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This study aims to explore how aspiring entrepreneurs navigate between their own individual self-concept and the organisational identity of the new venture during the process of new venture creation.

The study draws on three cases of aspiring entrepreneurs within a UK-based university incubator in the process of “becoming” entrepreneurs. Semi-structured interviews and secondary data were collected and analysed using a flexible pattern matching approach.

The data illustrated parallel identity and sensemaking processes occurring as the aspiring entrepreneurs navigated towards new venture formation. For the organisational identity process, three key stages were found to occur: referent identity labelling, projection and identity reification. Concurrently the sensemaking process made up of creation, interpretation and enactment were seen to enable identity transitioning mechanisms: cue identification, liminal sensegiving and recognition of formal venture boundaries, which led to the organisational identity being formed.

This study is exploratory in nature thus future research is required to clarify the relationship between identity work practices and the process of creating a new venture (Oliver and Vough, 2020). The paper is limited to successful instances of new venture formation, and though this helped to extricate the identity transitioning stages and mechanisms that have thus far remained implicit within the process of new venture creation, it could be extended to examine entrepreneurs who fail to set up new ventures. This limitation opens avenues for further research on identity formation in failed ventures (Snihur and Clarysse, 2022) and on how entrepreneurs negotiate contested identities (Varlander et al., 2020). Furthermore, entrepreneurs take different pathways to new venture formation (Shepherd et al., 2021) and while this study follows the journey of aspiring entrepreneurs who differed in terms of sector, education and prior entrepreneurial experience (Shane, 2003), future researchers could undertake a more in-depth ethnographic study including the effects of incubator setting and how these can be best supported, as this was outside the original remit of this study. Given the importance of the university incubator (Bergman and McMullen, 2022), its role in the construction of new venture identity is an interesting area for future research.

This study provides a practical contribution into entrepreneurship curricula and incubator training, emphasising the importance of understanding the relevance of the entrepreneur's self-concept in making sense of future venture identities. Through the findings of this study, the importance of cue identification and how aspiring entrepreneurs rely on these to carve out the identity of their budding venture is demonstrated. Incubator spaces may have a role to play in supporting aspiring entrepreneurs to reflect on and interpret feedback (liminal sensegiving) during the venture creation process. Furthermore, both educators and incubator managers need to be aware of the state of in-between-ness aspiring entrepreneurs will face as they carve out the identity of the budding venture. This study enables educators to advise aspiring entrepreneurs that there will come a point on the entrepreneurial journey when they need to emphasise boundary setting between self and organisation to enable organisational identity to be fostered and venture formation realised. This study advises incubator managers to consider whether support around business registrations and creation of business accounts should be provided earlier in the incubation programme to emphasise boundary setting between self and organisation. There is a fruitful avenue for future research to extend the work in this paper to fully understand how this might be taught and practiced in the classrooms.

By extricating the stages of organisational identity formation, often hidden within the new venture creation process, this study has framed new venture creation as a liminal experience and a visible site of identity work. This study presents a process model of the key identity transitioning stages and mechanisms in new ventures, by illustrating how aspiring entrepreneurs' sensemaking influences identity transitions during the process of venture creation.

The purpose of this research is to analyze the development of high‐tech international new ventures as an acting process by individuals in relationship networks.

The study cross‐fertilizes research on internationalization of international new ventures, opportunity development of entrepreneurs and innovation development in technology‐based firms. A longitudinal case study on the development process of an international new venture operating in the software business is used as a base for analytical generalization and theory development.

The study illustrates events at three intertwined levels of acting on the development of an international new venture. It defines internal problem solving, external solution creation, opportunity selling and opportunity organizing as the behaviors driving the emergent, multi‐level process and embedding the venture in various networks.

Statistical generalization based on common patterns experienced by several firms was not sought in this study. Using the process research approach with event‐based analysis, the study, however, provides an in‐depth analysis of international new venture development through the actions of individuals at the level of key events. The methods for examining a complex development process over time can be utilized by other process researchers.

The complexity of building high‐tech international new ventures is, to a great extent, due to the necessity of handling the process at three levels simultaneously and in connection with one another. Since international new ventures are often based on business opportunities that have a short window of opportunity, the timeline creates further challenges. Embedding the business into various resourcing, legitimizing and otherwise assisting networks is crucial.

The study provides an insight into the ways of acting in networks that intertwines the internationalization, opportunity and technology development with development of a high‐tech international new venture. The study follows the development process in real time, something that is quite rare in previous international entrepreneurship research.

