     

Who become serial and portfolio entrepreneurs?

“Serial entrepreneurs” run multiple businesses in sequence while “portfolio entrepreneurs” run multiple businesses in parallel; they differ from “novice entrepreneurs” who have so far operated only one venture. The present paper is the first to model occupational choices between all three entrepreneurial types: It goes on to discuss its theoretical predictions in the light of independent evidence about serial and portfolio entrepreneurship from the extant literature.     

The entrepreneur: A capable executive and more

In the United States, entrepreneurs have been cussed and discussed, glorified and vilified, declared to be social misfits and bastions of the private enterprise system. Early in the life cycle of an entrepreneur, he or she may have been classified as being “unable to relate to family or peers,” later as “unwilling and unable to submit to or work with authority” to “jungle fighter” to “robber barron” to “philanthropist.” 5A common but incorrect assumption is that if one cannot adjust to the corporate environment, he or she should pursue an entrepreneurial career. Whether or not one can adjust does not preclude the necessity for the development of the skills and techniques required of a competent executive. The authors hypothesize that an entrepreneur must be a capable executive, and in addition, must possess a number of psychological characteristics to a greater or lesser degree than their corporate counterparts.This does not imply that all entrepreneurs are alike any more than all managers or executives are alike. Nor that the presence of a higher or lower level of a psychological trait or characteristic is itself sufficient for success. There are a number of sociological, psychological, demographic, and economic factors that appear to impact on the decision to enter entrepreneurial occupations. Although neither the absolute level of the impact of a psychological trait nor the interrelationship of the combined factors on the final decision-making process are known, research has indicated that significant differences in the intensity level of psychological traits or characteristics exist between entrepreneurs and managers or executives.This article discusses those traits that entrepreneurs exhibit at significantly different levels than do their corporate counterparts; how these factors may influence the decision to enter entrepreneurial occupations: and how these same traits have the propensity, if ignored, to have a negative influence on both the entrepreneur's organization and personal life-style.Entrepreneurs tend to be 1) tolerant of ambiguous situations, 2) prefer autonomy (autonomy may be described as self-reliance, dominance, and independence), 3) resist conformity, 4) be interpersonally aloof yet socially adroit, 5) enjoy risk-taking, 6) adapt readily to change, and 7) have a low need for support. These factors can lead to serious problems in delegation and communication, two factors of paramount importance to a growing concern. They may also cause intense stress or loneliness for the entrepreneur. Fortunately, the traits of willingness to accept change and ability to adapt to it will help the entrepreneur to accept and respond to problems that arise due to poor delegation or communication. Coping methods and a tolerance of ambiguity will assist the entrepreneur in dealing with stress and loneliness. The main problem is to alert the entrepreneur to the potentiality of these problems—which is what this article attempts to do.     

Role Models and Women Entrepreneurs: Entrepreneurial Superwoman Has Her Say

It is suggested that more “role model” women entrepreneurs are needed. However, the gender gap in entrepreneurship remains. This study analyses the narratives of 51 role model women entrepreneurs to explore how they represent women entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship. We found that in accordance with the contemporary pressure for women to succeed and perform personally and professionally, the voice of the (super)woman doing “individualized entrepreneurial femininity” dominates. The role models narratives obscure race, class, and age barriers; reproduce prevailing gender stereotypes; normalize discriminatory workplace treatment and depict entrepreneurship as an appropriate alternative for working mothers. Implications for policy makers are presented.     

Why Do Some Small Businesses Grow Faster and Become “Successful” While Others Do Not Get Beyond the ‘Foothills’?

Abstract

A great deal of research has been undertaken in the area of growth and yet the reason why some small businesses grow faster and more successful than others, has not received sufficient research attention and little is known. This study sought to provide some understanding of the broad question “Why do some small businesses grow faster and ‘successful’ while others do not get beyond the ‘foothills’”.

The conclusion that can be drawn from this study is that it is the actions of the individual entrepreneurs and their management teams that are more significant in achieving business growth. The entrepreneurs in the sample possessed some willingness to pursue opportunities, to marshal resources and initiate actions rather than to react to other people's actions. The owner-managers did not possess the entrepreneurial and management skills authomatically but were acqwuired over time. Our understanding of the growth of small businesses was derived from the in-depth interviews held with the owner-managers themselves on how their businesses evolved over time.     

