Small Business Economics最新文献

Previous work has found that a small number of export superstars contribute disproportionally to the economy’s overall exports. Differently from export superstars, this study is the first to define high growth exporters (HGXs) (that are not export superstars) as a new firm category. We provide their economic importance and depict their micro-level anatomy. By tracking HGXs in Croatia for over a quarter of a century, 44 out of 100 export superstars in 2019 were previously HGXs. HGXs represent only 0.5% of all firms and 18% of high growth firms (HGFs) in the economy, but are responsible for about 25% of new exports and 5% of new jobs. During their growth episode, HGXs hire more employees from technology intensive industries with previous experience in exporting. They often hire on a single year work contract, and more frequently send new employees to work abroad. HGX also increase their presence in more advanced markets, increase the number of new export products and decrease their reliance on the largest product or largest export market. We argue HGXs represent an under-researched category of firms.

Abstract

The relationship between top management team (TMT) members’ learning behavior and the innovation strategy of technology ventures remains unclear, especially when complicated by social hierarchies within the team. We draw on organizational learning theory to theorize that diversity in TMT members’ learning behavior has both positive and negative latent effects that produce an inverted U-shaped relationship between TMT learning diversity and a firm’s radical innovation strategy. Building on the social hierarchy literature, we also suggest that CEO power moderates this relationship by altering the latent forces: structurally powerful CEOs neutralize the benefits of TMT learning diversity, turning the link between learning diversity and radical innovation strategy predominantly negative, whereas prestigiously powerful CEOs neutralize the costs of TMT learning diversity, turning its relationship with the firm’s radical innovation strategy predominantly positive. Longitudinal, multi-source data from 77 TMTs support our model. The findings contribute to the research on learning and social hierarchies by illustrating how hierarchies rooted in different sources of power have different effects on the relationship between TMT learning diversity and innovation strategy.

This study theorizes how entrepreneurs in an emerging economy deal with adverse external scenarios by taking advantage of their previous business failure experiences. Using grounded theory and multiple case study approach, we found that individuals with re-entrepreneurial experiences exhibit greater resilience and prioritize re-building social capital as part of their crisis management tactics. This finding contrasts with those who are new entrepreneurs who do not have failure experience. Our study provides a conceptual framework to understand what re-entrepreneurs have learned from previous failure/crisis experiences to build resilience and strategically manage internal crises that were caused by exogenous events (e.g., social movements and the COVID-19 pandemic). Policymakers, entrepreneurs, and educators can benefit from the re-entrepreneurs’ learning lessons and strategic implications of this study.

A growing empirical literature has established a positive relationship between cultural diversity and entrepreneurship, often attributing this effect to innovation benefits of diversity. However, not all entrepreneurship is inherently innovative, raising the question of whether cultural diversity may increase the likelihood of an entrepreneur pursuing an innovative instead of a more replicative business strategy. This study investigates the relationship between regional cultural diversity and the innovation orientation of early-stage entrepreneurs and considers moderating factors by decomposing shares of foreign-born population by origin (within and outside of the EU) and by education level. Combining survey data from the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor with population-based indicators of cultural diversity, we carry out a multilevel analysis for 140 European regions. The results suggest that entrepreneurs in culturally more diverse regions are significantly more likely to exhibit innovation orientation.

“Fail fast and learn fast” is a principle commonly advanced to quickly grow and scale startups and SMEs. However, the literature lacks detailed insights into how such learning is organized. The paper aims to investigate how knowledge-intensive SMEs learn from failures through organizational learning processes. To answer this question, we present in-depth case studies of three SMEs that operate in a dynamic context where quick adaption to changes, failures, and learning are natural modes of practice. Our findings present the learning from the failure process, which includes three phases: (1) failure recognition, (2) interactive sensemaking, and (3) organizational adaptation. We condense our insights into a framework disentangling how SMEs succeed and fail and how they can learn from failures through their underlying learning processes. We contribute to prior literature on organizational learning in SMEs by focusing on knowledge-intensive SMEs and practices that enable effective learning from failures.

