Manuela Presutti

The Impact of Social Capital on the Start-Ups' Performance Growth

This paper analyzes the development of strong and weak ties of social capital between a start-up and its main customers and its impact on the growth of the start-up’s economic and innovative task performance outcomes. Results confirm that there are different configurations of social capital able to influence the start-up’s performance growth during its life cycle, which are contingent on the selected measures of task performance outcomes. Our findings can offer some interesting reflections in the field of social capital, entrepreneurship, and performance research, raising critical strategic implications for start-ups in terms of opportunities, resources, and governance.

The Importance of Proximity for the Start‐Ups' Knowledge Acquisition and Exploitation

This paper intends to verify the impact of geographical proximity on the processes of knowledge acquisition and exploitation by high‐tech start‐ups considering at the same time the role of both the social and cognitive dimensions of proximity. Our basic assumption is that proximity means a lot more than just geography. The findings from this research broaden our understanding of how start‐ups located inside an industrial cluster acquire knowledge from their customers and exploit it in an innovative way, underscoring the need to reconsider assumptions regarding the importance of geographical proximity between business partners during knowledge management.

Inter-organizational geographical proximity and local start-ups' knowledge acquisition: a contingency approach

Entrepreneurship studies offer conflicting answers to a key research question: What impact does geographic proximity have on the process of knowledge acquisition by start-ups? This study proposes a new, dynamic framework of three interrelated factors that may moderate this impact; it anticipates that the importance of local and distant knowledge networks depends on the life cycle stages reached by both start-ups and industrial clusters, as well as on the dyadic relationships between local start-ups and their business partners. Some additional variables help strengthen the conceptual model and the key research propositions. This study thus offers a new perspective on entrepreneurship research, namely the configuration of start-ups in both spatial and social contexts. Such a view offers two substantial benefits: a greater understanding of the role played by geographical proximity in knowledge acquisition and an impetus for further empirical research in this field. This article concludes with various implications of the proposed model for both theoretical and managerial purposes.

Serial Entrepreneurship and Born-Global New Ventures - A Case Study

Based on a longitudinal case study, we aim to understand how serial entrepreneurs can foster the development of born-global ventures. We consider a born-global start-up as the final stage of the learning process for a serial entrepreneur, advancing propositions regarding the importance of prior entrepreneurial experience for born-global venture creation and growth. We suggest that the serial entrepreneurs previous entrepreneurial experiences could substitute for the lack of knowledge, opportunity recognition and social networks of a born-global start-up. Thus, we recognize the necessity of a shift in the unit of analysis, from born-global start-up to a global serial entrepreneur, suggesting to follow a dynamic approach when the born-global start-up issue is discussed.

Firm ownership and internationalisation: Is it context that really matters?

This paper considers the potential role played by different kinds of shareholders in a firms international level, distinguishing the firms quoted in the UK from those listed in the countries of Continental Europe (France, Germany, Italy, Poland and Spain). Our results confirm that different kinds of ownership affect the overall level of a firms internationalisation. Family ownership has a negative impact on foreign sales in the UK but not in Continental Europe, while bank ownership has a negative impact on the scope of FDI in Continental Europe but no impact whatsoever in the UK. Institutional investors positively impact the scope of both foreign sales and FDI in the UK, while in Continental Europe they have a negative impact on foreign sales. These different results contribute to explaining why previous studies that have focused on just one country or a single measurement of internationalisation have come up with such contrasting results.

Experiential Marketing and Destination Management: Do Formal Network Strategies Really Matter?

Lynchburg, Tennessee, boasts only 6,000 residents, yet every year, hundreds of thousands people from all around the world arrive to visit. Statistical data show that tourists are attracted not by its historical downtown but by the presence of the oldest registered distillery (1866) in the United States, namely, Jack Daniel’s (official internal document of Jack Daniel). Since the establishment of the Visitor Center at the end of the 1990s, hotels, restaurants, and tourism-related activities have flourished in Lynchburg and its surroundings. Some international travel agencies and tour operators even include a visit to the distillery in their tourism packages. Yet this destination was not actively planned or designed in advance; it resulted from an autonomous initiative sparked by the significant number of loyal Jack Daniel’s drinkers. The tourism network surrounding the Visitor Center thus represents a sort of spontaneous coordination among interdependent tourism agents, encouraged by the strong and experiential tie between consumers and the product brand.

The Interrelated Impact of Social Networks and Knowledge Acquisition on Internationalisation Process of High-Tech Small Firms

The foreign development of high-tech start-ups is an important issue, since international activity requires specific knowledge that new firms may find it difficult to locate and acquire. It has been found that the pattern of foreign development in high-tech start-ups differs from that of conventional companies, starting to act in foreign markets soon after their establishment. This study utilizes a social capital approach, based on embeddedness prospective, to identify the possible resources useful to realize abroad both the knowledge acquisition and the knowledge exploitation, reinforcing the internationalization propensity of start-ups. We seek to articulate, by drawing on social capital theory and its link to knowledge concept, how social network ties may influence internationalization of start-ups. Basing on research of Yli-Renko, Autio e Sapienza (2001), we argue that different dimensions of social capital embedded in relationships between high-tech start-ups and their foreign customers improve the start-ups’ knowledge acquisition from these relationships and that this acquired knowledge may then be exploited for competitive advantage abroad. The hypotheses are tested with face to face survey data from start-ups in Italy. Our findings confirm the hypothesis that the internationalization propensity of start-ups is conditioned by social relationships, which may either facilitate or bind such a propensity through a direct influence on processes both of knowledge acquisition and of knowledge exploitation abroad. Consequently, by affirming the strategic link between social capital, knowledge acquisition and knowledge exploitation, we seek to contribute to a further convergence between the domains of entrepreneurship and internationalization research.