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Purpose – This study is intended to extend scholarship on the management of organizations by examining the long-term performance of orphaned products.

Design/methodology/approach – This study uses the historical context of the 1929 stock market crash and the Great Depression to examine the long-run appeal (performance) of orphaned products – products from start-ups that fail soon after production. I use this setting to determine how factors within the purview of management, as well as the role of changing tastes, affect the appeal of music from short-lived start-ups founded in 1929 and 1933.

Findings/originality/value – I find that while the evolution of tastes has a substantial effect beyond the control of a firm's managers, a start-up's decision-makers were able to positively influence the long-run appeal of music when they (a) recorded tunes with new artists and (b) were able to create an early big hit with the tune. These results demonstrate how and why, even with cultural producers in one of the greatest economic disasters in U.S. history, managerial decisions were meaningful for product performance. Finally, I show that the effect of being a start-up on the long-run appeal of a tune is time-varying such that being a start-up in 1929 or 1933 does not harm a tune's appeal until after World War II. These final analyses point to further ways in which strategy, history, and sociology might combine to further scholarship on the management of organizations.

This study aims to explore Accelerators and their practices in sustaining start-ups within their innovative programs for these companies based on the resource-based perspective. Moreover, with an ever-increasing demand for Accelerators amongst start-up companies, this study also demonstrates the importance of Accelerators, as it pertains to new venture creation.

This research uses an exploratory case study approach to examine a comparative view of leading Accelerator companies in the USA and Korea based on resource support.

The results of this study show that there are a number of differences between Accelerators of the two countries in terms of the resources they support for early-stage start-ups. The findings also show some similarities. However, in Korea, the Accelerator landscape is limited, where mentorship, resources and investments are not readily accessible, resulting in low success rates for Korean start-up companies. These limitations have had a negative trickle-down effect when providing entrepreneurs with strong access to resources and investors, which highly affects the success rates of early-stage start-ups.

In terms of the resource-based theory, this study contributes to the growth of early start-ups by emphasizing the role of the accelerator and suggesting the extent and impact that entrepreneurs have access to resources and investors.

With significant growth in start-ups around the world, the necessity for start-up funding and mentorship has increased drastically. Start-up companies need various types of assets, systems, knowledge and information to achieve their goals. In Accelerators, start-ups receive all the aforementioned resources while also improving their entrepreneurial skills. Start-up companies have many options in seeking investors who support both tangible and intangible resources to boost growth. While there is a wealth of information on traditional funding methods, there are few studies that shed light on the role of Accelerators from the resource-based point of view.

The purpose of this paper is to focus on the early development of eHealth service start-ups. To elaborate the research problem, the study addresses the following research questions: How do managerial experiences in eHealth service start-ups relate to the central findings of the recent empirically based stages-of-growth literature? What context-specific viewpoints should be considered when using the stage framework in relation to eHealth service start-ups?

In this explorative multiple case study, the authors test a growth framework describing the early stages of eHealth service firms through eight case studies. The authors utilise the critical incident technique and semi-structured interviews in the data collection.

When taking into account the key contradictions assessed in the study as well as context-specific features of eHealth businesses, the empirically based stage framework seems to be a useful starting point for reflecting on and predicting the challenges faced during the early development of eHealth service start-ups. Slow growth due to several factors and the essential role of the public sector were commonly emphasised elements of the context-specific viewpoints of the eHealth service business.

The results may be used in start-ups and intermediary organisations as a framework for predicting managerial challenges during the start-up stage of an eHealth service business.

Numerous universal models and frameworks have attempted to clarify management priorities during the early stages of business. However, context-specific viewpoints and their effects on start-ups have not been broadly studied. This study provides new insights into growth management in the eHealth context.

This study aims to understand the impact of underlying theme in the communication on social media on funding received by early-stage start-ups.

The study is based on empirical testing of data of 849 start-ups and more than 130K tweets. Machine learning (ML) model has been used for text classification of 130K+ tweets. Causal mediation analysis with bootstrapping is carried out for hypothesis testing.

