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Access to digital finance
(2024)
Financing entrepreneurship spurs innovation and economic growth. Digital financial platforms that crowdfund equity for entrepreneurs have emerged globally, yet they remain poorly understood. We model equity crowdfunding in terms of the relationship between the number of investors and the amount of money raised per pitch. We examine heterogeneity in the average amount raised per pitch that is associated with differences across three countries and seven platforms. Using a novel dataset of successful fundraising on the most prominent platforms in the UK, Germany, and the USA, we find the underlying relationship between the number of investors and the amount of money raised for entrepreneurs is loglinear, with a coefficient less than one and concave to the origin. We identify significant variation in the average amount invested in each pitch across countries and platforms. Our findings have implications for market actors as well as regulators who set competitive frameworks.
From an active labor market policy perspective, start-up subsidies for unemployed individuals are very effective in improving long-term labor market outcomes for participants. From a business perspective, however, the assessment of these public programs is less clear since they might attract individuals with low entrepreneurial abilities and produce businesses with low survival rates and little contribution to job creation, economic growth, and innovation. In this paper, we use a rich data set to compare participants of a German start-up subsidy program for unemployed individuals to a group of regular founders who started from non-unemployment and did not receive the subsidy. The data allows us to analyze their business performance up until 40 months after business formation. We find that formerly subsidized founders lag behind not only in survival and job creation, but especially also in innovation activities. The gaps in these business outcomes are relatively constant or even widening over time. Hence, we do not see any indication of catching up in the longer run. While the gap in survival can be entirely explained by initial differences in observable start-up characteristics, the gap in business development remains and seems to be the result of restricted access to capital as well as differential business strategies and dynamics. Considering these conflicting results for the assessment of the subsidy program from an ALMP and business perspective, policy makers need to carefully weigh the costs and benefits of such a strategy to find the right policy mix.
Although the search for promising business models (BMs) is crucial for every profit-oriented venture, searching for those challenges in particular entrepreneurs. Limited resources, missing expertise and absolute uncertainty call entrepreneurs to strongly rely on their cognition in searching for a promising BM. However, as prior studies have examined cognitive search activities in isolation and neglected cognitive differences, explanations of how cognitive factors affect the BM process and outcomes are thus far insufficient.
Addressing the overall question of how BMs emerge, the dissertation contributes to the cognitive perspective in entrepreneurship and BM research. Building on the dual-process theory from cognitive psychology, the micro-foundations of managerial decision-making and insights from framing literature, this dissertation explicitly investigates the impacts of different cognitive dispositions, search activities and visual framing effects. The core assumption is that cognitive dispositions and entrepreneurs’ searches for information determine their BM decision-making. Furthermore, BM visualisations have become popular instruments with which to explain and manage today’s complex business interactions. As they abstract from reality, they can also unfold impacts on the cognitive processes.
This dissertation offers new explanations to these aspects and consists of three studies and one reflective article. The first study explores the impacts of differences in search activities and cognitive dispositions in a qualitative study with 70 entrepreneurship students. The second qualitative study explores the cognitive impacts of 103 BM visualisations. Third, a quantitative PLS-SEM experiment with 197 entrepreneurs illuminates the link between BM visualisations and cognition. The reflective article expresses the results’ meaning for the teaching of BMs.
In sum, the studies have resulted in a new theory of stabilising factors explaining how cognitive dispositions, search activities and visual framing determine entrepreneurs’ decisions to imitate or deviate from existing BMs. It indicates that the decision depends on the context-dependent strategic orientation and cognitive disposition-dependent cognitive safety, that is the correspondence between characteristics of cognitive dispositions and search activities. Moreover, the studies identified five visual framing effects that are independent of cognitive dispositions and prior experiences. This provides fertile contributions to the literature on BM methods and how BM visualisations affect decisions. Most importantly, BM visualisations provide an emotionally stabilising function to rational entrepreneurs, a cognitively stabilising function to experiential participants and do not affect indifferent participants in general.
Culture-driven innovation
(2017)
This cumulative dissertation deals with the potential of underexplored cultural sources for innovation.
