Venture Strategy Research Articles

Planned Internationalization Level and Founder Attitudes Towards Venture Strategy

Although the behavioral differences of firms that internationalize rapidly from birth (born globals) are well documented, the effects of early internationalization on new venture strategy remains largely unexplored. Using a large sample of nascent entrepreneurs, we explore the relationship between internationalization level and founder emphasis on four key dimensions of business strategy (i.e., price, product scope (i.e., niche/focus), differentiation, and innovation). Our finding of support for a non-linear (inverted-U) relationship between internationalization level and strategy suggests that strategy differences between born globals and domestic firms decrease at higher levels of intended internationalization.

When professionals become entrepreneurs: Identity construction of lawtech startup founders in Japan

Abstract How do professionals develop their identity when they become digital venture founders, and how does such identity affect their venture strategy? This article examines this understudied yet important question. The recent wave of digitalization has created opportunities for various professionals to participate in creating new firms. However, studies of professions and entrepreneurship to date have narrowly focussed on professionals’ intrapreneurship efforts within professional service firms (PSFs). This inductive study of lawtech ventures in Japan examines the sources of Founder Social Identity (FSI). The study shows that founders’ professional role identity developed during prior work experience influences their identity work to become an entrepreneur; moreover, the resulting FSI shapes founders’ strategic decisions on market segment choice. This study highlights the significance of a distinct type of FSI, which we call ‘professional communitarian’, for professionals who engage in entrepreneurship beyond the boundary of PSFs.

Marketing strategies using the flywheel model in a cycling retail sector venture

The aim of this study was to establish digital marketing strategies using the flywheel model in an enterprise in the cycling retail sector. The methodology followed a qualitative approach, using descriptive and bibliographic types of research. A literature review was conducted, followed by an interview to understand the current state of the venture's strategies, and the inductive methodwas used to generate an analysis of the results. Along the same lines, a thematic analysis of the interview was used using the qualitative analysis software Atlas TI, supported by the bibliographic management software Zotero and Publish or Perish to support the research process. The results show that the venture has a digital and relationship marketing strategy, which evidences opportunities for improvement. Subsequently, the flywheel model was used to structure these strategies as a proposal for the venture. The conclusions show that digital marketing strategies contribute to the commercial management of organizations. In addition, the venture shows opportunities to optimizeits digital marketing strategies through the support of the proposals resulting from the research.

Do international new ventures have attraction advantages? Insights from a recruitment perspective

This study applies a recruitment lens to examine how the proactive internationalization of new ventures might influence job seeker perceptions of organizational attractiveness. Using signaling theory and person-environment fit theory to develop our hypotheses, we employ a metric conjoint experiment with 209 job seekers (making 3344 decisions). Our multilevel regression results suggest that the international new venture (INV) strategy of proactive internationalization presents an ambivalent recruiting signal to job seekers. However, this effect is positively moderated by job seekers’ personal initiative and international experience. We offer implications for signaling theory in international entrepreneurship, and practical implications for staffing INVs.

The Role of Community Engagement and Entrepreneurship in the Sustainability Performance of Social Ventures in South Korea

Social ventures, hybrid enterprises pursuing for-profit business and mission-driven nonprofit goals, have rapidly grown in South Korea owing to local governments’ proactive policies and support. Despite extensive government support, community-based social ventures often fail to sustain themselves due to lacking experience, strategies, and social networks. Informed by stakeholder theory, this study investigates the relationships between social venture strategies and the core dimensions of government-funded, community-based social enterprises’ sustainability performance (economic, human resources management, and social performance). We circulated our online survey among the employees of community-based social start-ups funded by local governments in South Korea. In total, 210 participants completed the survey. The results of structural equation modelling demonstrated that venture entrepreneurship and community engagement are positively associated with all dimensions of sustainability performance, subsequently improving work satisfaction. As community-based social ventures involve diverse stakeholders, organizational members should negotiate complementary or competing values in a holistic picture of all involved parties (e.g., funders, employees, and residents) to pursue sustainability efforts.

The roles of innovation strategy and founding team diversity in new venture growth

Using fsQCA, this study explores how venture strategy, as well as founding team knowledge diversity and demographic diversity interact to explain revenue growth of new ventures. Based on a longitudinal dataset containing 210 new ventures, we find that the effects of team diversity are complex such that different diversity conditions explain short-term (i.e. one year) compared to sustained growth (i.e. over three years) and that their role is contingent on the venture’s strategy. We identify three recipes that explain revenue growth in the short-term and four recipes that explain revenue growth in the longer-term. One recipe is the same for both time periods pointing towards the potential role of imprinting of certain team diversity conditions in combination with an innovation strategy. Our findings provide a nuanced and in-depth picture of the relative relevance of an innovation strategy, knowledge diversity, and demographic diversity at distinct stages of venture founding.

