Richard A. Hunt

Entrepreneurial tweaking: An empirical study of technology diffusion through secondary inventions and design modifications by start‐ups

Existing theories of technological innovation posit a split between the incremental innovations produced by large incumbents and the radical innovations produced by entrepreneurial start-ups. This study presents empirical evidence challenging this foundational assumption by demonstrating that entrepreneurs play a leading role, not a subordinate role, in sourcing incremental innovations through secondary inventions and design modifications. Among the highest-ranked incremental innovations leading to the commercialization of the mechanized reaper and cloud computing services, nearly 90% were attributable to entrepreneurial start-ups. Paradoxically, however, an entrepreneurial start-up had only a one in fourteen chance of garnering returns from a reaper innovation and a one in nine chance of gains from a cloud computing improvement.

Contagion Entrepreneurship: Institutional Support, Strategic Incoherence, and the Social Costs of Over‐Entry

Existing literature on the legitimizing role of institutions tilts toward a “more is better” perspective, proffering the notion that the liabilities of smallness and newness can be mitigated through institutional policies that foster acceptance, trust, and confidence. Although this may seem reasonable, even desirable, institutional munificence can trigger massive over‐entry, potentially causing unintended consequences and unwanted social costs. Using a data set of nearly six million transaction‐level decisions involving all 612 companies and 56,240 permitted projects from a complete industry history, I find that unforeseen costs arise when small, early‐stage firms substitute the legitimizing effects of institutional support for strategic coherence. The findings are surprising and significant. While institutional support for new markets does in fact generate a surge in firm formations, the ill effects of munificence are evidenced by indiscriminate, contagion‐style market entry by unfit firms that perform poorly, fail quickly, and leave a long trail of regulatory violations in their collective wake. The study offers opportunities for scholars, practitioners, and policymakers to reassess the core assumptions related to the benefits and costs of institutional support for new industries, firms, and entrepreneurs.

Intergenerational Fairness and the Crowding Out Effects of Well‐Intended Environmental Policies

Sustainability involves the drive to ensure intergenerational fairness. However, the results of actions taken to achieve sustainability often lie far into the future and efforts to promote the welfare of distant generations may or may not ultimately be successful. While both governmental policies and entrepreneurial innovation have been cited as being indispensable to the achievement of sustainability, the manner in which they co-exist and interact over very long periods of time remains unclear. Using a computational model spanning more than two centuries, this study asks: Do well-intended environmental policies facilitate or inhibit environmental entrepreneurship? By simultaneously considering both the ethical and economic consequences of efforts to arrest environmental degradation, our study answers the call to develop multi-disciplinary perspectives and integrative frameworks when addressing the challenges of sustainable existence. Contrary to widely held perceptions, our findings suggest that policy actions may, in the long run, result in less intergenerational fairness by crowding out environmentally desirable innovations and organizations. Our examination of the long-term interactions between policies and markets offers insights and opportunities for scholars, entrepreneurs, environmentalists, ethicists and policymakers to develop solutions that preserve and extend the essential contributions of both policy actions and entrepreneurial innovations.

Entrepreneurial round-tripping: The benefits of newness and smallness in multi-directional value creation

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to develop and empirically test the theory that new industry entrants hold advantages over incumbents in the shift from unidirectional to multi-directional revenue streams. Design/methodology/approach Using a Cobb-Douglas production function, modified to isolate returns to innovation, the authors examine data from three separate contexts: steamships on Western US rivers (1810-1860), satellite-based internet services (1962-2010) and food waste recycling (1995-2015). Findings The results reveal that while incumbents often attempt to stretch existing technologies to fit emerging circumstances, entrepreneurial innovators achieve greater success by approaching multi-directional value creation as a distinct challenge, one requiring new technologies, organizational forms and business models. Existing theories have primarily attributed incumb ent inertia to a firm’s inability perceive and pursue radical innovations, the results also suggest that existing firms are unwilling to pursue innovations that are likely to erode the marginal profitability of their respective business models. Ironically, rather than protecting incumbents’ financial interests, the authors find that “marginal reasoning” can lead to diminished performance and even extinction. Research limitations/implications The proposed framework and empirical findings have implications for numerous multi-directional frontiers, including: social networking, commercial space travel, distance education and medical treatments using nanoscale technologies. Practical implications While incumbents often lament the destabilizing effects of multi-directionality, new and small firms enjoy a compelling array of entry points and opportunities. Originality/value Scholars, incumbent firms and start-ups both benefit from insights stemming from the novel formulation of multi-directionality challenges and opportunities.