Nowadays, firms recognize an increasing demand for innovation to keep pace with an ever-growing dynamic worldwide competition. Knowledge is one of the most crucial sources and resource, while until now innovation has been foremost driven by technology. But since the last years, we have been witnessing a change from technology's role as a driver of innovation to an enabler of innovation. Innovative products and services increasingly differentiate through emotional qualities and user experience. These experiences are hard to grasp and require alignment in innovation management theory and practice.
This work cares about culture in a broader matter as a source for innovation. It investigates the requirements and fundamentals for "culture-driven innovation" by studying where and how to unlock cultural sources. The research questions are the following: What are cultural sources for knowledge and innovation? Where can one find cultural sources and how to tap into them?
The dissertation starts with an overview of its central terms and introduces cultural theories as an overarching frame to study cultural sources for innovation systematically. Here, knowledge is not understood as something an organization owns like a material resource, but it is seen as something created and taking place in practices. Such a practice theoretical lens inheres the rejection of the traditional economic depiction of the rational Homo Oeconomicus. Nevertheless, it also rejects the idea of the Homo Sociologicus about the strong impact of society and its values on individual actions. Practice theory approaches take account of both concepts by underscoring the dualism of individual (agency, micro-level) and structure (society, macro-level). Following this, organizations are no enclosed entities but embedded within their socio-cultural environment, which shapes them and is also shaped by them.
Then, the first article of this dissertation acknowledges a methodological stance of this dualism by discussing how mixed methods support an integrated approach to study the micro- and macro-level. The article focuses on networks (thus communities) as a central research unit within studies of entrepreneurship and innovation.
The second article contains a network analysis and depicts communities as central loci for cultural sources and knowledge. With data from the platform Meetup.com about events etc., the study explores which overarching communities and themes have been evolved in Berlin's start up and tech scene.
While the latter study was about where to find new cultural sources, the last article addresses how to unlock such knowledge sources. It develops the concept of a cultural absorptive capacity, that is the capability of organizations to open up towards cultural sources. Furthermore, the article points to the role of knowledge intermediaries in the early phases of knowledge acquisition. Two case studies on companies working with artists illustrate the roles of such intermediaries and how they support firms to gain knowledge from cultural sources.
Overall, this dissertation contributes to a better understanding of culture as a source for innovation from a theoretical, methodological, and practitioners' point of view. It provides basic research to unlock the potential of such new knowledge sources for companies - sources that so far have been neglected in innovation management.
Zentrale Aufgaben von Kommunen in Deutschland umfassen die Gewährleistung der Daseinsvorsorge, des öffentlichen Verkehrs, Wirtschaftsförderung, Zugang zu ausreichender Breitbandinfrastruktur, gesundheitliche und soziale Betreuung und Zugang zu kulturellem Leben. Kommunen in ländlichen Regionen stehen gleichzeitig vor zahlreichen gesellschaftlichen, wirtschaftlichen, sozialen und politischen Herausforderungen. Neuartige Ansätze und innovative Akteure und Netzwerke werden daher im Kontext der Schaffung von sozialen oder digitalen Innovationen von den Kommunen als Antwort auf diese Herausforderungen begrüßt, stoßen aber auch teilweise auf Barrieren.
In dem Sammelband wird von den Herausgebenden die Frage untersucht, wie sich digitale Vorreiter:innen, die wir „Digitale Pioniere“ nennen, in ländlichen Regionen vernetzen, um einen positiven Beitrag zur ländlichen Regionalentwicklung zu leisten. Dabei liegt der Fokus hauptsächlich auf der kommunalpolitischen Ebene und auf der Frage, wie Digitale Pioniere als Schlüsselakteure in der ländlichen Governance agieren. Die Forschungsergebnisse kommunaler Governance sind anhand ländlicher Untersuchungsteilregionen in Baden-Württemberg und Mecklenburg-Vorpommern im Rahmen des Forschungsprojekts „DigPion – Digitale Pioniere in der ländlichen Regionalentwicklung“ (2020–2023) erarbeitet worden. Abschließend wird überprüft, wie die Erkenntnisse und erarbeiteten Handlungsempfehlungen für das Bundesland Brandenburg zu übertragen sind.
