Hans Landström

Venture capitalists' decision to syndicate

Financial theory, access to deal flow, selection, and monitoring skills are used to explain syndication in venture capital firms in six European countries. In contrast with U.S. findings, portfolio management motives are more important for syndication than individual deal management motives. Risk sharing, portfolio diversification, and access to larger deals are more important than selection and monitoring of deals. This holds for later stage and for early stage investors. Value adding is a stronger motive for syndication for early stage investors than for later stage investors, however. Nonlead investors join syndicates for the selection and value–adding skills of the syndicate partners.

Entrepreneurial Studies: The Dynamic Research Front of a Developing Social Science

Entrepreneurship research has been built upon a historical foundation grounded in economic change. To understand the development of the field, it is useful to understand the motivations and interests of key scholars and to trace the linkages between these scholars and other authors, from the transient to the contributor. This has been done through a bibliometric analysis of research articles cited between 1982 and 2004. Entrepreneurship has developed from a subdiscipline of management studies reliant on alien terms and cognitive methods toward a separate field with increasing complexities of its own. While not fully mature, entrepreneurship shows all the signs of a maturing field from its increasingly internal orientation and the establishment of key areas of research through to an enhanced, discipline–specific, theoretical approach with a professional language of its own.

Handbook of Entrepreneurship

Despite good books such as this one, these are all questions that cannot be answered given the current state of the analytic art. Yet they are likely to be of increasing importance as we design more high-performance systems of a hazardous or failure-sensitive character. The recent sabotage of high-volume commercial sites on the Internet highlights the growing challenge-to both organizational management and organizational analysis.

Informal investors as entrepreneurs

Abstract The scarcity of risk capital for start-ups and technology-oriented small firms is an ever-recurring theme in the economic debate. In recent years interest in the informal risk capital market, i.e., private individuals who invest their own capital in small unlisted firms, has grown significantly, but our knowledge about this market is relatively limited. Against this background, the aim of this study is to describe and explain the decision-making criteria used by informal investors when assessing new investment proposals. In the study a conjoint method is used in order to measure quantitatively the relative importance of one decision-making criterion in relation to another. In total 34 general decision-making criteria and 35 leadership criteria were identified. A subjective sample of 44 informal investors in Sweden answered either a questionnaire relating to general decision-making criteria or one relating to leadership criteria. The data were coded into a conjoint model in order to process the relative ranking between the decision-making criteria. Earlier research has regarded informal investors as the financiers of small firms, looking at their investments as objects. In this study another interpretation is made and the informal investors are themselves regarded as entrepreneurs, that is they see their investments as subjects. This means that the relationship between the investor and the entrepreneur in the firm in which they invest can be characterised by using the concepts “business creator” and “co-creator”, i.e., informal investors look for future business opportunities, and they want to participate in the creation process. This is expressed in their assessment of new investment proposals. For example, the informal investors attach a great deal of weight to decision-making criteria related to the business potential of the investment, the relationship between the entrepreneur and investor, as well as the entrepreneurs own ability to develop his/her firm. Furthermore, informal investors do not have the opportunity to play an executive role in the portfolio firms, and they therefore regard the entrepreneur in the portfolio firm as their stand-in, i.e., co-entrepreneur. This is also expressed in the decision-making criteria used by the informal investors, in that it is entrepreneurs who can be characterised as having entrepreneurial ability, which seems to be what the investors are looking for. Looking at informal investors as entrepreneurs themselves may have several implications for policy-makers as well as for entrepreneurs seeking capital.

University Training for Entrepreneurship—An Action Frame of Reference

Abstract Global concern for knowledge about and competencies for entrepreneurship and small business is growing. When discussing university training for entrepreneurship an action-oriented approach is needed. Originating in an elaboration of Kolbs model of action learning, an ‘entrepreneurial action capability’ (EAC) test is constructed. The test is based on the ‘critical-incident’ technique and validated against other images of entrepreneurial characteristics. Swedish university students, including those on special programmes oriented towards innovation and entrepreneurship, as well as existing small-business owner-managers are analyzed with the help of the EAC and associated tests. Substantive conclusions indicate that owner-managers, business students and engineering students score differently on the EAC test. It is argued that these groups use their intuition and analogical reasoning differently. The lest findings are used to modify the original learning model. Methodological lessons are that any for...

