Search results

The purpose of this paper is to develop an understanding of the effects of existing capabilities, by exploration and exploitation, on the choice between internal corporate venturing and external corporate venturing.

Data from 259 Taiwanese firms in the information technology (IT) sector are collected. The study period is four years: 2003 to 2006. Information on corporate financial data and new ventures from the Taiwan Economic Journal (TEJ) database are collected, as well as patent information from the Taiwan Intellectual Property Office (TIPO). Poisson regression is used to test the hypotheses.

There exists a positive relationship between a firm's existing capabilities and corporate venturing activities. The findings indicate that exploration is a better predictor of internal corporate venturing, while exploitation is better at predicting external corporate venturing.

Empirical results are derived from a sampling of information technology firms in Taiwan thus raising issues about their generalizability to other empirical contexts.

That internal and external corporate venturing could be complementary is clarified; meaning that each could contribute to a particular type of strategic renewal. For firms that engaged much more in exploration, internal corporate venturing is a better for growth than external corporate venturing; it can leverage existing technologies and keep valuable breakthrough technologies in‐house. In contrast, for firms that focus much more on exploitation, learning externally is a better renewal strategy than venturing internally; it can access and integrate resources trans‐organizationally to create novelty that may serve as avenues for further growth.

This is the first study that compares the effects of exploration and exploitation with regard to the decision to engage in internal or external corporate venturing.

Two hot topics today in the popular press as well as academic literature are international entrepreneurship and corporate entrepreneurship. These topics challenge two traditional notions within those fields: the difficulty of established corporations to be entrepreneurial and the difficulty of entrepreneurs to go global. The current study introduces the concept global corporate ventures, which merges the concepts internal corporate ventures and “born globals.” This concept is developed and illustrated by two examples of global corporate ventures, ING Direct and HSBC Direct, two financial services e‐commerce ventures that have been launched on a global scale.

The purpose of this paper is to focus on the investigation of the venture capital investment process in the emerging markets of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE), including Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Romania, and Russia. The study aims to describe the mechanics by which venture capital firms operating in the CEE region process deals.

The paper is based on a two‐phase interview interaction process with venture capitalists operating in the CEE region. In the first semi‐structured (exploratory) phase of the study, 14 venture capitalists agreed to participate in one‐hour interview and aimed at discussing their venture capital process. In the second phase of the study (confirmatory), 24 venture capital firms commented on the actual fit of the proposed nine‐stage model into their past investments.

The study has two conclusions. Firstly, the study confirms the existence of a nine‐stage venture capital investment model, comprised of deal origination, initial screening, feedback from the investment committee and due diligence Phase I, feedback from the investment committee (due diligence Phase I), pre‐approval completions, formal approvals and due diligence Phase II, deal completion, monitoring, and exit. Secondly, the proposed model defines the venture capital process in terms of three channels of activity: document channel, information channel, and decision channel.

The study is important for at least four reasons. Firstly, the study focuses on the investigation of the entire venture capital process. Previous research in the area focuses on some specific facets of the venture capital process. Secondly, the paper investigates the connection between decision‐making, information gathering and written communication within a venture capital fund. Thirdly, the study focuses on the most recent period of development of the CEE industry. Many venture capital firms only recently crystallized their venture capital process. Lastly, the study proposes areas of further research for academics and makes suggestions for practitioners.

Young/small firms are often seen as acquisition targets, but rarely viewed as potential acquirers. However, in this study we found that one-third of the young ventures in our sample pursued aggressive growth though acquisition of their competitors. Furthermore, contrary to conventional wisdom, we found striking evidence that young firms pursuing growth via acquisition significantly outperformed their peers who pursued growth via internal development. Thus, growth via acquisition clearly represents a viable strategic option for young, small firms.

Social ventures have been reported to have a hard time obtaining funding. A growing number of social ventures have used crowdfunding as a viable alternative fundraising tool. This paper aims to investigate among social ventures, what makes some more successful than others in crowdfunding.

Theoretically, this study builds upon three streams of literature: nonprofit fundraising literature, crowdfunding literature and social entrepreneurship literature. Empirically, it obtains data with a novel Web-crawling approach from the Indiegogo crowdfunding platform and analyzes them with a variety of statistical modeling.

This study finds that social ventures that have greater internal resources including team size and venture age, stronger partnerships with other entities and more frequent communications with backers via social media and updates have a higher tendency to successfully raise funds from the crowd than those social ventures that do not.

This study seeks to understand social ventures’ crowdfunding performance and identify the specific factors that have led some social ventures to be more successful than other social ventures. It builds a novel data set and uses different statistical models to explore the intersection of social entrepreneurship and digital crowdfunding. In addition, this study provides actionable strategies for social ventures to improve their crowdfunding performance while providing practical implications for increasing people’s knowledge of and participation in social entrepreneurship through education and public policy. Overall, this study contributes to both social entrepreneurship and crowdfunding literature while offering practical implications.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the influence of team member diversity and internal social capital on project performance within the context of business plan competitions (BPCs).

The paper uses survey data on 95 nascent entrepreneurial teams enrolled in an open‐to‐the‐public BPCs. It assumes that higher levels of functional diversity as well as higher levels of internal social capital enhance the performance of nascent entrepreneurial teams in the crafting of their business plans (BPs).

Under this particular context, where the needs for information processing and decision‐making requirements are so high, teams having higher levels of functional diversity attained better performance. Inversely, teams with higher levels of internal social capital did not show a significant advantage in the development of the BP.

