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Whether older or younger entrepreneurs may be better positioned to achieve performance outcomes for their ventures is a much debated question. Here, we draw on Galenson℉s theory of creativity to propose a contingency perspective for understanding the relationship between entrepreneur age and venture performance, suggesting that a venture℉s level of innovativeness plays a moderating role. Results from a representative sample of 1,182 nascent entrepreneurs revealed mixed support for our hypotheses. While a negative relationship was found between entrepreneur age and performance for those developing “innovative” ventures, no relationship was found between entrepreneur age and performance for those developing “imitative” ventures.

The hallmark of the “European Approach to Entrepreneurship,” if there is such a thing, has been its diversity. European entrepreneurship research has been like Europe itself, a panoply of diverse ways of thinking, expressed in theories, methods, or research questions. Only when comparing European research to North American do observers find a semblance of commonality. For example, it appears that European researchers as a whole tend to use more fieldwork and qualitative analysis approaches than do their North American counterparts (e.g., Aldrich, 2000). However, this perhaps reflects a stronger academia-based and quantitative dominant research paradigm among North American researchers than among the diverse research traditions currently active in Europe.

How general can a “general” theory of entrepreneurship be? Abstraction is a necessity but is it possible to include venture opportunity variation in a general theory of entrepreneurship building on two contrasting perspectives such as equilibrium economics and disequilibrium economics. Two important boundaries need to be explicated. First, defining entrepreneurship as the creation of new economic activity includes both the creation of new means – ends (cf. Schumpeter, 1934) – as well as optimizing within known means – ends frameworks (cf. Kirzner, 1997). Second, such a theory includes an opportunity – actor nexus because it is the first tangible or intangible evidence of existing venture opportunities. Formal models of entrepreneurship often start with a person and at some point in time an exchange of persons with firms take place which is confusing because both levels of analysis and outcome are mixed with each other. Apparently, there is no such thing as entrepreneurship without actors, but if we want to create knowledge about the creation of economic activity, we need to frame our boundary around the nascent initiative instead of single actors and/or teams of actors because value can only be assessed in relation to the costs of services withdrawn. Analogous to this is, for example, the theory of firm and the theory of organizations with boundaries well beyond single actors or groups of actors. Another factor behind a venture-based theory of entrepreneurship comes from empirical evidence from the Swedish PSED, which suggests that approximately 16% (n=97) nascent entrepreneurs are exchanged during the start-up process. Formal models of entrepreneurship could therefore start with the nexus of venture opportunities and enterprising actors as suggested by Shane (2003) or with resources as suggested by Davidsson (2000) and progress forward in the entrepreneurial process. Entrepreneurship models built around the economic activity itself needs to be dynamic allowing different outcomes and feedback loops because resource combinations alter our perception of value and diffuses information, which may lead to additional resource combinations (Hayek, 1945).

Many factors influence entrepreneurs, some of which influence the level of innovation (i.e. innovative or imitative) of new products or services pursued. The purpose of this paper is to explore the impact of the psychological motivations of the entrepreneurs and their institutional setting on the innovativeness of the new venture they pursue. Through this exploration, we can gain a better understanding of how innovative new ventures still occur in varying institutional environments.

In order to deliver the authors’ propositions as they pertain to innovation, the authors review the literature on entrepreneurs’ default regulatory focus (i.e. promotion or prevention seeking) and the strength of the institutions in which they are operating.

The authors theorize that promotion focus enhances innovativeness of ventures while prevention focus enhances imitativeness of ventures. The authors also provide a conceptual framework for the interplay among institutions and regulatory focus and provide a typology for how these varying combinations impact innovativeness or imitativeness of venture type.

In this study, the authors discuss and unpack the entrepreneurial mindset in order to bridge gaps between institutions and cognitive motivations of entrepreneurs as they pertain to innovativeness of venture type. By synthesizing several areas of research, the authors shed light on entrepreneurs’ innovativeness by proposing how these factors work together in determining whether an entrepreneur’s venture is more or less innovative based on regulatory disposition and in different institutional settings.