The role of incubator organizations in the founding of growth-oriented firms

The role of incubator organizations, those organizations where entrepreneur work before starting their own firms, is examined. Using a sample of 161 new, growth-oriented firms, the relationships of the new companies to their incubator organizations are considered, as well as the characteristics of the incubator organizations. 5The findings have implications for prospective entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurs in most industry categories do not change geographic location and, in most technical industries, usually start businesses related to what they did before. An individual's decision to join a particular organization results in a particular geographic location and in knowledge about a particular industry. The would-be founder located in an unpromising geographic area and getting experience in an industry offering few opportunities for company start-ups is unlikely to be able to start a growth-oriented technical firm, regardless of personal motivation. However, the prospective founder of a nontechnical firm appears to be less tied to the experience gained in an incubator organization.There are also implications for regional economic development. Because technically oriented start-ups are tied closely to the business of their incubator organizations and because most entrepreneurs don't move when starting, the possibilities for high-technology start-ups may be very limited in many geographic regions. There have been no studies, to date, on why some founders move when starting. Programs to attract entrepreneurs at the time of start-up may have promise, but, at least to date, there is not much evidence of entrepreneurs being mobile at this stage of their careers.Local and regional programs to attract branch facilities of larger corportions have a long history. The emphasis is usually upon attracting facilities that will offer the maximum number of blue-collar jobs. In contrast to this traditional approach, it might be beneficial to shift the emphasis to those facilities most likely to function as incubators. The greatest benefits might come from laboratories or divisions that would “seed” a region with people learning about promising technologies or industries.The role of universities in this process appears to be less direct than is often assumed. Based upon our sample, it appears that software and biotechnology/medical firms often have spun-off from universities or hospitals. However, in other industry categories, it is business firms that have primarily served as incubators. There are currently many experiments underway to create university-affiliated innovation centers or incubator centers intended to help aspiring entrepreneurs. Whether these will enable universities to function more effectively as incubators, spinning off students and faculty who start growth-oriented firms, remains to be seen.     

The Improvisational Entrepreneur: Improvisation Training in Entrepreneurship Education

Entrepreneurs constantly face unexpected and unanticipated situations; those that thrive are ones that are identified by the literature as “improvisational.” Yet extant entrepreneurship research has not distinguished what improvisation is from how to do it. I propose training in the principles developed from the theory of performing improvisation promotes the entrepreneurship mindset through pedagogy. Qualitative studies reveal entrepreneurial self‐efficacy themes related to interpersonal/team considerations for entrepreneurs, and introduce “improvisational alertness” as a critical entrepreneurship consideration. Entrepreneurs can learn to keenly pay attention to interpersonal conditions of the present and the future in order to adapt potential limitations for venture success.     

‘Expect the unexpected’: Implications of effectual logic on the internationalization process

International entrepreneurship literature has indicated that entrepreneurs often increase international activities along unexpected lines of reasoning without having a precise goal, resulting in “unplanned” internationalization. We argue that “unplanned” internationalization does not necessarily involve non-logical decisions; but, entrepreneurs can follow an effectual rather than causal logic and may base their decisions on the affordable loss principle rather than on the maximization of expected returns. Based on five case-studies, we discuss the implication of effectual decision-making on the internationalization process. We find that switching from causal to effectual logic allows firms to rapidly increase the level of commitment in the foreign market and could assist in overcoming liabilities of outsidership and, therefore, successfully increase the level of commitment in the foreign market.     

Can Social Exclusion Against “Older Entrepreneurs” Be Managed?

This paper investigates how sources of social exclusion and support emerge within an “older” entrepreneur's immediate environment, and how this affects the development of their small business. Based on 22 in‐depth interviews in London, United Kingdom, we suggest how older entrepreneurs with different backgrounds are able to manage social exclusion, and identify four coping strategies—passive negotiation, active negotiation, modification, and avoidance. We argue that, if “older entrepreneurship” (people starting a business aged 50 or older) is to flourish, both entrepreneurs and support initiatives need to become sensitive to the diversity of sources of discrimination and strategies to manage them.     

Machines augmenting entrepreneurs: Opportunities (and threats) at the Nexus of artificial intelligence and entrepreneurship

