Strategic entrepreneurship's dynamic tensions: Converging (diverging) effects of experience and networks on market entry timing and entrant performance

Abstract

In this paper, we return to the roots of strategic entrepreneurship research by examining the dynamic tension between opportunity-seeking and advantage-seeking activities and by testing key resources that affect both activities. More specifically, we identify the empirical manifestations of the two activities—market entry timing decisions and entrant performance—and examine the degree to which the type of resources (in particular, experience and networks) that enable firms to enter a new market space early converge with (or diverge from) the type of resources that enhance entrant performance. Through analysis of 78 new market spaces and the associated 6544 entrant games in the U.S. console video game industry between 1995 and 2012, we find that while some resources—particularly relevant experience—have convergent impacts on entry timing and entrant performance, the impacts of other resources—first-order and second-order embeddedness—on these two outcomes diverge. We demonstrate that this tension in terms of resource impact on the two aspects of strategic entrepreneurship persists as the markets evolve.