Journal of Business Venturing Insights最新文献

Supporting the implementation and growth of innovative start-ups to bring innovation to the market and foster local development, in terms of economic and social results, is on the agenda of policymakers worldwide. The latters constantly identify new specific tools, define more focused actions, and – in some cases – enact dedicated policies (local or national laws) in order to push individuals to start entrepreneurship processes.

In this regard, the Italian Start-up Act is worth mentioning since it stands for the first-ever national law, enacted in 2012, promoting and regulating innovative start-ups. Ten years after the enactment of the Italian Start-up Act, it is interesting to assess its impact and evaluate whether and to what extent it succeeds in bringing innovations to the market and fosters local development in Italy. The results of several previous studies – which look at the same sample of start-ups, but from different perspectives – are collected and compared in order to offer a broad overview and a comprehensive evaluation of this law.

How to deal with grand challenges and the crisis of knowledge production and their implications for entrepreneurial research and practice is a topic of growing interest. In this paper we argue that we need to rethink who is involved in entrepreneurship research and how that research is conducted and communicated. This begins by moving beyond the traditional ostensible objective separation of the ‘researcher’ from the ‘research subject’ to adopt a posthuman and post-qualitative inquiry perspective that questions the dominant position of the human subject and challenges the humanistic belief in the essential, conscious and intentional human as the primary source of agency. As such, it adopts a process ontology, stresses hybridity and difference and encourages experimentation. This requires us to become ‘bad researchers’, undertaking subversive research that goes beyond the oppositions of quantitative/qualitative and foundationalist/non-foundationalist. In this we take the ‘fool’ (jester, trickster) as our guide. Historically associated with inversion, usurping authority and putting down the mighty the fool is a liminal character who has the duty to ask all those questions that no one else dares to ask. The paper concludes with suggestions as to how this may inform a re-newed entrepreneurship for the crisis-laden twenty first century.

Sometimes, entrepreneurial action is driven by necessity. Whether global pandemics, climate change, or the oxygen system failure in Apollo 13, time-constrained and high-stakes decisions increasingly confront entrepreneurs and managers. Yet, our literature tends to favor intendedly rational and practiced approaches to entrepreneurial action in the face of perceived uncertainty. This study views entrepreneurial action from the other side of the mirror – imposed opportunities (not created), high time pressure, and limited resources (no trove access to resources and an inability to leverage contingencies). Using a mixed-methods approach and drawing upon data from the empirical setting of professional chefs and discourse from popular media, we explore these unique forms of entrepreneurial action through the lens of MacGyvering – a term developed from a 1980's hit television show where seemingly impossible odds and idiosyncratic challenges are routinely overcome. Our findings suggest that MacGyvering does not map neatly onto any single established concept of entrepreneurial action. Instead, it integrates some aspects of effectuation, causation, bricolage, and improvisation while explicitly adapting and eschewing others. Our insights can help entrepreneurs and managers act expeditiously to create new value in the face of environmental turbulence.

Micro-acquisition marketplaces are a recent phenomenon in the world of entrepreneurship that facilitate the matching of buyers and sellers of relatively small-scale startups or pre-startup projects. Unlike traditional acquisitions, in micro-acquisition markets, sellers typically decide on the timing and offset an initial asking price for the deal. However, cognitive biases are likely to interfere with these decisions and lead to suboptimal decisions that prevent efficient matching. We argue that the age of a project at the time of listing can act as a proxy for the time and effort that has been spent by the entrepreneur to develop the project. Building on effort justification and cognitive dissonance theories, we argue that there is a curvilinear relationship between project age and price; and that this relationship is moderated by the level of revenue achieved by the project at the time of listing. Using data from Acquire.com, we find empirical support for these patterns indicating that entrepreneurs may justify a higher price because of higher effort up to a certain threshold, and especially for higher revenue projects.

Spontaneous venturing plays a prominent role in alleviating suffering in limited-term crises. Yet, when crises endure over time, it may become necessary to transition spontaneous ventures into sustained ventures to effectively address persistent needs. In this rapid response paper, we collaborated with a problem owner to investigate five sub-problems associated with the core problem of transitioning from spontaneous to sustained venturing in the context of the global refugee crisis. Using a translational research approach in entrepreneurship, we suggest answers to the five identified sub-problems grounded in existing evidence from perspectives in the entrepreneurship literature (contextualization, volunteering, community-based organizing, and venture legitimacy). We further synthesize the solutions that can help motivate and structure sustained collective efforts to address endured crises and highlight key implications for the broader community that aspires to address persistent crises.

Healthcare entrepreneurship is of growing interest, but the area of research is not well defined and is disparate across disciplines. We take an integrative approach to examine the similarities and differences between the literature for the two parent domains (healthcare management and entrepreneurship). We present findings from an interdisciplinary four-phase Delphi study and propose a new framework to guide future research. Our proposed healthcare entrepreneurship framework not only reflects variations in key factors, such as actors, activities, processes and outcomes within the parent disciplines, but also suggests gaps, connections and future opportunities for research.

Actionable summary and highlights

Since COVID-19, there has been an influx of healthcare entrepreneurial ventures, but, within a volatile market, mixed success. We find that healthcare entrepreneurship is different from work in healthcare or entrepreneurship alone. For healthcare entrepreneurs to achieve their targeted health outcomes as well as their operational and profitability outcomes, all stakeholders need to work together. For the clinician-turned-entrepreneur and the serial entrepreneur now in healthcare, we provide three actionable insights to address some of the practical challenges in healthcare entrepreneurship.

• 1.

  We advise that venture teams include individuals from both entrepreneurship and healthcare backgrounds to shorten the learning curve, particularly as they develop the evidence base for the offering. Contacting entrepreneurship accelerators or university tech transfer and commercialization offices for which one may have had previous affiliations can be one approach to securing such team members.

• 2.

  Healthcare entrepreneurs should consider how to include end-user or patient participation to create new healthcare solutions. Working with relevant patient advocacy groups can be one approach and may help to increase the relevance and patient-centeredness of the solution.

• 3.

  Healthcare entrepreneurs may need to develop new business models and revenue streams. While healthcare is a human right, it requires financing to sustain offerings. One may strengthen one's “business and calling” mindset via joining healthcare entrepreneurship organizations for medical professionals, accelerators, and other local programs that support such entrepreneurial engagement in healthcare.

In addition to these insights for healthcare entrepreneurs, we include practical insights for other key actors. Corporations may incentivize partnerships that normalize co-produced innovations. Venture capitalists might develop novel funding mechanisms linked to non-traditional outcomes. Non-profit organizations can serve as interdisciplinary conveners to raise awareness of healthcare entrepreneurship needs. Policy makers might cons