The purpose of this paper is to explain the implications of different entrepreneurial orientations on business start‐up and development challenges.

This research reflects surveys of 1,075 experienced entrepreneurs and business and entrepreneurship students in Estonia during the years 2005‐2010. An additional method is action learning and reflections of training focused on recognising new business opportunities during the economic crises.

Combinations of co‐creative and innovative entrepreneurial orientations are more popular than the imitative entrepreneurial orientation. There is, however, an essential contradiction between stressing the principles of co‐creative orientation at the first stages of business opportunity identification and taking a more individualistic approach to innovation at later stages of the business development process and implementing the related changes. Potential entrepreneurs developing radically new innovative ideas in emerging economies should assess more realistically their existing core competences and search for opportunities to improve their competence base through cross‐border networking.

Surveys that apply the self‐assessment tool do not comprise a representative sample of all Estonian entrepreneurs. These surveys have been conducted in training settings and support self‐development of trainees. Research results can be used for differentiating entrepreneurship training and education. An important opportunity for entrepreneurship education in the context of organisational change is to support the cross‐border exchange of entrepreneurial ideas between “blue ocean dreamers”, who sometimes lack entrepreneurship experience, and more experienced entrepreneurs, who may be trapped in some regionally‐limited business in a highly competitive domestic market.

The results of the research explain why entrepreneurship training has to take into consideration differences between imitative, individually innovative and co‐creative entrepreneurs.

The purpose of this study is to provide a general review of the existing academic and practitioner literatures, pertaining to entrepreneurial selling with a view to articulate major entrepreneurial selling practices, patterns and principles that lead to entrepreneurial success and to propose two four-quadrant matrices.

The paper explores commonalities and distinctions in the entrepreneurial selling concepts articulated by Deutsch and Wortmann and Onyemah and Rivera-Pesquera – and relevant writings by Blank as well as Sarasvathy – are explored and analyzed.

It was found that the early stage entrepreneurial selling activities of founders – as a means of gleaning prospective customer feedback for product prototyping – form the core of contemporary entrepreneurial selling conceptualizations. Two provisional four-quadrant entrepreneurial selling matrices are proposed corresponding to the literature reviewed.

It is hoped that the two four-quadrant matrices might serve as a springboard for future researchers interested in exploring entrepreneurial selling. The notion of preliminary selling as a valuable form of marketing research is also worthy of future research.

Given the extent to which the perspectives of entrepreneurship practitioners, clinical professors and consultants are cited and explored, manifold aspects of entrepreneurial selling are put forth. The various approaches to preliminary selling that are explored are of especially high value to practitioners.

This is the first paper to fully explore the commonalities and distinctions across the entrepreneurial selling conceptualizations developed by Deutsch and Wortmann, as well as by Onyemah and Rivera-Pesquera, and the first to propose a conceptual framework focused specifically on entrepreneurial selling.

This paper examines the extent to which different sources of ideas for innovation are associated with novelty of innovation outcomes. We measure the novelty of product innovation using three well-established categories, ranging from highly novel new-to-world products to new-to-firm products that are essentially imitative, with products that are new-to-country (but not the world) being an intermediary category. In turn we investigate how knowledge derived from different external and internal (within-firm) sources of ideas can help firms increase innovation with different degrees of novelty. Our empirical analyses are conducted on a large sample of manufacturing firms from the South American emerging market of Colombia and show that many of the same sources of knowledge – such as scientific sources, production departments and managers – are associated with higher innovation in all three categories of novelty. However, some sources – notably external clients and internal interdisciplinary groups – are more significantly associated with more novel innovation than imitation. The implications of these findings for the literatures on innovation and imitation, and innovation by emerging market firms are discussed.

The purpose of this paper is to propose a model suggesting that innovation may act as a motivating force that increases entrepreneurs’ growth expectations, in which entrepreneurs’ growth expectations are shaped by their subjective values and entrepreneurial experience moderates this relationship.

This paper conducts statistical analysis on a sample of 11,579 entrepreneurs from 24 countries who participated in the IIIP survey of innovation in 2011 under the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor project.

