Technology entrepreneurship: Overview, definition, and distinctive aspects

Technology entrepreneurship lies at the heart of many important debates, including those around launching and growing firms, regional economic development, selecting the appropriate stakeholders to take ideas to markets, and educating managers, engineers, and scientists. Unless a generally accepted definition of technology entrepreneurship is established, however, these debates lose their focus. The purpose of this article is to identify the themes that dominate the technology entrepreneurship literature, provide a definition of technology entrepreneurship, and identify its distinguishing aspects relative to economics, entrepreneurship, and management. The author argues that technology entrepreneurship is an investment in a project that assembles and deploys specialized individuals and heterogeneous assets to create and capture value for the firm. What distinguishes technology entrepreneurship from other entrepreneurship types (e.g., social entrepreneurship, small business management, and self-employment) is the collaborative experimentation and production of new products, assets, and their attributes, which are intricately related to advances in scientific and technological knowledge and the firm’s asset ownership right

What technology startups must get right to globalize early and rapidly

Upon or shortly after inception, growth-oriented technology startups must operate in a market that is global. Management teams and investors of technology startups can benefit from approaches and models that can help them operate in a global market early and rapidly. How well a technology startup addresses the realities of globalization will determine its success. A better understanding of what management teams and investors of technology startups must get right to globalize their startups is needed. This article is an attempt to meet this need. In this article, lessons that have been extracted from six literature streams and from information on 21 startups founded in 12 countries are used to identify the six elements that a startup must get right to globalize early and rapidly. These six elements are: i) Problem scope, ii) Stakeholders’ commitments, iii) Collaborative entrepreneurship, iv) Relational capital, v) Legitimacy, and vi) Global capability. The main contribution of this article is that it throws the spotlight on the need to develop prescriptive rules and practitioner-oriented models that can help a technology startup operate globally from an early stage

Examining the modes malware suppliers use to provide goods and services

Malware suppliers use various modes to provide goods and services to customers. By mode, we mean “the way” the malware supplier chooses to function. These modes increase monetization opportunities and enable many security breaches worldwide. A theoretically sound framework that can be used to examine the various modes that malware suppliers use to produce and sell malware is needed. We apply a general model specified recently by Hagiu and Wright to study five modes that malware suppliers use to deliver goods and services to their customers. The framework presented in this article can be used to predict the mode in which a malware supplier will function; to study which types of malware suppliers, agents, and customers are attracted to each mode; to discover new modes; and to better understand the threat a malware supplier presents

Cybersecurity startups: The importance of early and rapid globalization

Corporations and government agencies worldwide seek to ensure that their networks are safe from cyber-attacks, and startups are being launched to take advantage of this expanded market for cybersecurity products, services, and solutions. The cybersecurity market is inherently global; therefore, cybersecurity startups must globalize to survive. With this article, we fill a gap in the literature by identifying the factors that make a technology startup valuable to specific stakeholders (e.g., investors, customers, employees) and by providing a tool and illustrating a process to describe, design, challenge, and invent the actions that should be performed to globalize a cybersecurity startup early and rapidly for the purpose of increasing its value. The development of the tool builds on recent advances in the resource-based literature, the review of the literature on born-global firms and business model discovery processes, and the experience gained operating the Lead to Win ecosystem. This article will be of interest to entrepreneurs and their venture teams, investors, business development agencies, advisors, and mentors of cybersecurity startups as well as researchers who develop tools and approaches that are relevant to technology entrepreneurs