Limitations are associated with the exclusion of external social capital measures and not considering demographic faultlines, which might have some impact on the results. Besides, this paper has the limitation of basing its analysis upon teams within a BP contest. Theoretical implications stress that under contexts maximizing the difference between potential upside gains and downside losses, team diversity is expected to play a larger role for BP effectiveness and success than team members' internal social capital.

Recognizing team prevalence and the impact of social dynamics amongst team members within entrepreneurial settings.

The paper contributes with the impact of social dynamic processes on nascent entrepreneurial teams.

The paper aims to postulate as to whether the brand manager function and role is best placed for creating high growth, disruptive brand portfolios. As a potential solution toward resolving this, prescriptions for nurturing brand intrapreneurs are advanced to accelerate corporate entrepreneurial thinking and action based on the empirical case material.

This paper draws from seven case studies of six large global consumer packaged goods (CPG) firms involved in strategic brand venturing activity. Interview quotations are used to provide an invocative account of key ideas and arguments in the paper. Data gathering comprised extensive documentation and observation, and 21 semistructured interviews with senior-level executives and entrepreneurs. Interviews ranged in length with a mean interview time of 1 hour 23 minutes. All interviews were recorded with interviewee permission and, subsequently, transcribed and analyzed. Within-case and across-case analyses were performed using the spiral methodology espoused by Creswell (2007).

Findings are clustered under three themes: galvanic and savvy leaders, entrepreneurial program design and nuanced operating models. In particular, the simultaneous practice of external and internal venturing inside a single venturing unit was noted to generate unique learning and promote corporate entrepreneurial action.

While case studies offer a way of investigating complex real-life phenomena with multiple variables, their ideographic nature suffers from an inability to generalize findings to other populations. This research design is no different. Nevertheless, rigorous within-case and cross-case analyses were performed involving world-class CPG marketing corporations to arrive at the findings presented.

Numerous prescriptions for implementing brand intrapreneurship are advanced in the paper.

Although technology venturing is a well-researched topic, ambidextrous brand venturing groups among CPG corporations renown for their marketing and branding prowess are only beginning to catch-on in practice – this is one of the first empirical paper to enumerate the practices of brand intrapreneurship within a strategic brand venturing framework.

This paper aims to address third actor introductions to interaction episodes aiming at fast-forwarding the continuous development of business relationships of new firms.

The study is qualitative, collecting data from 30 interviews from 28 informants associated with creation of new ventures and business network development in the context of a novel type of third actor called venture builder. Venture builders are privately owned organizations devoted to new firm creation in a factory-like mode, collaborating with individual entrepreneurs.

The findings suggest that interaction episodes, central to the development of new relationships, may be triggered by introductions managed by third actors using different types of involvement depending on the location and focus of the potential relationship. A framework is presented including four types of introductions to interaction episodes, aiming at saving time by removing the perceived distance between new firms and their counterparts in the initiation of business relationships. The framework describes four types of introductions of interaction episodes: Managed, Advised, Facilitated and Monitored.

Triggers and introductions of interaction episodes for new firms has previously been sparsely addressed. This paper presents how third actor involvement, by the introductions of interaction episodes with internal and external counterparts is managed with an aim of fast-forwarding relationship development.

The purpose of this article is to describe how investing in entrepreneurial ventures can help large firms pursue corporate entrepreneurship initiates. Ventures can be attractive partners due to their ability to provide a disproportionate share of radical innovations.

Based on existing literature and information collected via 45 surveys and 72 interviews, the paper shows that strategic fit is an important variable that determines the type of benefits ventures can provide to investing firms.

Three benefits large firms can reap from investing in ventures are: managing the risks and uncertainties of innovation; learning from the venture; and increasing bargaining power over ventures that supply innovative products.

Existing research does not go far enough to explain the range of benefits corporate venture capital can provide. The majority of investments were found in ventures that sell innovative products to the investing firm and have technological competences different from the investing firm.

Organizing for innovation is often a challenge for large firms. Because ventures may be more effective when started outside the firm than inside, investing in select entrepreneurial ventures can help firms effectively explore for radical innovation while continuing to exploit their existing resources internally.

For corporate strategists concerned about improving their firm's innovativeness, corporate venture capital can be part of a corporate entrepreneurship toolbox that can help augment a large firm's growth and competitive position. It can be particularly helpful in managing the risks and uncertainties inherent with radical innovation.

Since corporate ventures operate under the organizational conditions of a parent company, this article aims to highlight key conditions influencing the success of a new venture.

Two cases of corporate venturing are analyzed regarding their performance since they are characterized by different conditions within one international consumer‐goods company. Hence, the literature on corporate entrepreneurship is reviewed and combined with a case study to explore the role and drivers of organizational conditions in the inception and development of new corporate ventures.

The case study reveals two key organizational differences pertaining to corporate new ventures — procedural clarity and procedural discipline. These differences mitigate the variety of risks that corporate entrepreneurs face and smooth or hinder their way to evolve their venture from ideas to business.

As the study includes two venturing cases within the same company in the fast moving consumer goods industry (FMCG), the findings are so far limited to the characteristics of this company type and its sector.

This article supports mid‐level managers to run corporate ventures more successfully by introducing a clear action plan with well defined phases. Individual managers' impact should be limited and linked to a more objective network‐structure.

In contrast to previous literature, this paper highlights the influence of organizational conditions under which corporate ventures are initiated and operated. Additionally, there are further factors identified, the ventures' internal visibility, and the knowledge support by the parent company, which will influence the venture's success or failure.