Nascent Entrepreneurs and Venture Emergence: Opportunity Confidence,Human Capital,and Early Planning

Nascent entrepreneurs continuously evaluate the merits of the opportunities they pursue and so can abandon those that lack promise and persist with those that remain attractive. This paper articulates this evolving judgment about the opportunity as the nascent entrepreneur's opportunity confidence. It situates this construct in the context of the nascent entrepreneur's human capital and early planning actions in respect to the pursued opportunity, and in respect to the emergence of the nascent venture. Analyses of PSED data show that opportunity confidence positively affects venture emergence and that, through it, entrepreneurial experience and early planning have only indirect effects on venture emergence. In contrast, industry experience has a direct, positive effect on venture emergence. These results provide some novel insights into the nascent entrepreneurial process as well as into the role of human capital and early planning in that process.     

Regional patterns and determinants of birth and survival of new firms in Western Germany

This paper documents and assesses the economic performance of metropolitan technology centres in the USA during the business downturn of the early 2000s. We find that many of the USA's leading high-technology centres have performed at or near the national average, but that some of the nation's most prominent technology centres have fared poorly during the downturn, including Silicon Valley. The main factors that accentuated economic decline in technology centres during the recent recession include: a poorly diversified overall economic base; limited diversity within high-technology industries; relatively high (all industry) wages; and high levels of venture capital funding during the end of the ‘boom’ period of the late 1990s. We find that counter to some of the recent literature on regional development and knowledge-based industry clustering and networking, the rules of regional economic development have not changed dramatically with the so-called ‘new economy’. High-technology regions, just as ‘traditional’ industry regions over the past century, are vulnerable to pronounced economic cycles of growth and decline. The cycles can be particularly pronounced if regional economies are not well diversified and labour costs are not moderated during economic downturns. We also find that venture capital can exaggerate rather than moderate regional economic cycles, such as economic growth years in the USA from the late 1990s to the recession of 2001. The model suggests that free-flowing venture capital dollars may result in an over reliance on these funds, at the expense of a sound business model with sustainable growth and reasonable cash flow. Also, business networks associated with venture capital fund flow might be detrimental at critical economic turning points, often resulting in a rush of dollars in a limited business sector, rather than a diversified set of entrepreneurial ventures.     

An assessment of a venture creation programme: the case of Shell LiveWIRE

This paper examines the problems inherent in assessing the role of venture creation programmes. It suggests that there are, in particular, two areas to be considered. First, any assessment is contingent upon the evaluation context. In other words, not only are the objectives of any particular venture creation programme important, but also so are the objectives of the evaluation. Following on from this, it is also apparent that a simple input-output (‘black-box’) assessment is unlikely to fully capture the discontinuities or ambiguities inherent in the entrepreneurial process. To address these issues, an assessment instrument is developed to estimate the equivocal nature of the venture creation process. This 4-fold instrument suggests considering individuals in four states: individuals who use a programme but do not subsequently consider entrepreneurship to be appropriate (NO WISH); those who would countenance entrepreneurship in the future (POTENTIALS); those currently attempting to become entrepreneurs (NASCENTS); and those who are entrepreneurs (ACTUALS). Subsequently, this assessment instrument is used to consider the case of Shell LiveWIRE, which is a dedicated provider of enterprise support to young people in the UK. Based upon a sample of over 1000 young people, a probit and ordered probit analysis show that ‘soft’ forms of support (signposting and information provision) were of little value in moving individuals towards entrepreneurial activity. The research also found that the more likely an individual was to be engaged in entrepreneurial activity, the less their expressed value of LiveWIRE services.     

Industrial structure distortion and urban ecological efficiency from the perspective of green entrepreneurial ecosystems