Despite the growing body of literature on both organizational learning (OL) and corporate venture development (CVD), very few attempts have been made to establish connections between these two literature streams. While existing literature provides some evidence that OL may facilitate the process of CVD, several interesting research issues remain unexamined. We know very little about (a) what type of learning processes are effective at various stages of CVD; and (b) whether and how knowledge created through various OL processes enhances venture performance. These research issues are examined in this paper by integrating the literature from OL and CVD. We develop a conceptual model that integrates organizational learning with the antecedents and outcomes of CVD. We argue that (a) organizational learning in CVD occurs through two distinct and yet complementary processes; (b) productive organizational learning occurs when organizations vary their emphases on different types of learning depending upon the stages of CVD; and (c ) different types of learning are associated with different types of venture outcomes. Propositions are developed and implications are discussed to facilitate empirical research.

The creation of a new venture is at the heart of entrepreneurship and shares parallels with project-based organizing: embedded in an institutional context, founders have to assemble a team that works on specified tasks within a strict time constraint, while the new venture undergoes various transitions. The purpose of this paper is to explore parallels between both streams of research and an increasing projectification of entrepreneurship.

The study is based upon a case study of the Berlin start-up ecosystem including the analysis of interviews (n=52), secondary documents, and field observations.

The paper reveals that – shaped by their institutional context – patterns of project-like organizing have become pertinent to the new venture creation process. It identifies a set of facets from the entrepreneurial ecosystems – more specifically different types of organizational actors, their occupational backgrounds, and epistemic communities – that enable and constrain the process of new venture creation in a way that is typical for project-based organizing.

This study thus elaborates on how institutional settings enforce what has been called “projectification” in the process of new venture creation and discuss implications for start-up ecosystems.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how sustainability is integrated into a new venture’s business network initiation. This study unpacks sustainability in business network initiation using temporal bracketing and identifying its main processes. Temporal bracketing supports the understanding of the evolution of sustainability in network initiation. The processes help explore the sustainability patterns that emerge from the new venture’s attempt to integrate sustainability into network initiation.

The exploratory case study of an Italian pasta maker draws on industrial network theory to focus on the business network initiation of new ventures. The novelty is the integration of sustainability into the business network initiation literature. This paper adopts a single case study methodology and an abductive approach to analysis.

This study finds that sustainability in network initiation is achieved through three periods of initiation and through five processes that are overlapping, intertwined and reciprocal. This study suggests that sustainability can have a positive or negative impact when integrated into the initiation process.

This paper provides a conceptual framework for understanding how a new venture integrates sustainability in its network initiation. The framework comprises periods and processes of network initiation which show how a new venture can integrate sustainability in its business activities and resources through interaction with network actors.

It is unclear how nascent entrepreneurs make decisions during the venture creation process. The purpose of this paper is to investigate decision-making logics and their transformation over time among student entrepreneurs who aim to create new business ventures in the higher education setting.

The study employs the mixed methods approach through the use of survey and observation data. The longitudinal survey data comprise three surveys collected via an internet-aided tool. The constructs of causation and effectuation are measured using previously tested scales (Chandler et al., 2011). Non-participant observation data were collected during the course, focussing on the venture creation processes of four different start-ups, and were analysed thematically.

The findings show three transformation patterns – doubts in how to proceed, unwillingness to proceed, and unsatisfactory team dynamics – that led individuals towards a coping decision-making logic in which no causation or effectuation is emphasised. The findings illustrate that, despite this stage of decision-making logic, the learning process continues: Even if no new business venture is launched, entrepreneurship education can still generate learning outcomes that improve students’ understanding of entrepreneurship as well as understanding of themselves as entrepreneurs.

This study brings the theories of causation and effectuation into the teaching of entrepreneurship. Of particular value to scholars is the fact that the study generates new understanding of the decision-making logics during new venture creation. Accordingly, this study sheds new light on the transformation and complementarity of the decision-making logic of an individual as new ventures emerge in an educational context reflecting the real-life start-up context.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a process view into moments of entrepreneurial crisis within the venture formation process caused by environmental stressors. A new construct is conceptualized, the entrepreneurial breaking point (EBP), as a critical and potentially insurmountable moment of crisis caused by an entrepreneur’s appraisal of environmental threats during a new venture’s formation.

To develop the EBP within a process model, this study builds upon previous environmental frameworks by expanding upon and infusing a situated social cognitive approach with a stress perspective.

The theoretical framework developed sheds light on the complex person-environment interaction that can create an EBP, the process of experiencing an EBP, how individuals vary in their activation of coping resources to respond to an EBP and how an EBP can ultimately result in new venture exit, sustained performance or growth.

