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The purpose of this paper is to examine how the instructions of the lean startup methodology influence entrepreneurs. It explores what happens when such instructions are enacted by entrepreneurs in the context of a “prescriptive accelerator”. The goal is to shine a light onto the mechanisms by which these instructions are acquired and then utilised by entrepreneurs and to outline in some detail the implications of adhering to the lean startup methodology.

This paper employs an in-depth phenomenological semi-structured interview design. Two rounds of interviews were conducted, one at the beginning and one at the end of the programme with the CEOs and founders of 11 entrepreneurial ventures, totalling 22 interviews. The analysis of the interviews resulted in five second-order themes that are discussed in light of the processes of experiential and vicarious learning.

The findings suggest that through two distinct modes of vicarious and experiential learning, the instructions of the lean startup methodology are acquired, internalised and consequently put into practice by entrepreneurs. The paper further highlights the modifications to entrepreneurs’ governing variables and action strategies, as well as the resulting consequences of these modifications. This provides insights into possible outcomes of following the lean startup methodology in the context of a prescriptive accelerator where a strong focus on adhering to a systematic entrepreneurial methodology is a characteristic feature.

This paper contributes to our understanding of the under-studied and novel phenomena of the lean startup methodology and prescriptive accelerators. It complements the prevailing understanding of entrepreneurial learning as being largely experiential by accounting for the vicarious learning processes that occur in pedagogical settings such as prescriptive accelerators. It therefore shows that prescriptive accelerators provide unique learning situations where the combination of vicarious and experiential learning impacts the business development activities. Further, it provides a model of entrepreneurs’ theory of action as the outcome of the interactions between the lean startup methodology and the two modes of vicarious and experiential learning.

Given the growing recognition that learning plays a crucial role in entrepreneurship, this paper aims to systematically review the literature on entrepreneurial learning (EL), take account of its progress and analyze the unique characteristics of EL as a concept.

This paper uses a systematic approach to reviewing the literature on EL and critically assess the EL concept through the criteria of resonance, attributes (involving consistency, fecundity and differentiation), domain and causal utility.

A synthesis and assessment of extant literature reveals that a key challenge is the clear articulation of EL as a concept. This paper takes the first steps toward the specification of EL through a discussion of its unique properties. In this respect, the paper proposes the understanding of EL as an undertaking of entrepreneurial (i.e. proactive, exploratory and collaborative) learning behaviors (a crucial component of the EL concept) and recommends the context of new venture creation as an appropriate domain for the study of EL.

This paper paves the way toward a more robust specification of EL as a concept.

This systematic literature review initiates a discussion about how EL literature can find convergence on key issues, thus helping the field move forward. It does so by articulating central attributes of the EL concept.

The purpose of this study is to answer the following questions. What kind of entrepreneurial identities do students have that motivate them to choose either of the entrepreneurship course and university-based incubator? How do students involve in the entrepreneurship ecosystem at university based on their entrepreneurial identity?

For this study, the author began to gather information using previous knowledge and any aspect of a work, namely, from the literature review to represent interpretive syntheses of the meaning-making literature review addressing the research question.

This study suggests what happens to entrepreneur students from academia and the reason that they end up in one of the two aforementioned paradigms. This paper aims to underpin the issue of how various entrepreneurial identities of students cause substantial contributing factors in forming such entrepreneurial activities at university and throughout the entire innovation ecosystem.

Almost all of the content of the entrepreneurship education (EE) courses and incubator training is oriented towards consensual entrepreneurship methods, in accordance with entrepreneurship education. Although the core contents of the EE courses and university-based incubators’ training are the same, the outcomes are quite different.

This study considers the students’ entrepreneurial identities with a focus on their point of view that led them to end up in one of the two common entrepreneurship resources at universities: the EE course and entrepreneurial activities related to university-based incubators.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the efficacy of Osterwalder and Pigneur’s Business Model Canvas for 271 teams competing in a venture pitch competition during a cleantech accelerator program.

It uses competition results and data from a website used by participants to track their hypothesis construction and testing.

Teams that used the elements of customer segment, value proposition, key activities or key partnerships performed significantly better in the competition. Yet of all nine elements in the Canvas, only customer segmentation showed a significant linear bivariate correlation between the number of validated hypotheses and performance. Finally, teams that heavily used a triumvirate of elements composed of customer segmentation, value proposition and channel performed two times better than teams that barely used these elements.

The findings of this exploratory analysis imply that the components of a business model that explain and predict early success might be different than those for a more mature firm.

These results suggest that practitioners could improve early performance by narrowing their scrutiny to just the triumvirate, because the Canvas may contain components that are unhelpful for entrepreneurs as they form a business model for their nascent venture.

This paper fills a gap by empirically testing the prediction that application of the Business Model Canvas drives venture success and providing a revise definition for a business model that is more appropriate for start-up ventures.

Although business incubators are widely used support mechanisms for innovative entrepreneurship, the literature still lacks theoretically based explanations of how the incubation process creates value for stakeholders. This study aims to address this gap by developing a conceptual model, and related research propositions, that explains how the entrepreneurial logic in use by an incubator influences the incubation process (selection criteria and service offering) and performance.