Improving the entrepreneurial ecosystem plays an important role in the transformation and upgrading of traditional industries, and achieving the coordinated development of economy and environment among cities is important for improving the quality and efficiency of the entrepreneurial ecosystem. Using the panel data of 286 prefecture-level cities in China from 2003 to 2016, this study adopts the global reference super efficiency slack-based measure model considering undesirable output to measure China's urban ecological efficiency. In addition, the spatial lag model is used to investigate the impacts of industrial structure advancement and rationalization on ecological efficiency, and the impacts of the heterogeneity of industrial structure and economic development under the distortion of resource dependence on ecological efficiency. The results show that: every one-unit increase in the advancement of industrial structure will lead to a 0.0741 unit increase in ecological efficiency, but the high dependence on natural resources will inhibit the promoting effect of industrial structure advancement on ecological efficiency, and such an inhibiting effect will weaken with the improvement of economic development level; moreover, the influence coefficient of industrial structure rationalization on ecological efficiency is not significant, nor is it affected by the natural resource dependence and the level of economic development. This paper hereby proposes that in the process of promoting green entrepreneurial activity at present, the Chinese government should give full play to the role of industrial structure advancement on improving ecological efficiency, actively break through the constraints restricting the impact of industrial structure rationalization, reduce excessive dependence on resource industries, improve the level of regional economic development, and strive to transform resource-intensive industries to technology-intensive industries to support the sustainable development of a green entrepreneurship ecosystem.     

Social networks of female tech-entrepreneurs and new venture performance: the moderating effects of entrepreneurial alertness and gender discrimination

The social networks of entrepreneurs are an important factor affecting new venture performance. Based on the survey data of 316 new ventures in China, this paper explores the relationship between the social networks of female tech-entrepreneurs and new venture performance, and examines the moderating effects of entrepreneurial alertness and gender discrimination on this relationship. Our findings reveal that: (a) the social networks of female tech-entrepreneurs have a positive effect on new venture performance; (b) the entrepreneurial alertness of female tech-entrepreneurs has a positive effect on new venture performance; and (c) gender discrimination against women has a negative effect on new venture performance. Moreover, we found that gender discrimination negatively moderates the relationship between the social networks of female tech-entrepreneurs and new venture performance. We also found that entrepreneurial alertness positively moderates the relationship between the social networks of female tech-entrepreneurs and new venture performance. Our findings provide theoretical and practical implications for female technical individuals in the entrepreneurial practice, and shed light on the study of entrepreneurship theory in other emerging economies.     

Competition for private capital and central grants: the case of Japanese industrial parks

Local governments invest in public infrastructure to develop their regions. When they depend on intergovernmental grants for local development and have opportunities to lobby upper-level governments for such grants, horizontal intergovernmental competition in lobbying activity may emerge in addition to competition over public infrastructure. This paper empirically examines the existence of these interactions between Japanese localities, by using data on the value of industrial parks as infrastructure provisions and on personnel interchanges between the central and local governments as a measure of lobbying activity. Our results suggest that a Japanese local government’s choice of the size of industrial parks and its invitation to central officers to act as a director on loan are positive responses to the neighboring local government’s policy choices. As the value of the industrial parks in a district is affected by the neighboring districts’ lobby activities and their industrial park values, we can interpret these results as evidence of inter-regional competition in these two dimensions, rather than control by the central government in this unitary state.     

Teams in Australia's automotive industry: Characteristics and future challenges

Australia's automotive industry has throughout the 1990s embarked on a sustained programme to improve product quality, productivity and quality of work life through the development of a more flexible and team-based work-force. This paper examines the results of these efforts through a study of Australia's four car makers and their largest component suppliers. The paper examines the role of union-management cooperation in implementing work teams, identifies the forms of work teams that have been developed as well as evidence for the alignment of organization capabilities to support team-based work. The effects of work teams on organizational performance and quality of work life are also examined. Implications are discussed.     

Entrepreneurship and path dependency in regional development

This paper describes a case study of path-dependent industrial development in a specialized medium-sized region characterized by a specialized high-tech industry cluster, located near Norway's capital, Oslo. The case study examines the path-dependent process of new industry arising from technology-related industries through three main branching mechanisms: entrepreneurship, mobility, and social networks. More particularly, the study explores the extent to which regional branching mechanisms relate to different path-dependent processes of path extension, path renewal, or path creation. The case study of industrial development in a medium-sized region that critically examines the concepts of path dependence, and argues that specialized medium-sized regions follow different path processes from core regions due to regional branching that does not happen automatically but instead may require policy action and external investment to avoid stagnation or negative lock-in.     

Venture capital: Investor and investee perspectives

The venture capitalist plays a crucial role in, the startup and growth phases of entrepreneurial firms. Yet, the burgeoning but still relatively modest venture capital research literature continues to be characterized by isolated studies of how venture capitalists raise capital and select investments; little effort has been made to consolidate and integrate these findings. In particular, little is known about the impact of the venture capitalist's decision upon the entrepreneurial process.This paper has two objectives: The first is to review the available material and literature on venture capital decision-making and its impact on entrepreneurship. The second objective is to elucidate a research methodology which involves three different units of analysis as they relate to venture capital decision-making: the venture capitalist, the deal which was funded, and the proposal which was denied. Results from these three inter-related studies by the authors are reported.     

