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In response to Ford and Sullivan's chapter, this commentary poses a number of questions intended to help future research efforts ascertain whether levels of analysis and phases of new-venture emergence happen concurrently. Strongly in agreement with Ford and Sullivan's call for a process approach toward the study of entrepreneurial ventures, the commentary focuses on the potential processes associated with different levels of analysis that might possibly underlie the enactment and effectuation processes depicted in their model. Through the examination of these underlying processes, questions for future research are raised to help address the question, “Do levels and phases of new-venture emergence always happen together?”

Indigenous entrepreneurship and hybrid venture creation represents a significant opportunity for Indigenous peoples to build vibrant Indigenous-led economies that support sustainable economic development and well-being. It is a means by which they can assert their rights to design, develop and maintain Indigenous-centric political, economic and social systems and institutions. In order to develop an integrated and comprehensive understanding of the intersection between Indigenous entrepreneurship and hybrid ventures, this chapter adopts a case study approach to examining Indigenous entrepreneurship and the underlying global trends that have influenced the design, structure and mission of Indigenous hybrid ventures. The cases present how Indigenous entrepreneurial ventures are, first and foremost, hybrid ventures that are responsive to community needs, values, cultures and traditions. They demonstrate that Indigenous entrepreneurship and hybrid ventures are more successful when the rights of Indigenous peoples are addressed and when these initiatives are led by or engage Indigenous communities. The chapter concludes with a conceptual model that can be applied to generate insights into the complex interrelationships and interdependencies that influence the formation of Indigenous hybrid ventures and value creation strategies according to three dimensions: (i) the overarching dimension of indigeneity and Indigenous rights; (ii) indigenous community orientations and (iii) indigenous hybrid venture creation considerations.

We consider how the commercialization of social ventures may result from their founders’ personal experiences of commercial organizing. Building on theories of individual imprinting, we theorize that the commercialization of social ventures is influenced by two types of commercial experience: parental imprinting from the commercial work experience of a founder’s parents, and work imprinting from a founder’s professional experience within for-profit organizations. We find support for our theory based on analysis of a novel dataset of over 2,000 nascent social ventures and their founders. We further find that the marginal effects of additional work imprinting from a founder’s commercial experience decline with the longevity of this experience. We discuss implications of our findings for literatures on social ventures, imprinting, and hybrid organizations.

Student entrepreneurs account for a considerable number of start-up ventures derived from university settings. Nevertheless, there is little research that demonstrates how university entrepreneurship education (EE) directly influences students’ start-up activities. The primary purpose of this study is to examine the effectiveness of various types of university entrepreneurship activities (incorporate entrepreneurial courses, extra-curricular initiatives, and start-up support) on student start-up behavior. This quantitative research utilized questionnaire data collected from university students (n = 1,820) in southeast China and was analyzed with hierarchical Poisson regression in STATA procedures. Research results indicate that engaging in any type of university entrepreneurship activities positively predicts students’ start-up activities, yet this positive effect is contingent on students’ prior start-up experience and the overall university entrepreneurial climate. These findings advance our understanding of crucial elements within university entrepreneurial ecosystems and how various entrepreneurship activities within these ecosystems potentially impact students’ venture creation.

Despite the growing interest in IJVs and their governance, systematic research is limited on the board of directors and their roles in international joint ventures in emerging markets. In this study, we draw from corporate governance research that suggests that the levels of control and collaboration by boards are influenced by organizational complexity. While joint ventures possess several similarities compared to unitary firms, they also have unique sources of complexity given the fact that two or more international partners collaborate within JVs under an incomplete contract. Based on a sample of 114 IJVs, we argue and show four separate conditions that influence the functions that boards undertake as well as how control and collaboration as two separate functions are interrelated. Our findings address calls for research to open the black box of what boards actually do as well as to bring corporate governance theory to new organizational forms such as joint ventures.

