Making it happen: Entrepreneurs’ perspectives on co-creation partnerships with Corporates

Abstract

Large companies increasingly look for collaborations with new ventures to accelerate their innovation process, and indeed current research stresses the potential of such partnerships to develop innovations. But when are entrepreneurs willing to engage in a partnership with a larger player? We conduct a conjoint experiment with 115 independent entrepreneurs to understand entrepreneurs’ behavior when they are confronted with a cooperative offer. We seek to understand when founders of new ventures are willing to engage in such asymmetric partnerships through consideration of the characteristics of the entrepreneurial decision maker and the perceived attributes of the larger counterpart. The results of the hierarchical linear model suggest that a high level of openness of the large company and concise contractual design signal trustworthiness to entrepreneurs, which has a positive impact on their willingness to partner. Our study also suggests that entrepreneurs’ self-efficacy reduces the willingness to partner and the positive impact of concise contractual designs. The results have implications for the self- concept and the design of innovation and partner management of large firms.