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Business plan writing seems the panacea to gain stakeholder legitimacy and financial backing. Our chapter explores the contributions and disconnections between business plan writing and the start-up process for incubated technology entrepreneurs. The study is set in the South East Enterprise Platform Programme (SEEPP), an incubator programme for technology graduate entrepreneurs in the South East of Ireland. Using a purposive sample of technology entrepreneurs in start-up mode, we took a qualitative approach consisting of content analysis of 40 business plans and in-depth interviews with 25 technology entrepreneurs. Our research found that writing a detailed business plan constrains the technology entrepreneur’s natural penchant for action, compelling them to focus on business plan writing rather than enactment. Technology entrepreneurs favour a market-led rather than funding-led operational level document to plan, and learn from, near-term activities using milestones.

Taking the entrepreneur’s perspective and a broad view of business advisory services, the purpose of this paper is to examine to what degree the need of business advisory services among Swedish start-ups, first-generation immigrants compared to non-immigrants, is fulfilled.

The sample data consist of a unique and comprehensive firm-level database and contain telephone interviews with 2,800 Swedish start-up entrepreneurs. The study examines 20 different kinds of business advice services, in terms of both need and use. Statistical methods such as Mann-Whitney test and regression analysis are used while controlling for entrepreneurial characteristics.

The findings suggest that immigrants’ compared to non-immigrants’ need for business advisory service was not fulfilled. Of the 20 different business advices, ten were fulfilled and ten were not fulfilled. Both strategic advice and operational advice were fulfilled as well as unfulfilled. Apart from ethnicity, other variables did influence the need of business advisory services.

The author was not able to make comparisons between different immigrant groups.

This study offers an explorative approach that contributes on how business advisory services are differentially tailored between start-ups by immigrants and those by non-immigrants. It illustrates to what extent public- and/or private-funded organizations contribute to fulfilment of the needs of immigrant and non-immigrant start-ups.

Few studies take the entrepreneur’s perspective and from such a perspective examine the fulfilment of needs of advice regarding both private and public organizations role in the area. Both the need and the use of business advisory services are studied as well as the kind of business advice that is needed.

This paper aims to explore the effects of the positive psychological capital of young start-up entrepreneurs on start-up intention and entrepreneurial performance and examines variations in the relationship when measures based on Hofstede’s (1980) cultural dimensions model are applied. This study aimed to analyze whether the sub-factors comprising positive psychological capital differ across distinct groups, thereby enhancing the effects on start-up intention and entrepreneurial performance.

Data were collected from a total of 600 young start-up entrepreneurs from China (n = 300) and Korea (n = 300) to examine the relationship between psychological capital and start-up intention on entrepreneurial performance. To test the hypotheses, multi-group confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) with covariance structure analysis was conducted using EQS6b.

The results of the CFA show that sub-factors that comprise positive psychological capital, namely, hope, resilience and self-efficacy, were found to have positive effects on start-up intention. However, another sub-factor, optimism, did not have a significant effect on start-up intention. In addition, the positive psychological capital of young start-up entrepreneurs was found to be closely related to start-up intention.

A limitation of this study is that it fails to cover a wide range of concepts associated with psychological capital. There are likely many concepts that factor into understanding psychological capital beyond trust, the sharing of core values and the sharing of knowledge. In the future, systematic studies need to be conducted on models that review the roles of a wide range of explanatory variables for psychological capital.

The implications of this study apply in two areas. First, the academic implications involve the evaluation of psychological capital. Psychological capital is not being studied as widely as it should be in many areas of management and financial studies. Even though intrinsic factors such as psychological capital are core marketing concepts that cannot be neglected by today’s enterprises and CEOs, theories and empirical studies on these factors have made little progress. Under such circumstances, this study represents an opportunity to advance the theoretical discussion by presenting and examining new intrinsic factors associated with young start-up entrepreneurs from the perspectives of the managerial mindset, personnel management and marketing capabilities.

In the early stages of the introduction of psychological capital, studies focused on the meaning of research, the development of valid measurement tools and strategies for developing psychological capital. This paper presents an empirical study on the relationship between several variables related to the positive psychological capital of entrepreneurs, start-up intention and entrepreneurial performance. On the individual level, this study focused on the relationship between psychological capital and start-up intention and entrepreneurial performance, respectively.

Existing studies on psychological capital have focused mainly on positive organizational behavior. In the early stages of the introduction of psychological capital, studies focused on the meaning of research, the development of valid measurement tools and strategies for developing psychological capital. This paper presents an empirical study on the relationship between several variables related to the positive psychological capital of entrepreneurs, start-up intention and entrepreneurial performance.

The purpose of this paper is to compare investment in innovation (e.g. R&D) between new venture start‐ups before commercialization and operating businesses after commercialization.

Real options methods were used to model a new venture start‐up as a perpetual call option on an operating business that grows with R&D. The operating business uses R&D to improve actual earnings while the start‐up uses R&D to improve prospective earnings. When the start‐up entrepreneur commercializes his/her new product, device, or service with conventional investment (e.g. plant, property, and equipment to begin production), prospective earnings convert into actual earnings.

The ability of the start‐up entrepreneur to avoid commercialization costs upon failed R&D makes R&D more valuable to the start‐up entrepreneur than to the manager of the already operating business (for whom commercialization costs are sunk) and despite R&D costs that the start‐up incurs without the revenues that only commercialization generates. The value of R&D to the start‐up can be so great that the entrepreneur invests in R&D before the manager of an otherwise similar operating business in similar business conditions.