The results suggest that entrepreneurs involved in innovative entrepreneurship are more likely to have higher growth expectations, with subjective values playing a direct and indirect role in entrepreneurs’ expectations of firm growth. Additionally, the results indicate that the duration of entrepreneurial experience moderates the relationship between strategic orientation and confidence in innovation. This finding suggests there is feedback between having beliefs about the benefits of innovation and being an innovative entrepreneur, resulting in an over-estimation – at least in comparative terms – regarding firm growth rates. This relationship is stronger for novice entrepreneurs since experienced entrepreneurs tend to be more cautious about their expectations of growing.

This study deepens our understanding of the complex processes through which organizational-level decisions ultimately influence individual-level factors. The present findings contribute to progress in this task by suggesting that strategies aimed at cultivating innovation feed entrepreneurs’ subjective values of innovation as well as expectations of growth. Although the duration of entrepreneurial experience moderates the relationship between acting as an innovative entrepreneur and subjective values of innovation, the results suggest that entrepreneurs’ expectations are primarily driven by their internal perceptions of reality.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the direct and interaction effect of individuals’ human capital input and human capital output in the form of entrepreneurial self-confidence on the decision to exploit innovative opportunities.

Using a strategic entrepreneurship perspective, the authors suggest that when individuals with high human capital decide to exploit opportunities they do so by thinking and acting strategically. Strategic action(s) involves pursuing competitive advantages that enable a new venture to get a foothold in the market. The authors argue that such competitive advantages arise from the exploitation of innovative opportunities and individuals with high human capital are more likely to exploit innovative opportunities when they develop entrepreneurial self-confidence. The empirical analysis is based on a random sample of individuals from the adult population who are in the process of creating a new venture.

The results suggest that although human capital inputs and human capital output in the form of entrepreneurial self-confidence are significant factors in influencing the decision to exploit innovative opportunities, human capital inputs interact in different ways with human capital output in influencing this decision.

The main limitation of the authors’ study is the use of single item measures as indicators of innovative opportunity and human capital output (entrepreneurial self-confidence).

From a macro-perspective, the main implication of the study is that it is possible to assess the quality of entrepreneurship in an economy through individuals’ human capital and the proportion of innovative opportunities in the economy. Moreover, because not all types of human capital inputs influences the exploitation of innovative opportunities, policy makers can be selective in their policy interventions in spawning quality entrepreneurship in their economy.

Based on population-level data the authors’ study provides empirical evidence of the nature of entrepreneurial decisions being at the earliest phases of the entrepreneurial process. The study shows the importance of founders’ human capital inputs and outputs in influencing the quality of entrepreneurship in an economy. Moreover, the study extends the understanding the individual-opportunity nexus in promoting innovative entrepreneurship in an economy.

The main purpose of this study is to identify features and trends shaping the business models currently prevailing in the Canadian biopharma industry, by disaggregating the business model analysis into four key areas: value creation, investment strategy, business strategy, success factors

Results arise from an empirical fieldwork of qualitative nature, undertaken by the end of 2004, involving deep interviews to a broad variety of key stakeholders of the biopharma industry in the Quebec region, including biopharma firms, large pharma firms, venture capital funds, research centers and recognized experts from consultancy firms and Universities.

Biopharma firms encounter difficulties to bridge the gap between the research innovation focus to the large scale production focus. The biopharma firms need to announce achievable and promising hits in the near future, mainly by filing patents and also through scientific publications, and making believable their prospects to reach the release phase. Venture capitalists and private investors claim for original, innovative and marketable results, keeping away from just imitative enterprises. The one product firms still largely prevail.

Lessons learned through this fieldwork might in the future be complemented with a quantitative survey to biopharma firms in the Quebec region.

When funding biopharma firms, private investors claim for original, innovative and marketable results, keeping away from just imitative enterprises. The business model must evolve, and take into account the quick changes in the environment, coming either from the market or from the technologies and research streams.

Disaggregating the business model analysis into four key areas will make an original contribution to the limited knowledge about expectations and future prospects of the biopharma industry