Entrepreneurial decision making in high tech business development : a quasi-experiment

Research has shown that differences in decision making processes may explain differences in entrepreneurial effectiveness. Particularly rational planning based processes have been set off against other processes such as effectuation, abduction, and bricolage. However, there is still little empirical evidence on entrepreneurial decision making in the earliest phases of enterprise development. In a “living lab”, this study attempts to fill this void, by real-time tracing of entrepreneurs who start in the opportunity recognition phase. This paper shows the first results

Appropriation of value in Biomedical research outcome at Public Research Organisations

Transactions on biomedical research outcomes bring into play strategies that are determined by leveraging resources into quasi-markets and on options based on expectations. To govern such transactions, the choice of appropriate governance structures and the governance of interaction are all too often in remittance of risk and uncertainty. Organisation and communities are prompted by issues concerning intellectual property (IP) to underwrite information, which is inherently fraught with difficulties of discerning ownership and quantifying qualitative business variables. Against that backdrop, we enquire on the mechanisms underpinning value dissipation and value appropriation of biomedical research outcomes to make proposition on the organisational antecedence to innovation. It is a preamble study with the view to developing a meso-level framework to describe mechanisms of value appropriation of upstream biomedical (non-invasive) research at Public Research Organisation. Its underpinning is largely based on the availability appropriability regimes and viability of organizational governance decisions and how the choice of organizational governance form affects both the creation and appropriation of economic value

"No longer the sparkling new idea" : anchoring university entrepreneurship programmes in academic, entrepreneurial and regional policy networks

This paper is concerned with what makes a good university entrepreneurship programme (UEP), in particular with which features are necessary to allow UEPs to thrive within university settings. The paper begins from the paradox that UEPs are part of university’s extended development periphery, and always risk being eliminated because they do not deliver core university outputs, teaching and research. The paper seeks to understand under what conditions UEPs can thrive, using a case study of one UEP, the Temporary Entrepreneurs Scheme (the TOP programme) of the University of Twente in the Netherlands, which has recently celebrated its silver jubilee, and offers a good example of a UEP which has evolved to continue to meet stakeholder needs. The paper identifies three main stakeholder groups whose needs UEPs must meet, university management, regional economic policy makes, and enterprising entrepreneurs. The paper identifies how UEPs can respond to those three groups needs, and concludes by setting out the ways in which UEPs can meet those needs, providing the basis for a more nuanced understanding of what constitutes a good UEP

Technology business incubators as engines of growth: towards a distinction between technology incubators and non-technology incubators

Business incubators are an increasingly popular tool for promoting job and wealth creation. Yet given the heterogeneity of incubation models, it is not always clear how incubators operate, what their main characteristics are and how can they best contribute to job and wealth creation. If technology is central in promoting economic growth and new firm creation the crucial mechanism in transferring new knowledge to markets, then technology incubators have the biggest potential to contribute to economic growth. We define technology incubators by their strategic choices in terms of mission, linkages to universities and geographical location. We investigate their nature by comparing the levels of business services provision, selection criteria, exit policy and tenants’ characteristics. Our sample includes 12 incubators located in six Northwestern European countries and a total of 101 incubated companies. Data were collected in both incubators and among their tenants. Results show that technology incubators provide more tenants with their services, select younger companies and practice stricter exit policies. Additionally, they tend to attract more experienced teams of entrepreneurs. Our main contribution is a better understanding of the technology incubators impact against the remainder population of business incubators. We speculate that incubators not focussed in incubating technology might not be contributing to company creation at all. Further, the low levels of service provision are both a product and a consequence of slack selection criteria and weak exit policies. Finally, we discuss the implications of our findings to business incubator managers, policy makers and prospective tenants

Planning effectual growth: a study of effectuations and causation in nascent firms

Two main contrasting approaches are used in the entrepreneurship literature to explain how new ventures strategize: causal/planned strategies and effectual/emergent strategies. In this study, we explore the use of these strategies within micro and small firms. Our results show that larger companies typically used more planned strategies while simultaneously relying on effectual mechanisms. We observe that companies operating in known markets, anchoring their business ideas on experience and having a strong growth intention grow larger. This suggests that causal and effectual mechanisms can co-exist and lead to growth when combined. Theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed

Are Business Incubators helping? The role of BIs in facilitating tenants’ development

Business incubators (BI) are among a variety of initiatives to stimulate economic growth by promoting the creation and development of new companies. The rapid growth of BIs in recent years confirms their importance in the economic fabric. In this study, we conceptualize BIs using insights from knowledge based theory of the firm, resource-based view thinking and capabilities literature. BIs will be seen as service providers geared towards helping their tenants in solving developmental problems. The more problems the BI helps to solve the bigger the incubation value for tenants; further, as tenant firms solve problems they develop important capabilities which will yield increase their chances of survival once they graduate. Results show that tenants unequivocally seek support after experiencing problems. Solving those problems is a function of BI support and other external sources part of each tenant firm’s network of contacts. Age and human capital of tenant firms have a negative impact in the total number of the problems solved, suggesting BIs’ deficiencies in helping more experienced and older tenants. Our main contribution is to shed light on the processes of delivering support to young firms within BIs. Importantly, we assess the value of the BIs’ intervention by measuring the amount of developmental problems they help tenants to overcome. Finally, we discuss the implication of our finding to BI managers, prospective tenants and policy makers

Why Does Dave Spend Ten Times More Time on Interaction with Industry than Paul? : Toward a Model of Social Capital Activation for Entrepreneurial Academics

This paper focuses on academics that are looking for entrepreneurial ways to pursue their teaching, research and commercialization interests, in particular by actively engaging in university-industry interactions. The paper aims to improve our knowledge of why some academics exploit their social networks with industry more actively than others. We develop a conceptual model that aims to explain a mechanism behind social capital activation, and to identify factors that are likely to have the highest predictive power. We theorize on how academic’s motivation, perceived social influence and perceived ability unite into readiness to activate social capital, and under what circumstances this readiness is likely to result in actual behavior. Specifically, the objective of this paper is to further develop the model constructs and to operationalize them into a set of measurable items. For each of the readiness constructs, we present a set of composite variables, as well as corresponding observable variables. We conclude with implications of our analysis for theory and practice, and set directions for future research