The paper discusses implications for entrepreneurs during these moments of crises, including suggesting the use of trusted, impartial third-parties to overcome individual weaknesses, increasing awareness of the various environmental threats and finding a balance between goal-related commitment and adaptation.

This paper contributes to the existing literature by operationalizing and contextualizing a special case of socio-cognition under duress, filling an identified need for process work, exploring some reasons for EBP response variation across different entrepreneurs and elaborating on how the behavioral outcomes of an EBP may affect venture performance.

The purpose of this paper is to identify how different modes of resource configuration, entry strategy and product/market characteristics affect new ventures' start‐up processes as well as outcomes in terms of firm growth and revenues.

Case studies of three academic spin‐offs and three non‐academic new ventures are employed as a base for analytical generalisation.

Non‐academic ventures and academic spin‐offs have different bases for their venture creation and follow different strategies to enter their specific markets. Academic spin‐offs are to a larger extent innovative, product‐oriented and enter their target markets employing a technology/science‐push strategy, which requires considerable resources and partner cooperation to manage. The non‐academic ventures, on the contrary, exploit emerging opportunities on the market through a market‐pull strategy relying mainly on offerings already known to the market and building on their own, in‐house resources.

Future research should benefit from investigating factors and conditions affecting different ventures' start‐up process by utilizing qualitative, in‐depth approaches as well as quantitative approaches and a more robust database.

Venture creation processes are not uniform but dependent on situational and contextual factors. Overall, academic spin‐offs come forward as examples of Schumpeterian entrepreneurship characterised by exploration and innovation, while the more “Kirznerian” and non‐academic start‐ups primarily recognise and exploit upcoming market opportunities based on resources they control. The results highlight challenges for nascent entrepreneurs as well as for policy makers supporting new venture creation.

A comparison highlighting critical events, resource configurations and environmental conditions of different start‐up processes depending on the new ventures' origin.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the role of founding team experience (industry and venturing) in new venture creation. This paper posits the following questions: How does founding team experience influence the likelihood of new venture creation, in the nascent stage? How does industry context moderate this relationship? The study aims to fill an important gap in the literature by unpacking the impact of different types of founding team experiences on venture outcome, and by focusing on the influence of founding team in the venture creation process, specifically at the nascent stage.

The paper utilizes data from the Second Panel Study of Entrepreneurial Dynamics, a longitudinal data set of 1,214 nascent entrepreneurs in the USA. Logistics regression was employed to analyze the effect of founding team experience on new venture creation. Post hoc analysis was conducted to ensure the confidence of the findings.

The paper provides empirical insights about how founding team experience influences the likelihood of new venture creation in the nascent stage. At the nascent stage, founding team industry experience positively affects new venture creation while founding team venturing experience does not. However, in the high-technology industry environment, the influence of the founding team’s venturing experience on new venture creation is stronger than that in the low-technology industry environment.

Due to the design of the data set, there is a risk of “right-censoring” problem. Also, because the study used archival data on founding teams, the methodology did not allow for uncovering the underlying team processes and dynamics during the venture creation process based on learning from experience. Future studies are encouraged to examine other types of founding team experience and the underlying process-level factors on venture creation.

The paper provides important practical implications for nascent entrepreneurs/entrepreneurial teams on team assembling and composition. In general, a team with higher-level industry experience is critical for venturing success. A team with higher-level venturing experience is more desired in the high-technology industry.

This paper fulfills an important gap in the entrepreneurial team literature by highlighting the complex and nuanced ways in which founding team experience influences the likelihood of venture creation in the nascent stage of the firm, especially after incorporating the additional impact of the industry context.

The purpose of this paper is to understand how high‐tech firms from China internationalize and to determine whether they follow the gradual internationalization model suggested by the Uppsala school and/or the rapid internationalization model as suggested by the “born global” stream of researchers.

This is an inductive and exploratory study that tries to understand questions of how and why. A multiple case study method is used to find empirical evidence for the a priori assumptions derived from the literature.

It was found that the gradual internationalization model is still valid although high‐tech firms from China internationalize much faster than suggested by earlier studies and they do not follow the process suggested by born global studies.

The authors develop a number of propositions that can be empirically tested in pursuit of theory building for the internationalization of smaller firms from emerging markets.

The paper compares and contrasts the models suggested by Uppsala studies and by researchers in the field of born global studies and provides concrete propositions that can be tested to develop a theory for emerging market firms.