Justifying Innovations in a Start-up Accelerator Program: How Entrepreneurs Create Value through Pitch Discourse

Abstract

The relation between the linguistic features of value and start-up attributes has often been neglected. We examined how entrepreneurs create value through the business pitch by drawing on the identification of ‘logics of justification’, traditionally conceptualized as ‘orders of worth’. We describe the language of logics of justification and identify co-occurrence patterns among logics of justification, associations between logics of justification and industry sectors, and associations between logics and firm’s customer segment (b2b, b2c). This study provides unique insights about how the justification of innovations may draw on specific patterns of language depending on a venture’s features.