Tweets addressing quality-related uncertainty are a predictor of amount of funds raised. Audience response acts as a mediator between tweets focusing on relational orientation and amount of funds raised.

The authors advance signaling theory by theorizing and investigating the importance of signal content. Endogenous signal of quality directly influences the start-ups outcomes, while exogenous signal helps disseminate information and influence the success.

Entrepreneurs should put in concerted effort to reduce uncertainty about the start-ups. Value creation is a central concept for start-ups; however, communicating value should be the dominant part of social media strategy.

Computer-based language processing techniques have amplified the research focused on content. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first comprehensive study that explores underlying themes of communication of start-ups and their impact on acquiring funds.

This study aims to investigate the demand for business advisory services by owners of start-ups and young companies by taking a gender perspective. The study also examines whether risk-taking is more characteristic of masculine than feminine behaviour in this context.

A literature review examines business advisory services and risk aversion from a gender perspective. The empirical data are derived from interviews with owners of more than 2,700 start-ups and young companies in Sweden. A number of key variables compare how the company owners (women and men) view business advisory services as a way to overcome risk and to gain access to information in networks. Several statistical tests are used to analyse these data.

Women owners of start-ups and young companies use more and different business advisory services than men owners. There are differences among the men owners and women owners with regard to the amount of start-up capital, company size and industry sector. Given the risks associated with start-up, business advisory services are important to women in helping them reduce their risk in the start-up and early stages of their companies.

Companies in Sweden’s largest city, Stockholm, were not included in the sample. Financial data were not used as variables.

Policymakers should address women owners’ greater demand for business advisory services in their companies’ early stages.

This study’s originality is its gender perspective on the demand for business advisory services by start-ups and young companies and its challenge to previous findings about entrepreneurial behaviour and risk-taking.

The purpose of this paper is to shed some new light on the entrepreneurial finance of green start-ups, for which there has been little quantitative empirical evidence thus far. It explores what challenges green start-ups might experience when it comes to financial access.

The paper includes a survey of start-ups in Finland, Germany and Sweden and the separate evaluation of the “greenness” of participating companies’ product/service portfolios based on Eurostat’s Environmental Goods and Service Sector classification. A logistic regression is carried out for different company phases for two measures of challenges (“difficulty accessing finance” and “rejection by investor/funder”).

Green start-ups as an overall group cannot be said to have more challenges in access to finance. Particularly, a lack in business education and a high level of innovativeness, however, seem to be lead to more challenges for green start-ups in accessing finance compared to other start-ups.

Further research might seek to identify which exact characteristics of innovative green start-ups lead to challenges in financial access, i.e. is it individual factors such as high risk levels, high investment sums, long development periods or a low return prospect – or is it rather a combination? It might, furthermore, be rewarding to investigate whether “interventions” of business-related training might reduce challenges.

Suggestions are made for improved policy support to sustainable entrepreneurship in the case of green start-ups.

This research paper provides quantitative empirical analysis in a new research area, which has previously been predominantly theory based with some anecdotal observations as well as some early qualitative research.

This paper aims to investigate the factors that influenced seven graduates in the creative and digital industries to start their own businesses in Barnsley, South Yorkshire, UK – an area with lack of employing establishments and locally registered businesses.

Questionnaires and semi‐structured interviews identified the constraining and enabling factors graduates may encounter when attempting to start a business, and explored the impact of support provided.

Perceived constraining factors were: lack of general business knowledge, contradictory advisory support from external agencies, lack of sector‐specific mentors, lack of finance, and experience of familial entrepreneurship. Perceived enabling factors were: co‐mentoring from business partners, course content, financial gain, creativity and innovative ideas, control and risk taking, and the overarching package of support. Linkages between internal and external support could be improved.

The study provided insights into constraints and enablers to self‐employment for a small cohort of recent graduates looking to start‐up in the creative and digital industries. Further studies are required to explore the suggested effect of the “creative identity”, and of sector‐specific family entrepreneurial background.