Entrepreneurial team and strategic agility: A conceptual framework and research agenda

To be agile, responsive and innovative seems to have become prerequisites for long-term growth and success for any organizations operating in an increasingly volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous (VUCA) world. This paper argues that such prerequisites, in turn, are dependent on the organization's abilities to harness team-level entrepreneurial behaviours, talents and activities as drivers of continuous strategic agility and innovation through an effectively managed HRM process. It illustrates this argument by conducting a synthesized review of the literature streams of entrepreneurial team and strategic agility and developing a conceptual framework that links them together. Rooted in the micro-foundational perspective, this review examines the relationship between key conceptual dimensions of entrepreneurial team and strategic agility, and explores the connections between these two literature streams. Our findings suggest the potential value from a cross-fertilization approach, and points out the future research directions through which these literature streams might be advanced collectively and effectively. Our research sheds some important light on the relationship between strategic agility and HRM through the lens of managing effective entrepreneurial teams in differing contexts.     

The influence of entrepreneurs’ social referents on start-up size

This paper uses social comparison theory to explore the effect that the average size of established businesses at the regional (provincial) level may have on start-up size. It is argued that established entrepreneurs at the regional level become referents of new entrepreneurs, influencing not only the decision to become entrepreneurs but also the characteristics of the new venture, such as its initial size. Specifically, the greater the average size of established businesses at the provincial level, the bigger the start-up size of new ventures. This paper further considers how this effect is moderated by two key individual level variables: knowing an entrepreneur personally (i.e., close social referent), and being the owner and manager of an existing business (i.e., past entrepreneurial and managerial experience). Predictions are tested using data that combine individual- and provincial-level information in Spain over the period 2008–2014. The results show the positive relationship of the average size of established businesses on new venture start-up size, and that this effect decreases when the entrepreneurs have previous entrepreneurial experience.     

A Small Entrepreneurial City in Action: Policy Mobility,Urban Entrepreneurialism,and Politics of Scale in Jiyuan,China

This research details the mundane practices of policy mobility and entrepreneurial endeavour in Jiyuan in relation to the city's changing administrative position, and is one of the first attempts at understanding how entrepreneurial policies are mobilized, mutated and diffused in a small inland Chinese city. We interpret Jiyuan's evolving development strategies and trajectory through two interrelated conceptual lenses—policy mobility and urban entrepreneurialism—bridged by an analysis of the politics of scale. Over the past three decades, governance strategies in Jiyuan have evolved from policy imitation, during the germination of urban entrepreneurialism, to policy mutation and diffusion, under the amplification of entrepreneurialism, as the city has moved up the administrative levels and urban hierarchy. Policy mobility and urban entrepreneurialism in Jiyuan, involving a multi‐scalar process, are being shaped by the interactions between the city, the region, the central state and global capital under the confluence of globalization and marketization. The ‘successful’ story of a small entrepreneurial city tells a new tale that can inform wider contexts by painting a fuller portrait of the evolution of an entrepreneurial city across different scales and time and bringing cities hitherto ‘off the map’ back into the picture of urban entrepreneurialism against the backdrop of globalization.     

Research and Technology Commercialization

This paper introduces the special themed section on organizational interactions involving universities and firms that result in the commercialization of research and technology. Our objective is to shed light on some of the most vexing, yet under‐researched predicaments research institutions encounter, despite their best efforts to advance commercialization. First, we synthesize and extend recent studies, including the papers in the special themed section. Next, we develop a taxonomy of modes of commercialization. Specifically, we consider internal approaches, quasi‐internal approaches (e.g. incubators), university research parks, regional clusters, academic spin‐offs and start‐ups, licensing, contract research and consultancy, corporate venture capital, and open science and innovation. We also identify areas for further research at the individual (e.g. heterogeneity of entrepreneurial teams and experience; incentives), organizational and intra‐university (e.g. corporate governance; nature of growth strategies; relationships with trading partners; boundary spanning activities) and technology levels (e.g. institutional context; reconfiguration of technology; valuation of technology).     