Integrating the effectuation and entrepreneurial opportunities literature, which shares common conceptualizations about how the predictability of the future affects entrepreneurial action, the authors posit two archetypes of entrepreneurial logic that are associated with different incubation processes (causal or effectual) and two archetypes of opportunity attributes (discovery- or creation-based) that affect the incubation process needed to support their development.

Juxtaposing these archetypes, the proposed cross-level conceptual model specifies four levels of fit (ideal, surplus, deficit and mismatch) between the incubation process and the opportunity attributes of individual ventures, which directly influence venture performance (high, moderate and low). In turn, an incubator's performance is largely shaped by the overall performance of ventures in its portfolio.

This paper responds to the call for theory-building that links the antecedents and outcomes of the incubation process across levels of analysis. In addition to developing a conceptual model and research agenda at the intersection of entrepreneurship and business incubation, the proposed model also has implications for incubator directors deciding how to allocate limited resources, and for public/private sector administrators interested in leveraging investment in business incubators.

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 trends in entrepreneurship spaces developed by universities to support entrepreneurship education. It identifies characteristics that make a space conducive to innovation and explains whether current spaces adequately conform to those characteristics. More generally, this paper seeks to clarify what is being built, for which purposes and with what results.

Given the novelty of this research, the paper uses a multiple-method approach to allow for an iterative examination between theory and data. Multiple data and methods were used, including an action research method, a systematic survey of 57 entrepreneurship spaces at US universities and a thematic and content analyses of interviews carried out with individuals directly involved in the functioning of such spaces.

The paper presents a prescriptive model aimed at guiding the practitioner in the design of an entrepreneurship space. It identifies five types of entrepreneurship spaces that differentially support entrepreneurial activities and rely on different characteristics. These characteristics are centrally important for innovation and entrepreneurship spaces.

There are a number of practical implications from the work. It identifies key challenges in the design of entrepreneurship spaces and shows which questions to consider in the decision-making process.

The paper advances research on entrepreneurship spaces, an important yet poorly understood phenomenon. It reviews and introduces the literature on how space can support innovation, entrepreneurship education and entrepreneurial “spirit’” and proposes a typology of entrepreneurship spaces, providing a path toward more robust and comprehensive theory building.

The purpose of this paper is to present findings from longitudinal case studies of small firm mentoring relationships in Ireland. The rationale is to explore the gaps between the theory and practice of small firm mentoring.

The paper uses a comparative case study design involving interviews, observation and secondary sources of evidence including business plans.

In contrast to the literature the paper extends the role of mentors in the small firm context as offering direct and indirect support, which reduces uncertainty in order to increase legitimacy of the business entity.

The cases highlight a conflict between the broad theoretical scope of the mentor process vs a narrow role assumed by best practice.

The research presents an opportunity to enhance the pragmatic vs paternalistic perspective of small firm mentoring. The authors argue that for mentoring theory to be useful then a mentor’s role-set in small firms may be wider and should be more direct than mentors in large corporations.

The emergent theoretical framework combines organisational learning and decision-making theories. The paper contributes to the theoretical development of mentoring by extending the range and defining the role of mentors in the context of small firms.

This study aims to focus on understanding the tensions experienced by government officials in introducing electronic government (e-government) policies to support entrepreneurs in a developing Latin American country.

This study relies on an in-depth qualitative approach based on collaborative and analytic auto-ethnography. The authors concentrate on tensions experienced by a government official and how they were addressed when introducing e-government policies to support entrepreneurs during the Covid-19 pandemic.

The findings reveal that paradoxical tensions occur as changes are demanded, multiple concerns are expressed and decisions about resources have to be made. The findings reveal sources of tensions from government, business and external sources. Addressing such tensions revolves around a diverse form of paradoxes dealing with contradictions in terms of speed vs thoroughness and short- vs long-term implications.

The authors’ study provides several contributions. It advances understanding on the source and management of tensions experienced by government officials introducing e-government policies to support entrepreneurs during the Covid-19 pandemic. It also delineates multiple paradoxes experienced by government officials as new policies and systems were introduced. Finally, it offers a conceptual model explaining how government officials deal with multiple tensions emerging from the introduction of e-government policies in a developing country.

The prior literature has suggested that e-government initiatives would be guided by a prescriptive and tension-free process, driven by the interest to enhance governmental efficiency. This study reveals that developing e-government initiatives for entrepreneurs and existing businesses during the Covid-19 crisis was not immune to contradictions between government officials and the public. A conceptual model, based on multiple sources of tensions (government-related, business-related and external sources) and their management, is proposed. Implications and opportunities for further research are presented.

This paper explores the underlying principles on which effective model building can be explained in fast‐moving environments through an examination of qualities that govern the effectiveness of businesses and are shared by models that represent them. By studying a number of generic and specific cases three strands are shown to be of central importance: the way of thinking, operational system, and capacity for value generation. These three strands, which are interrelated, form the basis of a meta‐model for business models. Whilst specific business models always represent a choice between alternatives, each of which rests on different assumptions regarding the reality of business and its environment, the ability to generalise business models from one context to another is the function of the meta‐model. The application of the meta‐model will enable businesses to adapt themselves naturally to their environment which is changing at an ever‐increasing rate.