Understanding Business Process Evolution in Digital Ventures

Business processes are at each company\u27s core and must be adapted permanently to react to changing markets, substantial growth, or legal regulations. Especially digital ventures have the potential to evolve fast, and consequently, their business processes need to change at the same speed. Two streams of literature have looked into this. Traditional business process management sees business processes, once implemented, as relatively stable. In contrast, digital entrepreneurship literature highlights the inherent flexibility of digital ventures. Based on a multiple case study of five digital ventures, we analyze how entrepreneurs deal with this tension when business processes evolve. Building on entrepreneurial bricolage, we propose two types of resource recombination that we find, namely, usage of existing private resources and re-configuring of resources already being used within the venture. These insights contribute to extending our understanding of the evolution of business processes

On the Potential of Business Process Management for Digital Entrepreneurship: Findings from a Literature Review

Digital ventures face significant organizational challenges when scaling, including increasing sales and employee numbers, that withdraw resources from working on their market offerings. While digital entrepreneurship literature stresses the importance of creating processes that balance structure and flexibility to deal with these challenges, business process management (BPM) literature focuses on improving pre-designed business processes. We reconcile these perspectives in a structured literature review to explore how BPM can support digital venturing. We identify synergies and tensions between BPM and digital entrepreneurship and propose three avenues for future research. These include exploring ambidextrous BPM in digital ventures, treating digital venturing as a business process, and developing capabilities for balancing flexibility and structure. We contribute to information systems research by critically reviewing the literature on BPM and digital entrepreneurship and providing potential areas for future investigation

Knowledge Transfer within relationship portfolios: The Creation of Knowledge Recombination Rents

Purpose: The purpose of this article is to clarify the underdeveloped conceptualization of a particular type network rents, defined as knowledge recombination rents, related to the possibility for a firm to transfer and recombine knowledge within and across its portfolio of inter-organizational relationships. Design/methodology/approach: Adopting a contingency approach, we develop a comprehensive model with propositions drawn from an original synthesis of the extant literature on the management of inter-organizational relationships. Findings: We summarize the most important internal and external variables that explain how knowledge recombination rents arise within a firm’s portfolio of inter-organizational relationships. We create a seven-proposition model that considers: an “internal fit”, related to internal contingencies of the firm, specifically life stage and its strategy; an “external fit”, related to external contingencies of the network of the firm, specifically past experience and current portfolio structure. Research limitations/implications: The model is theory-driven. Future research is needed to empirically validate the propositions, especially in different industries and contexts. Practical implications: Our model, beyond the fact of being theoretically sounded, is also completely practical oriented. Indeed, we developed a comprehensive model articulated in seven propositions which relationship managers can easily use to analyze and manage their portfolios of inter-organizational relationships. Originality/value: Our model allows us to assert that the value of an inter-organizational relationship is not fixed nor just related to the single dyadic interaction; rather before engaging with a relationship is crucial to ponder possible benefits and harms. This is the central element in our contribution that develops an easy-to-use and comprehensive model based on best practices

How bricoleurs go international: a European cross-country study considering the moderating role of governmental entrepreneurship support programs

Research increasingly suggests that innovativeness and internationalization are two intertwined pathways to growth for entrepreneurial ventures. However, both ways can be resource intensive and thus challenging. Therefore, theory points to the emerging concept of entrepreneurial bricolage to explain how resourceful behavior helps entrepreneurial ventures thrive despite facing the challenges associated with growth. At the same time, recent studies increasingly emphasize the importance of institutional support for successful venture growth. Combining both streams, this study explores product/service innovativeness as a mediator in the relationship between bricolage and the degree of internationalization and further investigates the moderating role of governmental entrepreneurship support programs in this relationship. By drawing on a unique dataset of 681 European entrepreneurial ventures, we find that bricolage is an important means for entrepreneurial ventures that target foreign markets, as it fosters product/service innovativeness and thereby enhances a venture’s degree of internationalization. Interestingly, governmental entrepreneurship support programs do not affect the link between bricolage and innovativeness, but they influence how innovativeness translates into greater degrees of internationalization. We discuss the theoretical and practical implications of our findings