Pivoting and its Challenges: Pushing the Frontiers of an Emerging Domain

This Symposium examines entrepreneurial pivoting and its challenges through the lenses of key theoretical conversations motivating research on this topic. While pivoting has become increasingly ubiquitous in new venture strategy, particularly with the rise of the Lean Startup approach, pivots can also be challenging to effectively execute. Yet, scholarly research on this topic is still nascent. This Symposium seeks to bridge this gap by providing a deep dive into key theoretical conversations related to pivoting research, with the aim of exploring key commonalities and differences between different “theoretical conversations” that can inform further research. To this end, the Symposium will bring together scholars doing frontier research on pivoting who will reflect on the state of entrepreneurial pivoting research and its implications for stakeholders from the perspective of different theoretical conversations (e.g. cognition and pivoting, learning and pivoting, the “historic turn” in pivoting, firm governance and pivoting, and business model innovation and pivoting). The symposium will start with an introduction of pivoting research, and then will feature insights from each of the panelists, followed by integrative comments from a distinguished scholar discussant, and finally, an Q&A discussion session with the audience. The Symposium intends to provide participants with a cross-cutting, multidisciplinary understanding of the frontier theoretical conversations on entrepreneurial pivoting and its challenges.

The Effects of Cultural Diversity on Entrepreneurial Strategy: Emotional and Cognitive Perspectives

What drives differences in strategic choices in entrepreneurial ventures? The entrepreneurship literature has shown that technology ventures often rely on information they acquire from sources such as mentors and investors to make strategic decisions about new products or ideas. While the entrepreneurship research has found much theoretical and empirical support for the importance of collecting information for venture strategies, research is largely silent on how ventures process information for strategic choices. After gathering information, ventures vary in how they make sense of information, which can be carried out through coordination and cooperation among their members, in order to reach decisions on their strategies collectively. To shed light on this process, I examine whether the diversity of emotional and cognitive organizational culture in the formative years of a venture drives differences in information processing for its strategic choices of exploration and exploitation. I test these ideas by applying natural language processing tools to the employee review and news release data on young technology ventures. Results reveal that ventures with a higher level of diversity in emotional culture in the founding stage of the venture tend to choose more explorative strategies. In contrast, ventures with a higher level of diversity in cognitive culture are likely to pursue more ambidexterity by balancing exploration and exploitation. I discuss implications for this research on entrepreneurial strategy and organizational culture.

How new venture strategies promote firm performance: an optimal distinctiveness perspective

ABSTRACT New venture strategies are required to deal with the ‘conformity’ needs caused by institutional pressures and the ‘differentiation’ needs led by competitive motivations. However, it is not clear that how the strategies affect firm performance, especially in the entrepreneurial context. Drawing on the optimal distinctiveness perspective, we conceptualised the two dimensions of the new venture strategy (conformity and differentiation). Further, we explored the mechanism of how new venture strategies promote firm performance by analysing a data set that included surveyed new ventures in Chinese high-tech industries. The findings indicate that the relationship between ‘conformity’ strategy and product innovation is inverted U-shaped, while the relationship between ‘conformity’ strategy and market expansion is significantly positive. ‘Differentiation’ strategy has a significantly positive effect both on product innovation and market expansion. Moreover, if new ventures implement both the strategies simultaneously, they should first transcend the legitimacy threshold. Our findings contribute to the literature pertaining to entrepreneurship theories, and offer important implications for entrepreneurship practice.

Вибір стратегії виходу підприємства на міжнародні ринки

Domestic enterprises entering international markets have both problems and many opportunities to improve the efficiency of their activities. The article identifies the reasons why enterprises revise their business strategies and form new marketing strategies for entering the markets. The main ones are: increasing sales; increase in profits; ensuring both short-term and long-term profitability; increasing the capacity for innovation; economies of scale; education; competition; incentives on the part of government. It is noted that the strategy of entering international markets should be based on the principles of the overall strategy of the enterprise and be developed on the basis of an analysis of existing forms of strategies: export, joint venture, direct investment. The existing forms of strategies are considered and their essence is analyzed. Thus, the export strategy is considered as the choice by the enterprise of foreign markets for the promotion of goods, while production remains on its own territory. The joint venture strategy is implemented by combining the efforts of the enterprise with partners of other countries to conduct joint business based on the formation of partnerships and joint business activities, as result of which certain capacities are created outside the country. The direct investment strategy involves investing capital and creating own warehouses, manufacturing and trading enterprises, as a result of which the company becomes fully involved in foreign economic activity. It is proved that for an enterprise that is just starting its export activities in the foreign market, it is advisable to apply an export strategy of indirect exports and choose mediation. The stages of formation of the company’s strategy for entering the international market are presented: defining the mission of the enterprise; formation of goals and objectives; study of the external environment of the enterprise, assessment of the functional components of the internal environment of the enterprise; development and analysis of strategic alternatives, strategy selection; implementation of the strategy in the activities of the enterprise; evaluation and control of the strategy implementation.