Despite the valuable contributions of earlier learning studies, the specific analysis of how entrepreneurs and small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) learn has been sidelined in the literature. Significant research opportunities remain open in various unexplored realms. By adopting a multidisciplinary perspective that combines a variety of frameworks (i.e., organizational, economic, and innovation management), the collection of 11 studies of this special issue dedicated to learning delivers valuable insights into how entrepreneurs and SMEs capitalize on learning processes, while identifying how these processes are affected by the type of experience (i.e., success and failure). This paper first overviews the contributions of the 11 papers included in the special issue. Next, we discuss a number of yet unresolved topics that deserve academic attention, paying special attention to entrepreneurs’ direct and indirect experiences, knowledge obsolescence caused by technology upgrading, and the role of digital technologies—i.e., Internet-of-things and artificial intelligence—in the learning processes.

This paper examines the efficiency of the Initial Coin Offering (ICO) market through a search-theoretical lens. Search intensity associated with the process of identifying valuable startups is increasing in market granularity. DLT increases market granularity because asset tokenization lowers entry barriers. Lower-end entrants, however, increase aggregate search intensity but may lack search skills. The resulting search-related inefficiency creates a niche for intermediaries or institutional investors that specialize on search. Consistent with the theory, specialized crypto funds increase ICO market efficiency by reducing search frictions, inter alia, by shortening the time-to-funding and increasing the funding amount. At the same time, crypto funds extract sizable economic rents for their intermediation services. Overall, the study relates to the general trade-off between centralization and decentralization in entrepreneurial finance. It suggests that market frictions specific to early-stage crowdfunding of entrepreneurship may prevent “perfectly” Decentralized Finance (DeFi) markets from functioning efficiently.

Drawing from prospect theory, we use an experimental study design to explore how and why reference points of managers of family and nonfamily firms differ. We contribute to research on the role of economic theories for family businesses by elaborating on decision-making mechanisms in the context of family firms. Furthermore, we investigate whether family and nonfamily managers within family firms vary in their investment decisions. Our study demonstrates the importance of price volatility as a determinant of reference points and shows how the same type of information can lead to different reference points based on whether the manager is from a family or nonfamily firm.

We examine how experiential learning from both previous technology transfer experience and the disclosure of discoveries impact universities’ technology transfer outcomes, in terms of the number of spinoffs created and licenses granted, while acknowledging that TTOs provide specialized resources that support technology transfer processes. By using panel data models on a sample of public Spanish universities for the 2006–2011 period, our model introduces discovery disclosures as an instrument to account for the endogenous nature of the scientific research process. Results show that spinoff creation and license granting depend on their own experiential learning and on the number of discovery disclosures, which in turn depends on its own experiential learning. Technology transfer is influenced by two learning processes connected to technology transfer outcomes and discovery disclosures. Also, the effect of TTOs’ specific resources appears as not significant. In the context of Spanish universities, the findings support the view that, compared to TTOs’ staff specialization, accumulated knowledge from their own experience adds more value for generating technology transfer outcomes.

Abstract

An emerging theme in the entrepreneurial university (EU) literature is how universities should evolve to best reconcile their different missions, particularly research and commercialization, which often require different sets of resources. This tension is evident in the development of university spin-offs (USOs). In particular, the EU literature has generally overlooked how characteristics of university research affect USO’s early-stage access to external equity. In this study, we embrace the characterization of university research offered by literature in terms of patterns, specifically, exploration and exploitation. Through the lens of the imprinting perspective, we study the effect of exploration and exploitation in university research on the early-stage equity financing of USOs on a unique dataset that covers a sample of 739 USOs from 39 Italian public universities founded from 2011 to 2019. Our results indicate that exploration (exploitation) in research has an overall positive (negative) impact on the likelihood of USOs obtaining early-stage external equity financing. Additionally, this exploratory study offers several conceptual and practical contributions to the EU literature.