Historical Foundations of Entrepreneurship Research

Contents: 1. History Matters in Entrepreneurship Research Franz Lohrke and Hans Landstrom PART I: HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT OF ENTREPRENEURSHIP AS A RESEARCH FIELD 2. Entrepreneurship Research - A History of Scholarly Migration Hans Landstrom and Mats Benner 3. Entrepreneurship Research - Research Communities and Knowledge Platforms Hans Landstrom and Olle Persson PART II: INTELLECTUAL ROOTS OF ENTREPRENEURSHIP RESEARCH Opportunity Recognition 4. Environmental Uncertainty and Firm-level Entrepreneurship Lou Marino, Patrick Kreiser and Anthony Robinson 5. Entrepreneurial Alertness and Opportunity Discovery: Origins, Attributes, Critique Nicolai J. Foss and Peter G. Klein 6. Opportunity Recognition: Evolving Theoretical Perspectives Robert A. Baron 7. The Historical Roots of Entrepreneurial Orientation Research Verona P. Edmond and Johan Wiklund Opportunity Evaluation 8. On the Relevance of Decision Making in Entrepreneurial Decision Making Saras D. Sarasvathy and Henrik Berglund Opportunity Exploitation 9. Only the Good Die Young? A Review of Liability of Newness and Related New Venture Mortality Research Franz Lohrke and Brian Nagy 10. Entrepreneurial Groups Martin Ruef 11. Governance Theory: Origins and Implications for Researching Boards and Governance in Entrepreneurial Firms Jonas Gabrielsson and Morten Huse 12. The Historical Roots of Socio Network Theory in Entrepreneurship Research Sarah Jack and Mary Rose Integrative Works 13. The Psychology of Entrepreneurs: A Self-regulation Perspective Alan R. Johnson and Frederic Delmar 14. Social Entrepreneurship: A Historical Review and Research Agenda Todd Moss, Jeremy Short and Tom Lumpkin PART III: ECONOMIC HISTORY AND ENTREPRENEURSHIP 15. Historical Reasoning and the Development of Entrepreneurial Theory R. Daniel Wadhwani 16. Culture, Opportunity and Entrepreneurship in Economic History: The Case of Britain in the Twentieth Century Andrew Godley 17. Industrial Renewal and Entrepreneurship in Sweden - A Structural Cycle Explanation Hans Landstrom and Lennart Schon 18. Entrepreneurial Capitalism in East Asia: How History Matters David Ahlstrom and Linda Wang

What do we mean when we talk about business angels? Some reflections on definitions and sampling

Early research on business angels recognized a couple of methodological obstacles that significantly have hindered knowledge accumulation about the phenomenon. In this article we will reflect upon these methodological obstacles with focus on definitional issues and sampling techniques. The purpose is to provide a framework that systemizes and inter-relates the variety of definitions within the field as well as to critically review the sampling techniques currently applied in the research field. We maintain that researchers need to make conscious definitional choices when conducting studies of informal investors and business angels, and argue that changing the unit of analysis from investor level to deal level can help to avoid definitional inconsistencies. Further, we suggest two alternative ways of creating high quality samples of business angels and informal investors – the random sample approach and the multi-sample approach. Both procedures reduce the sample bias and allow for longitudinal analysis which is argued to be essential in future research.

Co-operation between venture capital companies and small firms

What are die characteristics of good co-operation between an entrepreneur and a venture capitalist? In diis study the aim is to describe and analyse the relations between small firms owned by venture capital companies and venture capital companies in Sweden. The venture capital companies could be classified in four configurations; operations-oriented, consultancy-oriented, structure-oriented and mentor-oriented companies. The configurations reflect two dimensions in the co-operation, namely the character of operational work and the intensity of interaction. The results show among other diing that those configurations which worked ‘actively’ with their portfolio firms appear to provide resources to a greater extent man the more ‘passive’ companies. Furthermore, ‘continuous’ interaction between the entrepreneur and the venture capitalist seems to be important for the result of the portfolio firm.

Institutional theory and contracting in venture capital : the Swedish experience

This paper tests the tenets of institutional theory by means of an empirical study of the contractual strategies applied in the Swedish venture capital industry. Venture capitalists differ in, for example, their preferences for early or later stage investments. Some have more experience than others and some are employed by public funds while others work in non-public funds. The sector, however, was expected to be relatively homogeneous due to the small size of the industry and the cultural milieu in which it is located. This homogeneity was tested regarding the use of contractual strategies among venture capitalists in Sweden. Seventy-nine separate contractual covenants were examined in relation to distinctive sector variables, structure, experience and investment preferences. The results indicate that the greatest differences in contractual strategies occur among those with differing investment preferences. There appear to be two distinct venture capital cultures controlling contractual choices in these groups. The public and the non-public sector have limited variations in their contractual choices, although public funds employ slightly more standardized strategies. Little difference was found between the contractual choices made by experienced and inexperienced venture capitalists. The findings generally conform to the outcomes predicted by institutional theory.

What makes entrepreneurship research interesting? Reflections on strategies to overcome the rigour–relevance gap

Abstract As entrepreneurship researchers compete to have their work published and universities strive to attract the best entrepreneurship scholars, it is appropriate to examine what makes entrepreneurship research interesting. Interesting studies are usually defined as well-crafted and well-written studies that challenge established knowledge, and produce new theories and findings. This paper examines entrepreneurship scholars’ views on the characteristics of interesting entrepreneurship research by means of a qualitative approach. Eight focus group interviews comprising junior and senior entrepreneurship scholars were conducted. A core finding is that interesting studies must be relevant to practice. However, the institutionalization of entrepreneurship as an academic field has favoured rigour at the cost of relevance, leading to scholars’ frustration with the rigour–relevance gap. In this paper, we analyse various dimensions of interestingness and reflect on strategies for overcoming the rigour–relevance gap, with particular focus on the creation of applicative knowledge.