This chapter is a reflection on the Shepherd and Zacharakis (1997) paper, which starts with a review of citations in the intervening 20 years, and dives more deeply into these works to better describe and consider the evolution and use of conjoint analysis in entrepreneurship research. The proliferation of new uses for a conjoint analysis are identified, such as more studies of entrepreneurial decision making, which came to supplant the early efforts, which focused on venture capital decisions. Additional expansions into other entrepreneurship stakeholder groups are also reviewed. The use of conjoint as an accelerator of multilevel research is also noted, as are the improvements and challenges in conjoint methodologies as the field has matured.

Entrepreneurial activity is a critical issue in the transition of economies attempting to reduce, or abolish state-owned monopoly enterprises. In many Central and Eastern European countries, privatization, restructuring, and failure of state-owned enterprises as consequences of the reforms typically led to a reduction of the size of the workplace. For example, in Poland, about 3.5 million employees lost their jobs in the period 1991–1996 (PEAD, 2003). After the collapse of communism in Europe, post-communist countries have undertaken reforms to liberalize their economies. These reforms stimulated the development in the private sector of small and medium-sized enterprises. New ventures provide a counterbalance to the loss of jobs at state-owned companies. In the period 1991–1996, new enterprises in the private sector in Poland created more than 1.8 million jobs. By the end of 2002, they provided work for 68% of the total employed persons (PEAD, 2003). Further, new ventures can play a critical role in stimulating economic growth. As a result of market reforms, the contribution of the private sector to Gross Domestic Product, e.g., in Hungary, went from 7% in 1988 to 85% in 1999 (World Bank, 2000). However, many new ventures do not survive the first year of operation. For example, in Poland, about 40–45% enterprises established in the period 1995–2000 failed after the first year of their existence (PEAD, 2003).

Why is the quality of innovation-driven entrepreneurship seemingly declining? We argue the growing Entrepreneurship Industry and the way it has transformed entrepreneurship as an activity are important, under-appreciated explanations. By leveraging the Ideology of Entrepreneurialism to mass-produce and mass-market products, the Entrepreneurship Industry has made possible what we term Veblenian Entrepreneurship. This is entrepreneurship pursued primarily as a form of conspicuous consumption, and it is fundamentally different from the innovation-driven entrepreneurship that it emulates and superficially resembles. Aside from lowering average entrepreneurial quality, Veblenian Entrepreneurship has a range of (short-run) positive and (medium- and long-run) negative effects for both individuals and society at large. We argue that the rise of the Veblenian Entrepreneur might contribute to creating an increasingly Untrepreneurial Economy. An Untrepreneurial Economy appears innovation-driven and dynamic but is actually rife with inefficiencies and unable to generate economically meaningful growth through innovation.

Social entrepreneurs who use market mechanisms to solve wicked problems (Rittel & Webber, 1973) may benefit from practices based on design thinking. Design thinking offers approaches to work iteratively on both problem and solution spaces collaboratively with multiple diverse stakeholders, which is characteristic of innovating for social change. This research conceptualizes designing as a construct formed by three practices: making improvements, generating creative leaps, and problem-solving. Using Boland and Collopy’s (2004) conception of a sense-making manager, it proposes “how” nascent social entrepreneurs take actions and also proposes “what” specific activities they undertake for the development of the venture. A conceptual model proposing “what” it is that social entrepreneurs do and “how” they go about their activities affecting new venture development is tested using structural equation modeling. Preliminary support for the predictive capability of the model is encouraging, suggesting that practices based on design thinking may be further developed in order to advance theoretical understanding of the application of design thinking for social entrepreneurship.

The entrepreneurs’ ability to identify opportunities can lead to wealth creation and competitive advantage. Often, however, opportunities that are innovative may defy up-front analysis suggesting that the entrepreneurs may have had somewhat inaccurate perceptions and need to refine their ideas after the ventures are started. This paper therefore focuses on mitigating the negative impact of early misperceptions through the use of learning-oriented information processing systems to refine opportunities post starting a venture. Specifically, it suggests that an experienced and heterogeneous top management team and a decentralized, organic structure enhance the system's ability to gain knowledge from acting on early misperceptions and may even form the basis for a distinctive capability that leads to competitive advantage.