High-Growth Entrepreneurship in Mexico

Research from the United States finds a small percentage of firms are responsible for the great majority of net new job creation. We now have a fairly precise set of stylized facts regarding the characteristics of these high-growth firms (HGFs). However, we have little understanding of HGFs in Latin America. To address this gap, we explore the characteristics of HGFs in Mexico selected by Endeavor, a global business accelerator. We find Mexican HGFs are present in a wide range of industries, including information technology and consumer segments. Several are pursuing strategies targeting base of the pyramid consumers and/or expanding internationally. We conclude with suggestions for future research and policy implications.     

Entrepreneurship in the Region: Breeding Ground for Nascent Entrepreneurs?

This paper employs data from the German Socioeconomic Panel (SOEP) and data from the German Social Insurance Statistics to study nascent entrepreneurship. In particular, micro data from the SOEP characterizing employees and nascent entrepreneurs is combined with data characterizing the entrepreneurial environment. The principal findings suggest that individuals are embedded in their local entrepreneurial environment which influences an individual especially at the beginning of the decision process about whether to become self-employed. Work and previous self-employment experience is more important than formal education for the likelihood of being a nascent entrepreneur. Furthermore, social capital is an important stimulus for nascent entrepreneurs. Finally, the results indicate that financial assets are less important for nascent entrepreneurs.     

Joint Ventures in Russia: The View from the Russians

This article, detailing research on Russian joint ventures with foreign partners far to the south east of the capital, focuses on Russian business people who are not playing the GKO market or trying to stash money away in Swiss bank accounts. The findings of this research suggest that some Russians may be growing as disenchanted with the experience of doing business with foreigners as some foreigners have become at doing business with Russians.     

Joint Ventures in Kazakstan: Views from Local and Foreign Partners

For all the talk of a crisis of confidence in the region of the former Soviet Union (FSU), international business goes on as it has done throughout the decade since the fall of Communism. This article reports on the views of foreign and local partners who have established joint ventures in Kazakstan, the largest of the independent satellite republics of the FSU. Findings suggest that such joint ventures are playing an integral role in the growth of business in Kazakstan, although they are difficult to manage successfully.     

Manhattan's Tech Start-Ups Settle in the Flatiron District and Chelsea

New York City's technology sector has sometimes been calledSilicon Alley,in deference to its Western big brother,which sprawls across the San Francisco Bay Area.Now,a decade after the dot-com crash stopped the rapid growth of the city's booming Internet sector,a high-tech corridor has developed in the Flatiron district and neighboring Chelsea. The older,small office buildings in the Flatiron district have attracted start-ups,while large companies like Google and IAC/InterActiveCorp have found homes in Ch...     

Start-Ups and External Equity: The Role of Entrepreneurial Experience

Interest in entrepreneurship has increased dramatically over the last two decades. Because of the role that entrepreneurship plays in economic development, an understanding of the financing of business start-ups is essential. A long-standing problem for many business start-ups is acquiring external equity during the first year of operations. This paper analyzes the determinants of obtaining external equity. Special consideration is given to the role of entrepreneurial experience. The results suggest that entrepreneurial experience impacts a start-up's ability to obtain external equity.     

Supplier Partnerships and the Small, High-Growth Firm: Selecting for Success

Strategic partnerships are commonplace in today's global economy. Effective use of partnerships are viewed increasingly as an important issue facing small, growth-oriented firms. A key debate is how small firms should manage supplier partnerships. Contrasting the debate about the extent to which small firms are inertial versus adaptive, the impact of growth on value chain partnerships with suppliers was investigated. Data collected from 91 pharmaceutical-related firms is used to test the proposition that firm growth is related positively to maintaining or to expanding relationships with suppliers, not to terminating partnerships. The paper further posits that this relationship between firm growth and the amount purchased from a supplier is moderated by the perceived effectiveness of the value-chain partnerships such that when effectiveness is higher, the relationship between sales growth and the amount purchased from a value-chain partner is stronger. The propositions, which are tested with regression analysis, are supported partially.     