Startup Experience and the Mobilization of Human Capital Resources in New Ventures

Human capital resources are a foundation of organizational performance, yet highly difficult to mobilize in new ventures. Given the central role of founders’ past experiences in new venture strategy formation, we investigate whether and how their prior startup experience influences employee mobilization, depending on the outcomes of earlier endeavors. Integrating behavioral theories of the firm with regulatory focus theory, we suggest that serial founders who failed earlier are more likely to be prevention oriented and change their employee mobilization strategies towards a more targeted hiring approach. Using Danish register data, we compare the employee sourcing practices of a sample of serial entrepreneurs to a control group of novice founders who later engage in serial venturing. We find suggestive evidence of trial-and-error learning in hiring strategies among serial entrepreneurs who have discontinued previous ventures. Alternative mechanisms such as selection effects, stigma of failure, and demand-side constraints, are also tested but not empirically supported.

Future strategies for promoting tourism and petroleum heritage in Khuzestan Province, Iran

PurposeIndustrial tourism not only strives to preserve industrial heritage, but can also be a strategy for being familiar with the history of industry and attracting tourists to new destinations. This paper examines the issue of promoting petroleum industrial tourism in the case of Khuzestan, Iran. The research aims at determining appropriate strategies for promoting petroleum industrial tourism.Design/methodology/approachThe data were analysed through a strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT) model.FindingsThe results revealed the competitive strategy as the best. Lastly, strategies such as: concentric diversification, joint venture strategy, conglomerate diversification and horizontal diversification were proposed as key solutions. The results support the view that establishing an exploratory ecomuseum in the territory of Khuzestan Province can be a suitable concentric diversification strategy towards petroleum industrial sustainable tourism in the future.Originality/valueThe main originality of this paper includes linking tourism with the petroleum (oil and natural gas) industry and its natural landscapes for the first time in a case study. Therefore, the results of this research can extend the literature in this regards. Moreover, this paper attracts tourists to visit natural landscapes of petroleum heritage.

Joint Ventures and Sustainable Development. A Bibliometric Analysis

One of the most common business strategies in companies’ growth and internationalization is the Joint Venture (JV) strategy. This type of entry mode in the global market has contributed to building a more sustainable international market. This type of collaborative business normally happens between firms located either in the same country or located in different countries with different levels of development. This paper presents a thorough cross-bibliometric analysis of studies examining the relation between joint ventures and sustainability published in academic journals during the period from 1997 to 2020 and available in the Scopus Collection. This mapping of the field on the one hand graphically illustrates the publications’ evolution over time, and on the other hand, the use of bibliometric methodology shows a picture that clusters the academic research of the relationships among these two topics according to the following criteria: JV type, sustainability criteria, host country groups and activity sectors. In addition, the public or private JVs’ nature shows a relation to the type of sustainability, and mainly development and management sustainability. The paper reveals the knowledge gap regarding the connection of these two fields, JV and sustainability, and provides a robust roadmap for further investigation in this field.

Does founding team composition influence external investment? The role of founding team prior experience and founder CEO

Entrepreneurship research examines the nature and diversity of founding teams’ prior experience to understand its influence on the new ventures’ growth, which is often measured in terms of the latter’s capacity to raise capital (i.e., external investment). Founding teams operating in the high-tech industry need a diverse set of experiences—entrepreneurial, managerial, and industry (technological domain)-specific—to craft a venture strategy. However, the conditions in which these experiences lead to an external investment remain unclear. We address this issue by arguing that these types of experience have different effects on the efforts of Founder CEOs and Non-Founder CEOs to influence external investment. We tested this theoretical argument using a sample of 60 new young high-technology ventures, and the results point to a positive association between founding teams’ prior managerial and industry (technological domain)-specific experience and the obtainment of external investment. The relationship between Founder CEO and external investment was negative. The interactive influence of a team’s prior experience and the CEO’s role on external investment demonstrates the former’s crucial effect on venture growth, particularly regarding new ventures managed by Founder CEOs and teams with prior managerial experience.

Founder ethnic composition, early internationalization, and new venture performance

This study empirically examines the role of founder ethnic composition in international new venture (INV) strategy choice and performance. We find that new ventures with more immigrant entrepreneurs on the founding team have an advantage of pursuing an INV strategy to generate higher revenues. Moreover, new ventures with an ethnically diversified founding team tend to achieve higher revenues and profits. Our findings suggest that immigrant entrepreneurs can align available immigrant resources with their new ventures’ international strategy to increase venture performance. This study contributes to both immigrant and international entrepreneurship literature. Managerial and policy implications are also discussed.

