G. Page West

Entrepreneurship Research in Emergence: Past Trends and Future Directions

This article evaluates the emergent academic field of entrepreneurship to better understand its progress and potential. We apply boundary and exchange concepts to examine 97 entrepreneurship articles published in leading management journals from 1985 to 1999. Some evidence was found of an upward trend in the number of published entrepreneurship articles, although the percentage of entrepreneurship articles remains low. The highly permeable boundaries of entrepreneurship facilitate intellectual exchange with other management areas but sometimes discourage the development of entrepreneurship theory and hinder legitimacy. We argue that focusing entrepreneurship research at the intersection of the constructs of individuals, opportunities, modes of organizing, and the environment will define the field and enhance legitimacy. Decision theory, start-up factors of production, information processing and network theory, and temporal dynamics are put forward for entrepreneurship scholars to explore important research questions in these intersections.

Collective Cognition: When Entrepreneurial Teams, Not Individuals, Make Decisions

New venture success often depends on how the founding team collectively understands its world, estimates effects of possible actions, makes decisions, and allocates appropriate resources. Drawing on recent work in managerial cognition and entrepreneurship, this article argues for the importance of examining cognition at the team level. New venture strategy is used as a springboard to discuss collective cognition, although other important critical decision domains in new ventures may also be used to illustrate the arguments. In this and other such decision domains, collective cognition mediates between individual cognitions and firm actions and performance. A method for assessing entrepreneurial top management team cognition is developed and then tested in an exploratory study of technology–based new ventures. Two structural characteristics of collective cognition (differentiation and integration) are strongly related to firm performance, suggesting interesting opportunities for future entrepreneurship research in cognition.

The Impact of Knowledge Resources on New Venture Performance

A new ventures strategy—and thus its performance—is based upon the knowledge the firm has about its market, its opportunity in that market, and its appropriate conduct to take advantage of that opportunity. Resource‐based theory underscores knowledge as a type of resource that confers competitive advantage and the potential for sustainability, two factors that are critical for start‐ups. Three types of procedural knowledge are considered to be important at start‐up: (1) about the industry in which the venture competes; (2) about the type of business approach the venture is pursuing; and (3) about creating, building, and harvesting new ventures. Knowledge useful to the new venture is developed either through relevant personal experiences or by accessing relevant knowledge possessed by others. Hypotheses are developed regarding the impact on the performance of new ventures as a result of these sources of knowledge, and these relationships are explored in a study of new technology‐based firms.

Contrasting Entrepreneurial Economic Development in Emerging Latin American Economies: Applications and Extensions of Resource-Based Theory

Emerging economies face daunting economic development challenges. Economists and management consultants have generally suggested global solutions that typically focus solely on foreign direct investment. Yet a resource–based theory approach offers an alternative view of economic development in which a foundation of resources within a region gestates entrepreneurial activity. While theoretically appealing, it is unclear in application how such resources can be developed or which types of resources are most important to develop. This paper extends the application of resource–based theory to entrepreneurial economic development in subsistence economies. A qualitative study of contrasting entrepreneurial activity in Chiapas (Mexico) and Atenas (Costa Rica) highlights the primacy of intangible resources—and especially entrepreneurial orientation resources—in the gestation of entrepreneurial activity.

The Achilles Heel of Firm Strategy: Resource Weaknesses and Distinctive Inadequacies

Two separately developed views within the strategic management literature elucidate the source of a firms competitive advantage based on the internal attributes of the firm: the resource-based view (Wernerfelt, 1984) and the distinctive competence view (Selznick, 1957). As developed in the literature, however, both views neglect important dimensions which inhibit the achievement of competitive advantage. These dimensions are resource weaknesses and distinctive inadequacies. Accounting for weaknesses and inadequacies exposes important choice-sets confronting management in making resource investments, and of time-related dimensions in developing sustainable advantage. Considering the effects of weaknesses and inadequacies provides insight on the limits to firm growth and to sustainability of competitive advantage. Theory on developing competitive advantage may lack explanatory and predictive power if it excludes these perspectives, which if included may also improve prescription for practitioners.

To agree or not to agree? consensus and performance in new ventures

It is an intuitively appealing notion that enhanced firm performance is associated with agreement by top managers on a fundamental set of strategic goals and on methods to accomplish those goals. Whereas previous studies have for the most part examined this relationship in larger companies competing in stable industries, the study reported here provides findings from newer entrepreneurial ventures in dynamic industries. Several important findings emerge from this study. First, managers’ assessment of better performance is not related to agreement on a primary set of strategic goals and means. Instead, perceived better performance is significantly and positively related to disagreement on secondary sets of strategic goals and means. Second, powerful individuals in top management teams have an important impact on the nature of the consensus-performance relationship. In new ventures the influence of the CEO’s perspective and behaviors in forging agreement cannot be overlooked. Third, these results are evident during the earlier life cycle stages of a venture’s development, and in dynamically changing competitive environments.

Time and Entrepreneurship

Temporal dynamics are at the heart of entrepreneurship. This Special Issue of Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice presents a collection of papers focused on the intersection of time and entrepreneurial organization. Traditional approaches to the interface between entrepreneurship and time are grounded in western logic, where time is linear and scarce, faster is better, and the future is held to be more important than the past. The papers in this issue are framed by the editors in this perspective, but also suggest alternative conceptualizations of time that offer compelling new ways of understanding entrepreneurship.

Temporal Dimensions of Opportunistic Change in Technology-Based Ventures

Opportunity recognition and opportunity-directed behavior are at the core of entrepreneurial efforts in both new and existing ventures. This study examines characteristics and behaviors related to future time orientation and their association with the pursuit of entrepreneurial opportunity. We find that strategic change in young technology-based ventures is associated with top management teams who are perceived as being more future-oriented. Communication patterns linking future- and present-oriented managers are also associated with strategic change. The findings of this empirical study indicate that technology-based ventures should place substantial emphasis on identifying, embracing, and widely communicating ideas that challenge the status quo. Out of this process the entrepreneurial approach is reinvigorated with new opportunities for proactive strategic change and growth. Ways in which new venture management may take steps to recognize and move proactively on emerging new opportunities are suggested.

Connecting Levels of Analysis in Entrepreneurship Research: A Focus on Information Processing, Asymmetric Knowledge and Networks

This chapter argues that the information processing perspective can be applied across a broad scope of phenomena of interest in the field of entrepreneurship. Employing this perspective, the very same kinds of relationships exhibited and investigated at one level of analysis may also be exhibited and investigated at other levels. The perspective therefore provides a means to distinguish areas of relatedness and possible reconciliation between seemingly incommensurable paradigms that have been relied upon to examine aspects of the entrepreneurship phenomenon at different levels of analysis. It will be shown that information processing can at the same time accommodate other theoretical perspectives, and thus preserve the power of such perspectives to add insight about aspects of entrepreneurship. Thus the information processing perspective presents the possibility to achieve scope, parsimony and generalizability in the field.

A simulation of strategic decision making in situational stereotype conditions for entrepreneurial companies

Entrepreneurship is concerned with pattern recognition of situations and information by entrepreneurs. Simulation methods represent an attractive venue for exploring pattern recognition and information interpretation issues. A computerized decision-making simulation was developed and run to test hypotheses concerning interpretation of stereotypical situational cues to which new ventures are subject. Partial support is found for the existence of classes of situations to which entrepreneurs and managers respond. Stereotypical views of situations may develop quickly and be acted on easily in critical decision making. Future simulation research on cognition issues in entrepreneurship may enable entrepreneurs to better learn how to learn.