Guanxi与创业企业成长:国外研究述评

随着中国在世界经济舞台上扮演日益重要的角色,国外学术界为了便利自己国家的实业界了解并应对中国社会中的"guanxi",越来越多的国外学者从guanxi视角去研究中国的经济管理领域中的问题,而guanxi对创业企业成长的影响是其中的一个热点。针对该热点,本文从guanxi的分类和度量,guanxi与创业机会的识别和把握,guanxi与创业企业资源的获取,guanxi与创业企业绩效方面对国外学术界的研究现状进行回顾,并在评价它们的基础上指出该研究热点未来进一步可能的研究方向。     

Entrepreneurial Signaling via Education: A Success Factor in Innovative Start-Ups

Unlike traditional start-ups, innovative start-ups and their respective market partners are faced with severe problems of asymmetric information due to their lack of prior production history and reputation. Here, we study whether and how entrepreneurial signaling via education can help innovative entrepreneurs signal their abilities to banks and prospective employees. We argue that innovative entrepreneurs signal their quality by means of certain characteristics of their educational history. In particular, we expect potential employees to use an entrepreneur’s university degree as a quality signal when deciding whether to accept a job at an innovative start-up, and we expect banks to use a more precise indicator, namely the actual length of study in relation to a standard length, as a signal when deciding to extend credit to an innovative founder. By contrast, traditional start-ups are not faced with the same problems of asymmetric information, so we do not expect employees or banks to require the same signals from them. We empirically test our hypotheses using a dataset of more than 700 German start-ups collected in 1998/99. All hypotheses are borne out by the data.     

Assessing the Determinants of High-Growth Manufacturing Firms in Italy

Few firms grow rapidly, but their contribution to employment growth is often impressive. The main purpose of this paper is to analyse both the external and internal factors that can affect the probability of being a high-growth firm (HGF) in Italy. We found that HGFs are, on average, young firms and are present in different industries, but the role of demand is important to understanding their performance at the sectoral level. Moreover, our findings show that financial constraints and profitability are not associated with the probability of being a HGF. HGFs, on average, are characterised by high productivity, but only when growth is measured in terms of sales. The most original results of this study concern the endogenous determinants of rapid growth, which have yet to be adequately examined in the literature. First, we found that the concentration of ownership is important for HGFs that experienced rapid growth in their sales. Second, the quality of human capital is a strong point for firms experiencing rapid employment growth.     

Determinants of the Prevalance of Start-ups and High-Growth Firms

The purpose of this study is to identify key institutional determinants of firm emergence and growth. We do this using various types of data from Sweden. A characterization of a number of institutions and policy measures shows that they are likely to have contributed to an environment that discourages entrepreneurial activity and firm growth. Aspects dealt with include: missing arenas for entrepreneurship in the care sectors and for household-related services, taxation of entrepreneurial income, incentives for wealth accumulation, wage-setting institutions and labor market regulations. Using original data, we provide evidence of a low prevalence of nascent entrepreneurs and a small net employment contribution by high-growth firms. We admit that indisputable evidence for the effects of institutional arrangements is almost impossible to establish. However, the consistency of our theoretical arguments and empirical data makes a strong case for the notion that the Swedish case illustrates the costs of giving too little weight to economic renewal in policy making.     

East-West Joint Ventures in the Soviet Union:

Last two decades of the East European experience prove the enclave model of East-West joint ventures not viable. The promising integrative model presupposes much better structural conditions in the economy. Until at least 1995, structural determinants of the Soviet-based joint ventures will largely reduce them to enclaves; therefore the joint venture expansion in the USSR will be constrained.     

农民创业行为影响因素研究——基于西北五省区调查的实证分析

基于西北五省区的调查数据,运用Logit离散选择模型,对农民创业行为的影响因素进行实证分析。研究结果表明:培训、社会经历、社会背景、人力资本等对农民的创业行为有正向影响,其中培训的边际影响值最大;年龄因素的影响是负的;性别、父母职业、兄弟姐妹数、父母平均受教育程度等因素的影响不显著。     

Build a Firm,Start Another: The Bromleys and Family Firm Entrepreneurship in the Philadelphia Region

Drawing chiefly on the multi-generational strategies of a durable family firm in the Philadelphia textile industry, this article strives to suggest the creative manner in which kin-based managerial teams responded to shifting economic environments in the United States, c. 1850–1940. Central to the Bromleys' success was the spinning off of new firms in different, but related, textile sectors, thereby taking advantage of market opportunities and easing inter-generational successions. Still, key failures of vision in the inter-war era defeated the expansionism of the Bromley clan's most successful section. Two regional case studies of family firms in metalworking and foodstuffs are appended to suggest the range of variation in succession strategies and their results in differing industrial sectors and market environments. As might be expected, a call for more intensive and conceptually refined research is offered at the close.     

