A Good Idea is Not Enough: Understanding the Challenges of Entrepreneurship Communication

This paper addresses a less-investigated issue of innovations: entrepreneurship communication. Business and marketing studies demonstrate that new product development processes do not succeed on good technical invention alone. To succeed, the invention must be appropriately communicated to a market and iterated through dialogue with potential stakeholders. We explore this issue by examining communication-related challenges, abilities and barriers from the perspectives of innovators trying to enter an unfamiliar, foreign market. Specifically, we summarize results of a set of studies conducted in the Gyeonggi Innovation Program (GIP), an entrepreneurship program formed by a partnership between the University of Texas at Austin and Gyeonggi-Do Province in South Korea. Through the GIP, Korean entrepreneurs attempt to expand domestically successful product ideas to the American market. The study results demonstrate that these innovators must deal with a broad range of challenges, particularly (1) developing deeper understanding of market needs, values, and cultural expectations, and (2) producing pitches with the structure, claims and evidence, and engagement strategies expected by American stakeholders. These studies confirm that a deeper understanding of successful new product development (NPD) projects requires not only a culturally authentic NPD process model, but also communication-oriented research. The GIP approach offers insights into good programmatic concept and effective methods for training engineers to become entrepreneurs. Yet we also identify potential improvements for such programs. Finally, we draw implications for studying entrepreneurship communication.IC2 Institut

Articulating Problems and Markets: A Translation Analysis of Entrepreneurs’ Emergent Value Propositions

In this qualitative study, the authors apply Callon’s sociology of translation to examine how new technology entrepreneurs enact material arguments that involve the first two moments of translation—problematization (defining a market problem) and interessement (defining a market and the firm’s relationship to it) - which in turn are represented in a claim, the value proposition. That emergent claim can then be represented and further changed during pitches. If accepted, it can then lead to the second two moments of translation: enrollment and mobilization. Drawing on written materials, observations, and interviews, we trace how these value propositions were iterated along three paths to better problematize and interesse, articulating a problem and market on which a business could plausibly be built. We conclude by discussing implications for understanding value propositions in entrepreneurship and, more broadly, using the sociology of translation to analyze emergent, material, consequential arguments. The study is based on data collected at the Austin Technology Incubator’s Student Entrepreneur Acceleration and Launch program (ATI SEAL) at The University of Texas at Austin.IC2 Institut

Understanding the Value Proposition as a Co-Created Claim

In this paper, the authors examine five cases of technology commercialization in terms of how entrepreneurs advance a specific kind of claim: the value proposition. The value proposition can describe the characteristics of the innovation itself (Goods-Dominant Logic) or propose how the innovation will cocreate value with stakeholders (Service-Dominant Logic); in the examined cases, the value proposition transitions between these two "logics," addressing different needs in the ongoing argument. We conclude by discussing the needs that each "logic" serves and the implications for better understanding entrepreneurship communication.IC2 Institut

Rethinking Supply Chains as Neighborhoods

This paper explores the implication of a neighborhood model for interfirm interactions that explicitly tries to create an equality matching relationship among firms in an industry. The aim is to examine what would happen if these firms worked to gain trust with each other with an eye toward maximizing the value of the collaboration across projects rather than just maximizing revenues in individual projects. A review of extant literature and an analysis of in-depth interviews yielded three actionable strategies that support the creation of a sustainable neighborhood in the construction industry: 1) Hub Strategy, 2) Trust Exercise Strategy, and 3) Sustainable Neighborhood Strategy. As envisioned in this study, the hub is a concentrated, inter-organizational structure for supply chain participants in large, complex projects. Importantly, hub members engage in a variety of technical activities that infuse ongoing and future projects with innovation, scope optimization, and operational efficiencies. Additionally, other activities within the hub are designed to purposefully allow participants to develop trust through collaboration before or outside of their primary contractual engagements. At present, this model has been examined for construction megaprojects, but the general neighborhood concept could be applied to many different industries and settings including manufacturing supply chains and collaborations among communities engaging in economic development. Future work will explore whether mechanisms like the hub and trust exercises can be applied in these other settings as well.IC2 Institut

Linked but Desynched: An OODA Analysis of Associated Entrepreneurship Accelerator Programs

Accelerators are programs that support fledgling ventures with a set curric- ulum, moving them through a cycle of venture development that culmi- nates in a Demo Day pitch in which the ventures argue for their viability. Yet firms are often involved in multiple programs with conflicting objectives and cycles. No research has addressed such conflicts. This article examines an accelerator program that is partially linked to others in order to share resources. Drawing on the OODA (observe, orient, decide, act) framework, the authors identify disjunctures between cycles, anchoring this analysis at the final pitch. Working back from this deciding point, they examine interference between the associated programs.IC2 Institut

Linked but desynched: An OODA analysis of associated entrepreneurship accelerator programs

The final published version of this article is available at https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/10506519221121813Accelerators support fledgling ventures with a set curriculum, moving them through a cycle of venture development, culminating in a Demo Day pitch in which the ventures argue for their viability. Yet firms are often involved in multiple programs with conflicting objectives and cycles. No research has addressed such conflicts. In this article, we examine an accelerator program partially linked to others to share resources. Drawing on the OODA framework, we identify disjunctures among cycles, anchoring this analysis at the final pitch. Working back from this Decide point, we examine interference among the associated programs.WritingIC2 Institut

Co-creation by Commenting: Participatory Ways to Write Quicklook® Reports

The authors examined comments in revisions of 24 Quicklook® reports that were written to provide market feedback to entrepreneurs. Most Quicklook reports underwent a revision cycle, and the number of comments per draft varied considerably. Based on this analysis, commenting was frequently used to provide revision guidance from staff to the assessors who authored the Quicklook reports. The commenting activities focus on the overall objective to deliver strong arguments for an innovation from the market’s perspective. Therefore, the most comments address the Quicklook report’s most important sections: Potential Commercial Markets, Competitors and Benefits, and Potential Benefits. In particular, staff comments addressed co-creation, argumentation, the writing process, and text quality. We conclude by calling for further research into such reports in particular and entrepreneur communication in general.IC2 Institut