基于联合风险投资的创业智力资本导入机理研究

本文首先描述了创业企业通过吸收联合风险投资获得发展所急需的财务资本与智力资本而飞速发展的现象;然后阐述了创业智力资本的结构,探讨了基于联合风险投资的创业智力资本的导入机理;最后,进行了具体案例的剖析。     

城市产业园建设存在的问题与对策研究

随着经济的发展,在世界范围内相继出现了一些产业园,因受到地域与经济的影响,一些产业园开始变得相对固定,但企业的用地成本却受到土地资源的影响而不断提升。因此,论文对城市产业园的问题进行了分析,阐述了产业园在定位、创新、融资等方面的解决策略。     

‘Who Knows What?’ in New Venture Teams: Transactive Memory Systems as a Micro‐Foundation of Entrepreneurial Orientation

The increasing importance of entrepreneurial behaviour has led scholars to embrace the idea that an entrepreneurial orientation (EO) is an important predictor of firm performance. While EO occupies a central position in strategic entrepreneurship research, scholars have yet to explore its origins in new ventures. Drawing on the knowledge‐based and cognitive views, we theorize that a new venture team's transactive memory system is a cognitive mechanism that spurs the development of an EO. In a field study of high‐tech new ventures in China, we examined the relationship between venture teams’ transactive memory systems (representing the distribution, integration, and utilization of the teams’ knowledge) and EO and the moderating influence of team‐, firm‐, and environment‐level factors. We found that the transactive memory system of a new venture team enhanced their EO and that this relationship was positively influenced by intra‐team trust, the structural organicity of a venture, and environmental dynamism. Our findings provide novel insights into the micro‐foundations of TMS in developing an EO in new ventures.     

Attracting cross-border venture capital: the role of a local investor

Examining an increasingly prevalent but under-researched phenomenon, cross-border venture capital investments, it is observed that local venture capitalists typically invest first, followed by foreign venture capitalists in later rounds. A model is developed that explains the role of a domestic venture capital investor in attracting foreign investors and which also accounts for the impact of various circumstances on the importance of this role. In our model based on analysis of nine cross-border venture capital-backed companies, local venture capitalists have several important roles in increasing the venture's cross-border investment readiness including advice to operational management and contributing contacts and local market knowledge. The importance of these roles is mitigated if the entrepreneurial team is highly experienced or if the home market is not important for the venture. The prominence of the local investor has signalling value. Finally, the local investor's international social capital facilitates the formation of cross-border syndicates. Overall, the model developed in the paper contributes to a better understanding of cross-border venture capital and in particular to the division of labour between domestic and foreign venture capitalists in international venture capital syndicates. The paper also contributes to the emerging literature on international social capital.     

Technological innovation and industrial organization in the Danish wind industry *

The origin of this article is the paradox that heavy US R&D funding to hi-tech aerospace industry in the seventies and eighties was not able to provide an appropriate industrial technology base in wind technology that could match the wind turbines from the much more low-tech Danish machine industry (agricultural sector), which received very limited public R&D funding. Nevertheless, the Danish manufacturers took the lion's share of the world market in the eighties, in casu the California home market for the American producers. A bottom-up learning based development strategy almost completely outperformed a science based top down development strategy for this re-introduced energy technology (top down failures were also seen in the UK, Denmark, W. Germany). The top-down and bottom-up strategies reflect two very different types of de facto entrepreneurial behaviour and industrial organization.     

警惕我国企业集群发展中潜在问题

企业集群是当今区域经济发展规划的新趋势 ,引起了多学科领域学者关注。我国已经出现了一些企业集群的雏形 ,但是这些企业集群都存在不同的问题。以东莞、温州及部分的高新区为例 ,从各自的形成过程、发展轨迹等角度 ,讨论了各具特色的区域集群存在的不同性质的问题     

在杨凌及其周边农民中普及英语的意义与策略研究

杨凌作为中国农业起源地和现代农业领跑者,以及作为国家向亚太经合作组织开放的十大工业园区之一,在国际农业科技贸易舞台上发挥着愈来愈重要的作用,在当地及其周边农民中普及英语的时代已经到来。本文围绕这一立意从建设社会主义新农村、构建学习型社会等四个方面分析了在杨凌当地及其周边农民中普及英语的积极意义,又从政府牵头开展专项培训、高校助力组建普及小分队等四个方面提出了对杨凌当地及其周边农民普及英语的四点建议性策略。