Entrepreneurship and Illegality: Insights from the Nigerian cross-border Trade

Illegal business activity is common throughout the world, occurs in a diversity of forms, and is often viewed as the darker side of entrepreneurship. Of particular interest is illegal cross-border trade, which occurs at low levels between developed countries, but is often widespread between developing countries. It is on the increase, despite many attempts by governments to eradicate it. Yet illegal trading is poorly studied both theoretically and empirically from an entrepreneurial perspective. The paper outlines a working model exploring the relationships between key entrepreneurial factors and illegal trading, and explores the model using fieldwork data collected by the first author in Nigeria during an 8-month ethnographic study of cross-border trading. The Nigerian cross-border trade is particularly interesting, as it takes place in an environment of long-standing illegality and corruption. The findings reveal that illegal practices are so widespread that they are a norm, an almost parallel economy with its own traditions and values. In this context, entrepreneurial advantage in trading illegally is quite different from that which would be expected in more familiar Western contexts. The entrepreneurial advantages of trading in illegal goods and evading duties appear overwhelming at first, as bribery of officials is widely accepted, which reduces risk of law enforcement to negligible levels, and most traders do not view illegal trading as immoral. Closer analysis reveals, however, that traders need to bribe to trade any goods, legal as well as illegal. Bribery is part of a system of harassment by officials that pervades all aspects of the trade. In this climate, there are no special advantages in targeting illegal goods to trade in. The distinction between what is legal and illegal becomes blurred and irrelevant. Traders target any goods irrespective of their legal status if potential profit margins are high. Entrepreneurial advantage thus lies in the trade itself and making it work, not in its illegality. Most entrepreneurial energy is devoted to creatively circumvent the harassment of corrupt officials, not to exploit illegal business opportunities. The paper concludes by demonstrating that certain factors are crucial to our understanding of the relationship between entrepreneurship and illegal trading, in both Western and Nigerian contexts, but that the relationships between the factors differ widely in the two contexts. The model constructed provides a basis for further comparative research in other regional contexts. In terms of policy implications, the illegality of the trade is of some benefit in that it has created hundreds of associated jobs and businesses, which enable traders to operate more securely and efficiently in the climate of corruption, harassment, and uncertainty. Most traders, however, have learnt to profitably live with illegality, but nonetheless, would still prefer to trade in a less stressful and impartial legal system. Illegality on balance is more harmful than beneficial for economic development. Removing illegality once institutionalised, however, is not a simple matter and no solution can be found without fuller understanding of the sociology and the entrepreneurial processes of illegal trading.     

Insurance of Techno-Organizational Ventures and Procedural Ethics: Lessons from the Deepwater Horizon Explosion

Hazardous operational consequences of unethical behavior in high-risk projects can be traced back to inadequate relationships between businesses and the insurance industry. The communication of blame, as a consequence of major industrial accidents like the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig in the Gulf of Mexico in April 2010, and the relevance of this communication of blame for subsequent insurance litigation, show that the awareness of the relationship between unethical behavior resulting in irresponsible procedural action and deficient loss-prevention practices is a significant component of risk consciousness. The awareness of ethical origins of project risks could alter the methods of design and monitoring of insurance contracts for risky techno-organizational ventures.

     

创业过程中财富创造影响因素研究

财富创造是创业过程开展的目的,也是创业研究的焦点。为了洞悉影响财富创造的内在机理,揭示影响财富创造的更深层次的因素,本文围绕创业过程中作用于财富创造的机会、资源与战略,梳理和评述其对财富创造的影响;并在此基础上,通过进一步深化财富创造与三因素间内在逻辑关系的理解,构建出财富创造与影响因素间的逻辑关系模型。     

Time Perspectives in International Joint Ventures:

This paper recognizes a new era for international joint ventures (IJVs) in which venturers must agree to center the venture's efforts in developing new products, regardless of its previous primary purpose. After the reasons behind the cyclical evolution in the purposes and motivations of the venturers is reviewed, the paper argues that time is a multi-dimensional variable which every organization enacts in a unique fashion. IJVs must entrain the respective time reckoning systems of the partners if the venture is to avoid strategic and operational difficulties. Assuming that the venturers' temporal asymmetry yields asynchrony in the venture, the venturers' divergent time horizons are used to demonstrate the likely impact on marketing issues. This concept extends the literature on problems unique to IJVs by identifying an element which will help assess the compatibility of potential IJV partners throughout the life cycle of the venture's industry as well as provide a neutral issue on which all entities may operate for better results in all phases of the industry's life cycle.     

A Relational Framework for Analyzing Ventures in Cognitive Environments: Illustrations from the TNK-BP Experience

This article looks at multinational investments in Central and Eastern Europe from a relational matrix perspective. The matrix posits a set of business relationships as outcomes of environment, regulatory or cognitive, and cluster valence combinations of power, urgency, and legitimacy. BP's pursuit of petroleum reserves leading to the venture with Russia's TNK is offered as a case study pointing to two general propositions relating the conduct of global firms in the region. Data analysis relating foreign direct investment with degrees of perceived corruption supports the propositions of opportunistic behavior and acceptance of opaque environments by global petroleum companies. The legitimacy construct is shown to be most prone to erosion, and its diminution impacts a firm's operating flexibility.