The nascent entrepreneurship hub: goals, entrepreneurial self-efficacy and start-up outcomes

Entrepreneurship involves human agency. The entrepreneurial process occurs because people are motivated to pursue and exploit perceived opportunities. It is rooted in the theory that action is the result of motivation and cognition. Therefore, this paper applies elements of goal theory and social cognitive theory to develop a motivational model of nascent entrepreneurial start-up outcomes. The objective of this model is to renew attention on motivational constructs in entrepreneurship research. Additionally, it provides predictive value for the likelihood of new firm founding among nascent entrepreneurs. Results suggest that motivational antecedents among nascent entrepreneurs significantly influence the likelihood of quitting the start-up process versus continuing nascent entrepreneurial start-up efforts.     

Knowledge-intensive innovative entrepreneurship integrating Schumpeter,evolutionary economics,and innovation systems

Small Business Economics - This article proposes a novel conceptualization of knowledge-intensive innovative entrepreneurship, which can capture the main characteristics of a vital phenomenon in...     

Regulatory costs on entrepreneurship and establishment employment size

In this article, we examine how the level of regulation affects the size distribution of businesses. To the extent that regulation functions as a fixed cost, it should lead to larger firm size. However, regulations may also lead to smaller establishments with firms outsourcing regulated activities or staying small to take advantage of state exemptions for small businesses from regulations. We empirically examine the relationship between the size distribution of establishments and the level of regulation using state- and industry-level panel data from 1992 to 2004. Our results suggest that regulation decreases the proportion of zero employee and 1–4 employee establishments. The proportion of establishments in the 5–9 employee range generally increases with the level of regulation. Thus, regulation appears to operate as a fixed cost causing establishments to be larger.     

Business incubation: innovative services in an entrepreneurship ecosystem

This article studies the process of business services provision by business incubators. It considers this provision as an innovative and dynamic process, carried out in an open innovation context, where many elements from the entrepreneurship ecosystem (EE) interact. Thus, the article creates new knowledge because conceptually, it defines and relates all the key elements that are the source of innovation and value added: business services themselves, the EE, the context of open innovation and the features of that interaction. This conceptualization is tested empirically in two different scopes, a broad one with 255 business incubators around the world, and a Spanish case with two university incubators with some references to a foreign two-country study. Results detect some patterns of service provision according to ownership, size and partnership of the business incubators and show the efficacy of the cooperation of the private and public sectors and the universities.     

Fractionalization,entrepreneurship, and the institutional environment for entrepreneurship

The vast majority of the literature on ethnicity and entrepreneurship focuses on the construct of ethnic entrepreneurship. However, very little is known about how ethnic heterogeneity affects entrepreneurship, and the institutional arrangements affecting entrepreneurship. This study attempts to fill the gap, and thus examines the effect of ethnic heterogeneity on various outcomes associated with entrepreneurship and the institutional environment for entrepreneurship. Using indices of ethnic and linguistic fractionalization, we show that ethnic heterogeneity negatively influences entrepreneurship. We argue that potential channels that can explain the negative effect of fractionalization on entrepreneurship include trust, social network, and innovation, among others. This study provides a new perspective on the existing debate that seeks to understand why the levels of entrepreneurial success vary across countries.     

Franchise,innovation and entrepreneurship

Since franchise business can be an alternative to independent business, it seems interesting to look at those factors that encourage individuals to choose franchise rather than independent business. It is also relevant to consider the role of innovation because it is generally accepted that independent business facilitates innovations to a greater degree than does franchise. The main goal of this paper is to determine the factors that encourage individuals to choose franchise activity and what role plays innovation in their decision.     

Islam,entrepreneurship, and embeddedness

This study centers on the premise that entrepreneurship is an embedded process. Although “the entrepreneur” is inherently an “individual,” entrepreneurship can never be fully disembedded from the more general social settings within which any business venture is situated. An Islamic‐based economic discursive framework should be cognizant of the different forms of sociality, spatiality, and community as well as the various norms, codes, and symbols that define society more generally. The work of Karl Polanyi on embeddedness is engaged and juxtaposed with Islam's understanding of the ideal mode of economic discursive practices. Islamic economic models and Polanyi are both critical of the corrosive effects of unbridled capitalism and individualism that ultimately lead to reification and exploitation. The conclusion recommends more small‐N case studies by researchers and entrepreneurial educational materials that emphasize the importance of networks and local embeddedness.     

Ideation,entrepreneurship, and innovation

In this his paper I discuss the origins of ideas starting with Locke. I do this to motivate the question: Why do scholars of entrepreneurship, innovation, and enterprise dynamics need to know about the sources of ideas that lead to new technology and innovation. I suggest and illustrate an answer to this question as well: One might want to think about the source of ideas if one seeks a perspective, theoretical or empirical, about covariates with successful R&D-based activities.     