An ecosystem-based job-creation engine fuelled by technology entrepreneurs

Job creation is at the centre of the rationale provided by governments and publicly funded organizations for investing in services purported to support entrepreneurs to launch and grow technology startups. However, little is known about how to design and build the engines that convert these publicly funded services into jobs in a region. In this article, we argue that the architecture of a job-creation engine fuelled by technology entrepreneurs is important and that it should be made visible to the stakeholders of a regional venture system. The manner in which the components of a job-creation engine are organized and integrated determines the effectiveness and efficiency of the conversion of public funds into jobs. Making visible the architecture of a job-creation engine enables individuals and organizations to: i) better understand the link between the investment made to service technology entrepreneurs and systematic job creation; ii) utilize the regional venture system more effectively; and iii) set the performance benchmark for capability improvement and rapid adjustment to environmental changes. The experience gained from operating Lead To Win since 2009 is used to describe the architecture of a job-creation engine fuelled by technology entrepreneurs that operate in Canada’s Capital Region. Lead To Win is an ecosystem designed to help a technology venture generate sufficient revenue to create six or more knowledge jobs in the region within three years of inception

Intrusion learning: An overview of an emergent discipline

The purpose of this article is to provide a definition of intrusion learning, identify its distinctive aspects, and provide recommendations for advancing intrusion learning as a practice domain. The authors define intrusion learning as the collection of online network algorithms that learn from and monitor streaming network data resulting in effective intrusion-detection methods for enabling the security and resiliency of enterprise systems. The network algorithms build on advances in cyber-defensive and cyber-offensive capabilities. Intrusion learning is an emerging domain that draws from machine learning, intrusion detection, and streaming network data. Intrusion learning offers to significantly enhance enterprise security and resiliency through augmented perimeter defense and may mitigate increasing threats facing enterprise perimeter protection. The article will be of interest to researchers, sponsors, and entrepreneurs interested in enhancing enterprise security and resiliency

The online world of the future: Safe, productive, and creative

A safer online world is required to attain higher levels of productivity and creativity. We offer a view of a future state of the online world that places safety, productivity, and creativity above all else. The online world envisaged for 2030 is safe (i.e., users communicate with accuracy and enduring confidence), productive (i.e., users make timely decisions that have an ongoing global effect), and creative (i.e., users can connect seemingly unrelated information online). The proposed view differs from other views of the future online world that are anchored around technology solutions, confrontation, deception, and personal or commercial gain. The following seven conditions characterize the proposed view of the online world: i) global-scale autonomous learning systems; ii) humans co-working with machines; iii) human factors that are authentic and transferrable; iv) global scale whole-brain communities; v) foundational knowledge that is authentic and transferrable; vi) timely productive communication; and vii) continuous technological adaptation. These conditions are expected to enable new social-behavioural, socio-technical, and organizational interaction models

Developing an innovation engine to make Canada a global leader in cybersecurity

An engine designed to convert innovation into a country’s global leadership position in a specific product market is examined in this article, using Canada and cybersecurity as an example. Five entities are core to the innovation engine: an ecosystem, a project community, an external community, a platform, and a corporation. The ecosystem is the focus of innovation in firm-specific factors that determine outcomes in global competition; the project community is the focus of innovation in research and development; and the external community is the focus of innovation in resources produced and used by economic actors that operate outside of the focal product market. Strategic intent, governance, resource flows, and organizational agreements bind the five entities together. Operating the innovation engine in Canada is expected to improve the level and quality of prosperity, security, and capacity of Canadians, increase the number of Canadian-based companies that successfully compete globally in cybersecurity product markets, and better protect Canada’s critical infrastructure. Researchers interested in learning how to create, implement, improve, and grow innovation engines will find this article interesting. The article will also be of interest to senior management teams in industry and government, chief information and technology officers, social and policy analysts, academics, and individual citizens who wish to learn how to secure cyberspace

The National Capital Region’s product leadership cluster

Clusters of innovative firms are important tools in improving the prosperity of a region. In this chapter, I present a model for the relationship between worldwide product market leadership and the performance of the region whereR&Dis core to this leadership. This model builds on the corporate strategy, clusters, and systems of innovation literatures. I then identify the product leadership cluster for Canada’s National Capital Region, describes its characteristics, and measures its dimensions. This cluster is comprised of 14 firms in which R&D in the region is core to their leadership positions in 16 product markets