Leadership Skills to Sustain High-Tech Entrepreneurial Ventures

High-tech (HT) innovation-oriented entrepreneurs start 35% more ventures and create 10% more jobs in the first 5 years of operation than the rest of the private sector and drive significant economic growth across all industries; however, more than 50% of the entrepreneurial HT ventures fail during the first 5 years of operations. Guided by the conceptual framework of transformational leadership theory, the purpose of this multicase study was to explore skills used by successful entrepreneurial leaders to sustain their HT ventures in Silicon Valley, California. Data collection was from 8 participants in semistructured 1-on-1 interviews and 3 participants in a focus group discussion. All participants were entrepreneurial leaders with experience in sustaining their entrepreneurial ventures beyond 5 years. A thematic data analysis approach involved text search, content coding to nodes, and code comparison techniques of collected data to extract themes and identify relationships in the findings. The emergent 4 leadership skill themes for HT entrepreneurial venture sustainability were the recruitment of the right team, situational adaptability, market orientation, and providing innovation stimulation. The right team can resourcefully assist the leader to execute market-leading competitive products and overcome challenges in the dynamic and intensely competitive and innovative HT industry. A culture of openness, ownership, and trust is conducive to the sustainability of an HT venture. Findings from this study may contribute to social change by promoting the formation of new HT ventures, increasing job creation, reducing work stressors, improving quality of life with innovative and cost-effective products, and services in healthcare, infrastructure, personal safety, education, and communications

Bricolage and growth in social entrepreneurship organisations

This paper explores the role of bricolage in the growth of social entrepreneurship organisations (SEOs). Building on the premises that (1) bricolage is based on the resources at hand and the subjective perspectives that individuals have of these resources, and (2) the characteristics of the top management team (TMT) are an indicator of the resources they make available to the organisation and their ability to put different perspectives into play to interpret resource environments, we seek to determine which configurations of resource endowment, autonomy in the use of resources, TMT diversity and bricolage promote organisational growth. Using a fuzzy-set theoretical technique (fsQCA), we show that the effect of bricolage on organisational growth is contingent on the availability of resources, the degree of autonomy in using these resources and TMT diversity in organisational tenure. Our findings also indicate that TMT gender diversity is not a relevant condition to the growth of SEOs that use bricolage and that TMTs incorporating members with differing levels of previous experience in for-profit organisations exert a negative impact on organisational growth.Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness [ECO2012-36053] and Andalusian Department of Economy, Innovation and Science [P12-SEJ-2396]

Is Business Process Management (BPM) ready for ambidexterity? Conceptualization, implementation guidelines and research agenda

Business Process Management ambidexterity is a nascent concept providing a philosophy and framework for organizations to radically innovate their business processes, while maintaining their capabilities in process efficiency and operational excellence. Considering the novelty of this topic, there is not yet an agreed conceptualization of the term, nor a consolidated view on related implementation guidelines. We aim to address this research gap through a Systematic Literature Review, where we provide a dual conceptualization that focuses on (1) the equilibrium balance between explorative and exploitative processes, as well as (2) the organizational capability to support exploration and exploitation. Based on this conceptualization, we provide consolidated guidelines for practitioners, including decision steps, followed by a research agenda in order to let this promising domain further advance

Effective Strategies for Venture Capital Evaluations of Organizations\u27 Drug Development Capabilities

Undercapitalization is a major impediment for the growth and survival of Canadian life sciences firms. Proficient management teams are the \u27sine qua non\u27 criteria in the venture capital decision-making processes. The purpose of this multicase study was to explore strategies successful venture capitalists use to improve their evaluation processes of life sciences management teams\u27 drug development capabilities. The conceptual framework for this study was based on business process management. The purposeful sample consisted of 10 venture capitalists located in the United States and Canada who had expertise evaluating life sciences management teams. The data were triangulated from semistructured interviews, annual reports, company websites, and articles. Collected data were coded to identify underlying themes. Several themes emerged from the analysis process: begin with the exit in mind, collapse learning timelines, conduct systematic due diligence, and cultivate and critique one\u27s drug development expertise. The findings may provide venture capitalists and other investors such as angel investors with a refined framework for improving investment decisions. Life sciences management teams may also attract more private equity financing by understanding the vicissitudes of investor expectations. Increased investment and venture capital support for life sciences companies may revitalize the development of new therapies and effect social change by improving patient lives and investment outcomes

How high-tech entrepreneurs bricole the evolution of business process management for their activities

International audiencePurpose: This paper focuses on how entrepreneurs anticipate and change their company's business process management after developing a radical innovation. The paper is based on a critical approach to business process modelling (BPM) that posits that—in spite of all the claims, guides, and tools that companies employ to help them modelise their processes—business processes are developed and improved (or at least changed) by individuals who negotiate, anticipate, and compromise to make these changes occur. Thus, BPM is more a matter of "bricolage" (Levi-Strauss) than an established and defined plan. Based on this position, our paper analyses how a business process model emerges in the early phases of a high tech new venture when the entrepreneur lacks a valid template to form a conceptual representation of the firm's business processes. Design/Methodology/Approach: We adopt a perspective based on the concept of bricolage. By analysing and comparing the discourse of 40 entrepreneurs—20 involved in an activity based on a radical innovation and 20 involved in an activity based on a more incremental concept—we are able to answer the two research questions