University start-up formation and technology licensing with firms that go public: a resource-based view of academic entrepreneurship

Although academic entrepreneurship is a topic receiving some attention in the literature, higher education's appetite for expanding technology transfer activities suggests that more research is needed to inform practice. This study investigates the effects of particular resource sets on two university commercialization activities: the number of start-up companies formed and the number of initial public offering (IPO) firms to which a university had previously licensed a technology. Utilizing multisource data on 120 universities and a resource-based view of the firm framework, a set of university financial, human capital, and organizational resources were found to be significant predictors of one or both outcomes.     

Small business,innovation, and entrepreneurship

The purpose of this special issue is to examine small businesses, innovation, and entrepreneurship, and show that, although these three concepts have their own specific literature and can be dealt with independently, they are closely related. From Schumpeter to the present, a stream of literature unites the concept of entrepreneurship with its ability to make new combinations of factors and corresponding innovations in processes and products; similarly, in a broad stream of literature, the most characteristic dimension of entrepreneurship is closely linked to small businesses. Small and large companies have different advantages and drawbacks with innovation, but small businesses provide the most conducive environment for entrepreneurship and innovation that are not necessarily sustained by the know-how and resources characteristic of large-scale production, but require commitment and close cooperation between company members. In this introduction, we show how the three topics converge in four articles dealing with micro-start-ups and innovation, institutional determinants of entrepreneurship, and determining factors in entrepreneurs’ individual characteristics.     

Patents, knowledge spillovers, and entrepreneurship

We develop an endogenous-growth model in which we distinguish between inventors and innovators. This distinction implies that stronger protection of intellectual property rights has an inverted U-shaped effect on economic growth. Intellectual property rights protection attributes part of the rents of commercial exploitation to the inventor that would otherwise accrue to the entrepreneur. Stronger patent protection will therefore increase the incentive to do research and development (R&D) and generate new knowledge. This new knowledge has a positive effect on entrepreneurship, innovation, and growth. However, after some point, further strengthening of patent protection will reduce the returns to entrepreneurship sufficiently to reduce the overall growth rate.     

Risk,balanced skills and entrepreneurship

This paper proposes that risk aversion encourages individuals to invest in balanced skill profiles, making them more likely to become entrepreneurs. By not taking this possible linkage into account, previous research has underestimated the impacts of both risk aversion and balanced skills on the likelihood individuals choose entrepreneurship. Data on Dutch university graduates provide an illustration supporting our contention. We raise the possibility that even risk-averse people might be suited to entrepreneurship; and it may also help explain why prior research has generated somewhat mixed evidence about the effects of risk aversion on selection into entrepreneurship.     

Union power,entrepreneurial risk,and entrepreneurship

The paper proposes that a trade-off can be identified between the union power and the entry rate of new enterprises. It suggests that union power increases the entrepreneurial failure risk, thereby discouraging entrepreneurship and reducing the employment opportunities. In addition, we show that high price uncertainty and a union-controlled labour market is a harmful combination for entrepreneurship.     

Leakage,entrepreneurship, and satisfaction in hospitality

Tourism is a very important tool for economic development. However, its economic effects are mainly conditioned by the level of leakage. This work defines leakage, provides an original evaluation of the entrepreneurial environment in showing that it is the one with the lowest level of leakage, and creates a new framework. It also measures leakage in an innovative way using a quantitative approach. In addition, the paper explores and shows how leakage can affect critical business factors, such as customer and employee satisfaction. The empirical study uses structural equations and data from hotels in the Valencian Region (Spain) to show how important leakage is in making businesses more competitive. The results confirm the new model and are of interest for company managers and public organizations.     

Market imperfections,opportunity and sustainable entrepreneurship

This research develops the argument that four types of market imperfections (i.e., inefficient firms, externalities, flawed pricing mechanisms and information asymmetries) at once contribute to environmental degradation and that they also provide significant opportunities for the creation of radical technologies and innovative business models. We show that these opportunities establish the foundations for an emerging model of sustainable entrepreneurship, one which enables founders to obtain entrepreneurial rents while simultaneously improving local and global social and environmental conditions. To advance this new field, we offer suggestions for a research agenda focusing on two areas: the relationship between market imperfections and entrepreneurial opportunities, and the emerging field of sustainable entrepreneurship.     

Institutions,entrepreneurship, and economic growth in Europe

Institutions have a decisive impact on the prevalence and nature of entrepreneurship. To date, the impact of institutions on (productive) entrepreneurship and the effects of entrepreneurship on economic growth have largely been investigated in isolation. In this paper, we bring together institutions, entrepreneurship, and economic growth using a parsimonious growth model in a 3SLS specification. In our first stage, we regress multiple measures of entrepreneurial activity on institutional proxies that are known to correlate with more productive forms of entrepreneurial activity. Using the fitted values of this first-stage regression as our proxy for productive entrepreneurship, we can then estimate a panel growth regression following Islam (1995) in a second stage. The third stage then optimizes the estimation of the two equations simultaneously. Our results show that productive entrepreneurship contributes to economic growth. In our set of proxies for institutional quality, financial stability, small government, and perceived start-up skills are the most important predictors of such productive entrepreneurship.