Reassessing the Practical and Theoretical Influence of Entrepreneurship Through Acquisition

This paper presents a long overdue reassessment of entrepreneurship through acquisition (ETA). Traditionally considered simply a niche occurrence of small company leveraged buyouts (LBO), ETA is actually a meaningful contributor to a nation’s entrepreneurial capacity and business revitalization. Scholarly understanding of ETA has been severely limited by three factors: the paucity of data related to entrepreneurial acquisitions, the tendency to equate entrepreneurship primarily with new venture creation, and the reliance upon explanatory models for buyouts that are grounded in narrowly conceived notions of 1980s-era, large-scale, hyper-leveraged LBOs. Prior efforts to conceptualize all buyouts based on the large LBO model and through the lens of agency theory have severely restricted the ability of scholars to look past the buyout model motivated by financial reengineering gains to see instead the entrepreneurial aims and outcomes often associated with buyouts, particularly ETA. In order to situate ETA more fruitfully in the domain of entrepreneurship finance, we take issue with the conventional agency theory framing and offer instead an explanatory model for ETA involving entrepreneurial intent and novel financing. To overcome the data scarcity problems and to bring the characteristics of ETA into sharper relief, we present testable propositions side-by-side with data from search funds, a specific ETA investment vehicle that substantively replicates the entrepreneurial intents and outcomes of ETA. By examining the theoretical streams of LBO and entrepreneurship finance in practical context of search funds, we build a more coherent conceptualization of ETA.

Value Creation Through Employer Loans: Evidence of Informal Lending to Employees at Small, Labor-Intensive Firms

At small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), cash-strapped employees frequently request loans from employers because they cannot obtain money on reasonable terms elsewhere for exigent needs. In turn, employers decide whether to lend the money through formal (i.e., written, contractual) loans or more informal “off-the-book” (OTB) loans. Our exploration of this understudied source of credit unearths important questions about the reasons employers lend money to employees, the manner in which they decide to make formal or informal loans, and the coveted benefits employers derive from lending to their workers. Considering the pervasiveness and significance of loan choices among small firms, and the absence of studies on the topic, we tackle these questions through an analysis of 459 informal and formal loans issued by 83 small business owners to their employees. The results show that the issuance of OTB loans is a key tactic for employers to manage resource dependencies with valued workers.

Bringing It All Back Home: Corporate Venturing and Renewal through Spin-ins:

More often than not, corporate acquisitions are expensive and difficult, especially those transacted for the purpose of advancing the aims of corporate entrepreneurship (CE). Motivated by frequent, high-cost failures, firms are experimenting with novel organizational structures and fresh approaches to acquisition-driven CE. In this study, we examine the effectiveness of corporate spin-ins—acquisitions in which the acquired company is founded by former employees of the acquiring firm—in resolving key challenges of CE-motivated acquisitions Using a matched pairwise dataset of spin-in and non-spin-in acquisitions, we discover that spin-ins generate superior outcomes, positioning them as a high-potential facet of CE portfolios.

Re-Imagining Rural Entrepreneurship: Towards a Multi-Paradigm Research Agenda

The evolving face and function of rural entrepreneurship has out-stripped existing efforts to define, describe and predict important entrepreneurial phenomena in the domain. This is problematic for...

An opportunity space odyssey: historical exploration of demand-driven entrepreneurial innovation

Purpose One of the crucial questions confronting strategy and entrepreneurship scholars continues to be: where do new industry sectors come from? Extant literature suffers from a supply-side “skew” that focuses unduly on the role of heroic figures and celebrity CEOs, at the expense of demand-side considerations. In response, the purpose of this paper is to examine societal demand for entrepreneurial innovations. Employing historical data spanning nearly a century, the author assess more completely the role of latent demand-side signaling in driving the quantity and diversity of entrepreneurial innovation. Design/methodology/approach Applying the methods of historical econometrics, this study employs historical artifacts and cliometric models to analyze textual data in drawn from three distinctive sources: Popular Science Monthly magazine, from its founding in 1872 to 1969; periodicals, newsletters, club minutes, films and radio transcripts from the Science Society, from 1921 to 1969; and programs and news accounts from the US National High School Science Fair, from 1950 to 1969. In total, 2,084 documents containing 33,720 articles and advertisements were coded for content related to pure science, applied science and commercialized science. Findings Three key findings are revealed: vast opportunity spaces often exist prior to being occupied by individuals and firms; societal preferences play a vital role in determining the quantity and diversity of entrepreneurial activity; and entrepreneurs who are responsive to latent demand-side signals are likely to experience greater commercial success. Research limitations/implications This study intentionally draws data from three markedly different textual sources. The painstaking process of triangulation reveals heretofore unobserved latencies that invite fresh perspectives on innovation discovery and diffusion. Originality/value This paper constitutes the most panoramic investigation to-date of the influence wielded by latent demand-side forces in the discovery and commercialization of innovation.