Artificial intelligence (AI) refers to machines that are trained to perform tasks associated with human intelligence, interpret external data, learn from that external data, and use that learning to flexibly adapt to tasks to achieve specific outcomes. This paper briefly explains AI and looks into the future to highlight some of AI's broader and longer-term societal implications. We propose that AI can be combined with entrepreneurship to represent a super tool. Scholars can research the nexus of AI and entrepreneurship to explore the possibilities of this potential AI-entrepreneurship super tool and hopefully direct its use to productive processes and outcomes. We focus on specific entrepreneurship topics that benefit from AI's augmentation potential and acknowledge implications for entrepreneurship's dark side. We hope this paper stimulates future research at the AI-entrepreneurship nexus.Executive summaryArtificial intelligence (AI) refers to machines that are trained to perform tasks associated with human intelligence, interpret external data, learn from that external data, and use that learning to flexibly adapt to tasks to achieve specific outcomes. Machine learning is the most common form of AI and largely relies on supervised learning—when the machine (i.e., AI) is trained with labels applied by humans. Deep learning and adversarial learning involve training on unlabeled data, or when the machine (via its algorithms) clusters data to reveal underlying patterns.AI is simply a tool. Entrepreneurship is also simply a tool. How they are combined and used will determine their impact on humanity. While researchers have independently developed a greater understanding of entrepreneurship and AI, these two streams of research have primarily run in parallel. To indicate the scope of current and future AI, we provide examples of AI (at different levels of development) for four sectors—customer service, financial, healthcare, and tertiary education. Indeed, experts from industry research and consulting firms suggest many AI-related business opportunities for entrepreneurs to pursue.Further, we elaborate on several of these opportunities, including opportunities to (1) capitalize on the “feeling economy,” (2) redistribute occupational skills in the economy, (3) develop and use new governance mechanisms, (4) keep humans in the loop (i.e., humans as part of the decision making process), (5) expand the role of humans in developing AI systems, and (6) expand the purposes of AI as a tool. After discussing the range of business opportunities that experts suggest will prevail in the economy with AI, we discuss how entrepreneurs can use AI as a tool to help them increase their chances of entrepreneurial success. We focus on four up-and-coming areas for entrepreneurship research: a more interaction-based perspective of (potential) entrepreneurial opportunities, a more activities-based micro-foundation approach to entrepreneurial action, a more cognitively hot perspective of entrepreneurial decision making and action, and a more compassionate and prosocial role of entrepreneurial action. As we discuss each topic, we also suggest opportunities to design an AI system (i.e., entrepreneurs as potential AI designers) to help entrepreneurs (i.e., entrepreneurs as AI users).AI is an exciting development in the technology world. How it transforms markets and societies depends in large part on entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurs can use AI to augment their decisions and actions in pursuing potential opportunities for productive gains. Thus, we discuss entrepreneurs' most critical tasks in developing and managing AI and explore some of the dark-side aspects of AI. Scholars also have a role to play in how entrepreneurs use AI, but this role requires the hard work of theory building, theory elaboration, theory testing, and empirical theorizing. We offer some AI topics that we hope future entrepreneurship research will explore. We hope this paper encourages scholars to consider research at the nexus of AI and entrepreneurship.     

The “why” of international entrepreneurship: uncovering entrepreneurs’ personal values

Previous studies investigating the “why” of entrepreneurial internationalization have focused on firm-level motivations, overlooking the relationships between firm-level and individual-level motivations and why entrepreneurs differ in the goals they intend to achieve. We investigate the role of personal values as desirable end states that motivate international entrepreneurship by functioning as superordinate cognitive structures that underlie the practical internationalization goals set by entrepreneurs. By adopting an idiographic approach based on a laddering methodology in a sample of 140 new domestic technology-based firms located in Northern Italy, we uncover and map the hierarchies of goals that motivate entrepreneurs’ internationalization intentions, which are anchored in five personal values: achievement, power, self-direction, benevolence, and security. We discuss our theoretical and methodological contributions and the policy implications of our findings.     

Transnational entrepreneurship: opportunity identification and venture creation

The present case study focuses on entrepreneurs who have migrated from one developed economy (Sweden or Finland) to another developed economy (Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR)). In contrast to the dominating understanding, we find that the transnational entrepreneurial incentives were opportunity driven rather than necessity based. The opportunity types identified varied, but indicate the importance of service opportunities, a type often left out of studies and classifications. A prevalent characteristic of transnational entrepreneurship is opportunity recognition based on introducing processes or products to the country of residence, familiar from the country of origin or based on use of the entrepreneurs’ contacts in the home country. This study showed, however, that although this was the case for two entrepreneurs, some identified opportunities for acting in the opposite direction, or did both import and export. Notably, there was also a fourth category, offering business-facilitating services, bridging differing cultural contexts in relationship-middlemen positions. For these entrepreneurs, there was thus no obvious “domestic market” from the start as assumed in traditional internationalization theories. Furthermore, although their businesses started on a limited scale between two countries, they quickly grew and entered other country markets. These transnational businesses thus represent forms of born globals not included in the high-tech business models often associated with such firms. Our findings finally lend support to arguments that a business-favorable institutional environment facilitates and encourages entrepreneurship.     

Entrepreneurial motivation and business performance: evidence from a French Microfinance Institution

This article examines the link between entrepreneurial motivation and business performance in the French microfinance context. Using hand-collected data on business microcredits from a Microfinance Institution (MFI), we provide an indirect measure of entrepreneurial success through loan repayment performance. Controlling for the endogeneity of entrepreneurial motivation in a bivariate probit model, we find that “necessity entrepreneurs” are more likely to have difficulty repaying their microcredits than “opportunity entrepreneurs”. However, type of motivation does not appear to make a difference to business survival. We test for the robustness of our results using parametric duration models and show that necessity entrepreneurs experience difficulties in loan repayment earlier than their opportunity counterparts, corroborating our initial findings. Our results are also robust to a sharper analysis of motivation, focusing on unemployment (on the necessity side) and non-pecuniary benefits from success (on the opportunity side).