Strategies for Heterogeneous R&D Alliances of In Vitro Diagnostics Firms in Rapidly Catching-Up Economies.

Most developed countries already have high-quality in vitro diagnostic (IVD) techniques for diseases, but developing countries often do not have access to these technologies and cannot afford them. Enabling firms to leverage external resources to optimize their research and development (R&D) performance has become one of the most critical issues for small and medium-sized late-coming IVD firms. R&D alliances, especially heterogeneous alliances, are necessary for releasing the resource limitations of late-coming small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and reaching the metaoptimum of the R&D performances. However, to the authors’ knowledge, a few, if any, previous studies have investigated the key success factors and strategies of heterogeneous alliances in the IVD industry. Therefore, the authors aim to define the critical factors for evaluating and selecting strategies for heterogeneous alliances in the IVD industry. A Decision-Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory (DEMATEL)-based analytic network process (DANP) was proposed to prioritize the weights associated with the evaluation criteria. Then, a heterogeneous R&D alliance strategy was derived from the compromise ranking based on the modified VlseKriterijumska Optimizacija I Kompromisno Resenje (VIKOR) method. An empirical study of major Taiwanese IVD firms’ evaluation and selection of heterogeneous R&D alliance strategies will be used to reveal the practicability of the analytic framework. Based on the analytic results, the joint venture strategy is the most suitable heterogeneous R&D alliance strategy for IVD firms in rapidly catching-up economies. These results can serve as the basis for heterogeneous R&D alliance strategy definitions in the IVD industry in the future.

Developing new opportunities, entrepreneurial skills and product/service creativity: a ‘Young Enterprise’ (YE) perspective

ABSTRACT The purpose of this research is to investigate how Young Enterprise (YE) student entrepreneurs develop new product/service opportunities, learn decision-making skills and achieve a sense of entrepreneurial self-efficacy. From a national survey of YE participants in the Netherlands, entrepreneurial self-efficacy was found to partially mediate relationships between new opportunity recognition belief and two key product/service creativity characteristics, namely: (a) new product/service novelty and; (b) new product/service meaningfulness. The ability of YE entrepreneurs to re-scale their new venture strategies, and/or re-adapt products and services were also important real options (or strategic decision-making) moderators in a new social cognitive learning framework. This article contributes to a fresh understanding of the opportunity recognition belief and entrepreneurial decision skills literatures from a social cognitive theoretical perspective. This research also provides much needed empirical support for European YE policy-makers, demonstrating that team-based mini-enterprise education initiatives really do benefit entrepreneurial learners!

The Dynamic Impact of Institutional Logic on New Venture Strategy

The Dynamic Impact of Institutional Logic on New Venture Strategy

Role Complementarity in Entrepreneurial Founding Team Compositions and New Venture Strategies

ABSTRACT The tale of exemplary founding teams with complementary behavioral and cognitive orientations is not a new narrative in the entrepreneurship practice, to the extent that terminologies such...

Peran Lembaga Simpan Pinjam Berbasis Masyarakat (LSPBM) Usaha Bersama Desa Siboang terhadap Pembangunan Ekonomi Pedesaan

The purpose of this research is investigatinhg and analyzing the basic needs of Community-Based Savings and Loan Institutions as well as efforts in local economic development and determining the strategies needed in developing the capacity of Community-Based Savings and Loan Institutions (LSPBM) and Small and Medium Enterprises (SME) in Siboang Village. This research also investiagates the role of LSPBM in the social and economic fields as well as internal and external factors to create strategies supporting the existence of LSPBM in Siboang village in order to empower local communities.This study applies a qualitative approach supported by the study of quantitative data. The data collected consists of primary data and secondary data. Primary data was collected by in-depth interviews with key figures and the researcher conducted observations, while secondary data were obtained from various literature studies including population documents from Sojol Subdistrict, Siboang Village and the 2016 Joint Venture LSPBM Annual Report. Information consisted of the Joint Venture LSPBM Management of Siboang Village, Secretary of Siboang Village, and Village Head. The technique of analyzing primary data and secondary data is processed through three stages of activity and carried out simultaneously, namely data reduction, data presentation and drawing conclusions through verification. Furthermore, qualitative data is processed into quantitative data, the researcher applies the SWOT analysis method that deals with internal and external factors of qualitative research that will produce a development strategy for the Joint Venture LSPBM.The results shows that the role of LSPBM is quite large in encouraging the local economy and is able to provide loans to LSPBM members in order to increase business, and it can develop and strengthen Joint Ventures LSPBM with SMEs in business and sharing cooperation for service and service coverage. It increases business capital with a savings pattern to get used to saving for members of the Joint Venture LSPBM. It also encourages LSPBM Assistance through institutions related in Donggala Regional Government for supervision and development of institutions, improvement of managerial human resources to be more optimal and professional.