Measuring Venture Emergence in Entrepreneurship Research

Abstract

This paper explores how venture emergence has been defined and measured in entrepreneurship research. It identifies the challenges of current measurement models and the opportunities to further integrate the study of venture emergence as a process and an outcome. A review of the literature and a collection of the measurement models provide an evolutionary perspective of the prior work on venture emergence. An analysis of the measurement models and scales is done to assess the comparability of prior research results and assess the differences between the different models. The measurement models used to study venture emergence in entrepreneurship research share a common theoretical grounding that reduces the diversity of instruments and scales. The variations on the operationalization of items in the measurement scales have reduced the comparability of findings, even when using similar datasets. Furthermore, most of the attention has been given to the study of venture emergence as an outcome, leaving underdeveloped the measurement models to advance in the understanding of venture emergence as a process. A collection of measurement instruments used to study venture emergence is presented, offering an overview of the overlaps and weaknesses in the current measurement models. Recommendations on the future development of measurement models as well as research gaps are offered as a guide for entrepreneurship researchers.