The support provided by universities can facilitate the transition from early stage ideas to actual graduate business start‐up. Issues such as provision of specialist advice and links with external parallel and follow‐on support need to be considered.

University start‐up units provide an important contribution to the development of graduate entrepreneurs and their role in the growth of national and global economy. Suggestions for improvements in performance, such as closer links with external business development agencies and support providers, are discussed.

Digital entrepreneurship is the key to economic survival and the lantern of jobs in developing countries. The debate about the challenges facing early digital entrepreneurs (DEs) in developing countries is still ambiguous. This study attempts to fulfill the gap with an in-depth examination of Jordan.

Referring to a digital start-up database hosted by the Ministry of Digital Economy and Entrepreneurship in Jordan, the study interviews a random sample of (n = 45) early (less than one-year seniority) DEs. Thematic analysis is carried out facilitated by NVivo 20 software. E-Commerce, agriculture technology, data and artificial intelligence and entertainment were at the top of the interviewed start-ups.

Nine challenges were observed, critically analyzed and discussed. The challenges are (1) the lack of realistic funding in terms and guarantees; (2) the negligence of guidance and advisory of incubators and entrepreneurship centres; (3) the emergence of unexpected risks; (4) the stringent economic situation; (5) competition; (6) legal and legislative obstacles; (7) obstacles to accessing markets; (8) team management and finally (9) disorganization in the entrepreneurial environment. The study sets recommendations to support early DEs in their journey.

This study highlights the significant implications for aspiring DEs by focusing on some challenges that might face their start-ups such as institutional, technology and local dimensions of context and measures to develop the entrepreneurial and digital competencies. This includes sustainable funding, poor direct guidance and advisory, unexpected failures/risks, and economic obstacles. This study might be considered a road map for the decision-makers to build their strategies for eliminating the main barriers for early DEs and start-ups.

Although recent literature discussed the challenges of entrepreneurs in Jordan, this is the first that identifies early DEs’ challenges and uses 45% samples of the community.

Despite the relevance of innovation in entrepreneurship literature, empirical research on the innovation-performance relationship in start-ups is underdeveloped and shows controversial results. To bridge this gap, the aim of this paper is to investigate the role of innovativeness on new venture performance in the early stage of the life cycle.

Regression modelling and propensity score matching are used to reveal systematic differences in growth between innovative start-ups (ISUPs) and non-innovative start-ups. We use an ad hoc dataset obtained through merging the financial database AIDA with data from administrative sources (Italian Chambers of Commerce and the Italian Ministry for Economic Development).

The results show that differences in growth can be explained by the different levels of innovativeness in new ventures. Moreover, unlike in prior studies, the innovation inputs matter more than innovation outputs. Indeed, the results support the idea that innovation policies can contribute to maximising the potential of start-ups.

The findings provide suggestions for policy makers and entrepreneurs to help firms configure ex ante appropriate actions to support the growth of new ventures in the start-up stage.

This study is the first to use the new objective measure of start-up innovation, available from the Italian LD 221 register. Second, different types of innovation are investigated as antecedents of firm growth. Third, we employ propensity score matching, which favours revealing systematic differences in growth between ISUPs and non-innovative start-ups. Fourth, the results of our study are the first to offer evidence on the effectiveness of the new Italian sustaining ISUPs policy.

Entrepreneurial activity is currently a primary concern of many developed economies that struggle with changes in their industrial structures. Many of the traditionally strong industries are encountering strong global competition and declining markets, and national competitiveness is often said to be built on new entrepreneurial firms that are able to grow in global markets. The facilitating national systems for these firms are covered in the emerging start-up ecosystem discussion. This chapter aims to contribute to this discussion by incorporating an analysis of the variety of actors and activities needed in start-up industries that rely on competence bloc theory. Furthermore, inspired by cultural-historical activity theory, the study specifies the contextual-, temporal- and renewal-related determinants of the activity of start-up ecosystems. As a result, a framework for examining start-up ecosystems as platforms for high-growth entrepreneurship is proposed in terms of its core constituencies that influence the emergence and non-emergence of high-growth firms.