Entrepreneurial failure
(2022)
Although entrepreneurial failure (EF) is a fairly recent topic in entrepreneurship literature, the number of publications has been growing dynamically and particularly rapidly. Our systematic review maps and integrates the research on EF based on a multi-method approach to give structure and consistency to this fragmented field of research. The results reveal that the field revolves around six thematic clusters of EF: 1) Soft underpinnings of EF, 2) Contextuality of EF, 3) Perception of EF, 4) Two-sided effects of EF, 5) Multi-stage EF effects, and 6) Institutional drivers of EF. An integrative framework of the positive and negative effects of entrepreneurial failure is proposed, and a research agenda is suggested.
Entrepreneurial persistence is demonstrated by an entrepreneur’s continued positive maintenance of entrepreneurial motivation and constantly renewed active engagement in a new business venture despite counterforces or enticing alternatives. It thus is a crucial factor for entrepreneurs when pursuing and exploiting their business opportunities and in realizing potential economic gains and benefits. Using rich data on a representative sample of German business founders, we investigated the determinants of entrepreneurial persistence. Next to observed survival, we also constructed a hybrid persistence measure capturing the motivational dimension of persistence. We analyzed the influence of individual-level (human capital and personality) and business-related characteristics on both measures as well as their relative importance. We found that the two indicators emphasize different aspects of persistence. For the survival indicator, the predictive power was concentrated in business characteristics and human capital, while for hybrid persistence the dominant factors were business characteristics and personality. Finally, we showed that results were heterogeneous across subgroups. In particular, formerly unemployed founders did not differ in survival chances, but they were more likely to lack a high psychological commitment to their business ventures.
Entrepreneurial persistence is demonstrated by an entrepreneur’s continued positive maintenance of entrepreneurial motivation and constantly renewed active engagement in a new business venture despite counterforces or enticing alternatives. It thus is a crucial factor for entrepreneurs when pursuing and exploiting their business opportunities and in realizing potential economic gains and benefits. Using rich data on a representative sample of German business founders, we investigated the determinants of entrepreneurial persistence. Next to observed survival, we also constructed a hybrid persistence measure capturing the motivational dimension of persistence. We analyzed the influence of individual-level (human capital and personality) and business-related characteristics on both measures as well as their relative importance. We found that the two indicators emphasize different aspects of persistence. For the survival indicator, the predictive power was concentrated in business characteristics and human capital, while for hybrid persistence the dominant factors were business characteristics and personality. Finally, we showed that results were heterogeneous across subgroups. In particular, formerly unemployed founders did not differ in survival chances, but they were more likely to lack a high psychological commitment to their business ventures.
Both entrepreneurship and innovation play a key role for business growth and economic development and are conceptually highly intertwined. Both fields have received extensive attention that has resulted in a large number of publications. The aim of this work is to provide an overview on the coevolution of entrepreneurship and innovation over the last decades, with particular attention to recent research trends. To track the evolution at the intersection of both fields, we employ a bibliometric analysis, which allowed us to identify the key concepts, the backbone of research, and to provide a systematic classification of main research themes diagnosed including: 1) entrepreneurial innovation and digital transformation, 2) sustainable innovation and entrepreneurship, 3) product innovation and knowledge, 4) entrepreneurial orientation and leadership, and 5) regional entrepreneurship and innovation (innovative entrepreneurship and historical roots). The findings of this bibliometric review are reported in the form of a knowledge graph that represents the results obtained in terms of the knowledge base (key terms), knowledge domains, and knowledge evolution (themes and bursts), based on which themes for future research are suggested.
Entrepreneurship education (EE) has attracted much scholarly attention, showing exponential growth in publication and citation numbers. The research field has become broad, complex, and fragmented, making it increasingly difficult to oversee. Our research goal is to organise and integrate the previous literature. To this end, we use bibliometric analyses, differing from prior analyses, which are outdated or have a different focus. Our results show an immense growth in publications and citations over the last decade and an almost equal involvement of business and educational research. We identify the most productive and influential journals and authors. Our co-citation analysis reveals two research clusters, one focusing on psychological constructs relating to EE, and the other on entrepreneurial behaviour and new venture creation. Based on a review of the 25 most-cited articles on an annual basis, we identify and quantify the most relevant research themes and integrate them into a research framework that we propose for future research. A major finding is that extant research centres around the outcomes of entrepreneurship education, whereas its pedagogy is still mainly a black box.