Without favoring either a priori, the authors show that under broad circumstances, a new venture start‐up undertakes R&D before an already operating business. The authors also discuss the empirical implications of the results.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a framework to link founding team and start‐up competitive advantage in the context of the Taiwanese technology‐based ventures.

The paper analyzes 211 start‐ups of the technology‐based sector and verifies the relationship between entrepreneur resources, trust, founding team partners' commitments, and start‐up competitive advantage.

In technology‐based start‐ups, the competitive advantage of a start‐up is determined by the founding team partners' commitments and the resources an entrepreneur has.

This study is retrospective which relies on technology‐based founding team members as the primary research subjects, some respondents may observe the performance of their start‐ups today and then make attributions about the past to explain that performance.

Utilizations of personal networks are important in the early stage of technology‐based start‐ups; through networking and using trust, an entrepreneur can gain the critical resources and competitive advantage required in the development of a business.

In technology‐based start‐ups, trust, not the resources an entrepreneur has, is an effective way by which entrepreneurs can win founding team partners' commitments.

Though extant literature has mapped various stages of start-up enterprise growth, there is limited research on the phases that an entrepreneur traverses before the enterprise is started and established as a venture. The paper attempts to understand the lived experiences of young Indians as they negotiate the entrepreneurial path.

Qualitative method, where primary data were collected using in-depth interviews of 15 start-up entrepreneurs. These narratives were compared with Bansal's descriptions of entrepreneurs in her book “Connect the dots”. The interview transcripts and the detailed descriptions were analysed for emergent themes.

Results indicated that there are five distinct stages in the development of a start-up entrepreneur; namely – pre-entrepreneurial stage, inflexion point, cocoon period, initial stage, crisis stage and, depending upon the success factors and support received during crisis stage, either a success stage or failure stage.

This is a narrative-based, qualitative approach to understand the lived experiences of young start-up entrepreneurs in India and an attempt to map developmental phases. The fact that India is a fast-growing market for start-ups and the higher rate of failure of start-ups in India makes the study relevant.

This study investigates the influence of entrepreneurial experience on small business investment. The purpose of this paper is to examine whether entrepreneurs with more prior start-up experience are better able to identify business opportunities and successfully transform these opportunities into investment projects.

The empirical setting in this study is Vietnam. The authors employ a panel data of small businesses (mostly households) from 2005 to 2013, and use a fixed effect method to estimate the regression coefficients. The results are also re-checked using the general method of moments and matching technique.

Empirically, it is found that entrepreneurial experience is an important determinant of investment decisions. Specifically, entrepreneurs with one start-up experience make more investments than novice entrepreneurs. However, entrepreneurs with more than one start-up experience do not make more investments than entrepreneurs with one start-up experience.

This is country-specific research. Further study may employ data from multi-countries to re-test the validity of the hypotheses.

This study provides a new perspective for analysing the role of entrepreneurial experience on entrepreneurial investments. It shows that prior start-up experience may turn out to be a liability to entrepreneurs since it restricts their ability to identify new opportunities.

The aim of this study is to test the assumption that ability to handle communication and liability of newness (LoN) is enhanced by academic entrepreneurship education and/or previous start‐up experience.

The data collection includes a questionnaire with a total sample of 392 responding entrepreneurs in Sweden. Statistical analyses are made between entrepreneurs with academic entrepreneurship education respectively previous start‐up experience.

The findings show that entrepreneurs with experience from entrepreneurship education report more developed communicative skills in the dimensions of openness as well as adaptation, whereas the dimension of other‐orientation is found to be learned by previous start‐up experience. When it comes to perceived problems related to LoN the differences between the groups were not as strong as assumed. However, the differences observed imply that also for handling LoN the authors identify a combined effect of possessing start‐up experience as well as experience from entrepreneurship education. Consequently, entrepreneurs with experience from both, show in total the most elaborated skills.

One way to improve future entrepreneurship educations is to make students more aware of the mutual profit in a business agreement and how to communicate this in a marketing situation. Another suggestion is to include starting business as a course work.

This study not only meets the call for actual outcome from entrepreneurship educations in terms of changed behaviour but also for interdisciplinary research in the entrepreneurship field in integrating leadership research with focus on communication.

The purpose of this paper is to examine if and how entrepreneurial assistance programs, through guided preparation, affect start-up success.

–This study uses Heckman's two-stage sample selection model to predict the effect of contact and interactions with entrepreneurial support programs on start-up outcomes while taking into account the entrepreneur's self-selection into obtaining support from these programs.

The results indicate that, after controlling for individual characteristics, activities undertaken during the start-up process, organizational characteristics and external factors, guided preparation contributes to a greater likelihood of achieving positive start-up outcome. This finding holds even after controlling for the entrepreneur's self-selection into contacting and using outside assistance.

Results suggest that self-selection bias remains a concern when studying the impact of assistance programs on start-up outcomes. Future research should make sure to address self-selection in their analysis.

The study's results have implications for the design of start-up programs. It highlights the importance of delivery structures that are fluid, flexible, interactive, experiential, and tailored to the individual entrepreneur's needs.

This study focusses on assistance programs broadly defined (includes many different types of programs) and provides an empirical analysis that addresses self-selection.