Robert Wuebker

Skirting the Issues Experimental Evidence of Gender Bias in IPO Prospectus Evaluations

Given the increasing number of women executives in the top management teams of initial public offering (IPO) firms, the lack of female-led IPO firms is a curious fact, especially since women-owned private businesses represent almost half of the new businesses formed in the United States, with patterns of founding similar to those of male-owned businesses. This lack of female-led IPOs suggests a potentially larger problem—a gender-based capital gap for new ventures. Given the empirical evidence suggesting a positive association between the presence of female executives and firm performance, the authors test whether investor perceptions are aligned with these empirical patterns. Using a sample of MBA students, the authors construct a simulated IPO, manipulating the gender demographics of the top management team. Their results suggest that female CEOs may be disproportionately disadvantaged in their ability to attract growth capital, when all other factors are controlled. Despite identical personal qualifications and firm financials, female founders/CEOs were perceived as less capable than their male counterparts, and IPOs led by female founders/CEOs were considered less attractive investments.

Handbook of research on energy entrepreneurship

Contents: 1. An Introduction to Energy Entrepreneurship Research Robert Wuebker and Rolf Wustenhagen PART I: THE ROLE OF START-UP FIRMS IN ENERGY ENTREPRENEURSHIP 2. Market Failure, Market Dynamics and Entrepreneurial Innovation by Environmental Ventures Elizabeth Garnsey, Nicola Dee and Simon Ford 3. Prolonged Gestation and Commitment to an Emerging Organizational Field: Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Businesses in Minnesota 1993-2009 Alfred Marcus, Kathleen Sutcliffe, Susan Cohen and Marc Anderson 4. Entrepreneurial Learning in Energy Technology Start-ups: A Case Study in the Biogas Market Petra Dickel and Helga Andree PART II: INTERNATIONAL ENERGY ENTREPRENEURSHIP 5. Entrepreneurial Opportunity and the Formation of Photovoltaic Clusters in Eastern Germany Matthias Brachert and Christoph Hornych 6. The Rise of Chinese Challenger Firms in the Global Solar Industry Gabrielle Meersohn and Michael W. Hansen 7. International Entrepreneurship in the Offshore Renewable Energy Industry Nicolai Lovdal and Arild Aspelund PART III: ENERGY ENTREPRENEURSHIP AND LARGE INCUMBENT FIRMS 8. Photovoltaic Business Models: Threat or Opportunity for Utilities? Jean-Marc Schoettl and Laurence Lehmann-Ortega 9. Why Corporate Venture Capital Funds Fail - Evidence from the European Energy Industry Tarja Teppo and Rolf Wustenhagen PART IV: FINANCING ENERGY ENTREPRENEURSHIP 10. Business Angels and Energy Investing: Insights from a German Panel Study Dietmar Grichnik and Christian Koropp 11. Venture Capital Investment in the Greentech Industries: A Provocative Essay Martin Kenney 12. How do Business Models Impact Financial Performance of Renewable Energy Firms? Moritz Loock PART V: COMMERCIALIZING ENERGY INNOVATION 13. Interfirm Relationships in a New Industry: The Case of Fuel Cell Technologies Stefano Pogutz, Angeloantonio Russo and Paolo Migliavacca 14. Challenges of Doing Market Research in the New Energy Market Roland Abold 15. Path Dependence, Path Creation and Creative Destruction in the Evolution of Energy Systems Raimo Lovio, Per Mickwitz and Eva Heiskanen PART VI: ENERGY ENTREPRENEURSHIP, INSTITUTIONS AND PUBLIC POLICY 16. Making, Breaking, and Remaking Markets: State Regulation, Entrepreneurship, and Photovoltaic Electricity in New Jersey David Hart 17. International Entrepreneurship and Technology Transfer: The CDM Situation in China Joao Aleluia and Joao Leitao 18. Incentive Prizes to Stimulate Energy Innovation and Entrepreneurship Neil Peretz and Zoltan Acs

The Strength of Strong Ties in an Emerging Industry: Experimental Evidence of the Effects of Status Hierarchies and Personal Ties in Venture Capitalist Decision Making

Drawing from social network theory, scholars have identified two ways in which social ties influence venture capital investment decisions: directly through personal ties and indirectly through status hierarchies. Previous research has examined these effects independently. Our study is the first to perform a joint examination of the role of social ties and status hierarchies in venture capital decision-making. We examine the relative importance of these two mechanisms through an adaptive choice-based conjoint (ACBC) experiment comprising of 3,132 investment decisions made by 86 venture capitalists from the United States and Europe. Our experimental context allows us to explore whether, under high levels of market uncertainty, strong personal ties exert more influence over investment decisions than the presence of a high-status investor in the deal. We also explore the moderating effects that market structure and experience play in shaping these decision processes. Our findings reveal that personal ties are more important in venture capital decision-making when compared to the relative status of other venture capital firms participating in the investment syndicate. Building on our main findings, we show that the influence of personal ties is less pronounced in the European investment community, as compared to more densely networked U.S. investors. We also find a U-shaped relationship between venture capitalist experience and the influence of personal networks on investment decisions.

Sustainability, innovation and entrepreneurship: introduction to the volume

Sustainability is back on the global agenda. After intense debates in the late 1970s and early 1980s about limits to growth, rising oil prices, forest dieback (Waldsterben) and the like, environmental and social issues received less attention in European public opinion during the 1990s. In the US, the timing was different, with an increasing level of attention to sustainability issues across businesses and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) occurring in the 1990s. With a new focus on climate change, we have recently seen the discussion about sustainable development return with increased intensity. The threat of uncontrolled changes in the atmosphere has led to an unprecedented wave of public attention to environmental challenges. At the same time, there is also increased awareness of social challenges such as high unemployment rates, increasing inequalities and poverty in developing countries. Global policy makers and corporate leaders are expressing the need for action. Governments have started to embark on ambitious emission targets. Corporate sustainability seems to have become a mainstream issue, at least on paper. At the same time, though, it becomes apparent that the magnitude of the sustainability challenge calls for more than just incremental changes to existing patterns of production and consumption. Just as global greenhouse gas levels have embarked on a steep path of discontinuous change, we seem to be in need of fundamentally new solutions in the way we do business and govern our economies. And even if we succeed in making substantial changes to corporate strategies and consumer behaviour, it seems to be an open question whether this will be successful. John Doerr, a prominent representative from the cradle of American optimism, the venture capital community of Silicon Valley, recently talked about the accelerating

Problems, Theories, and Governing the Crowd

Research and recommendations on innovation through crowdsourcing are diverse and often contradictory, providing little guidance on when, where, and under what conditions to use various forms of crowdsourcing. This article responds by arguing that focal economic actors, as organization designers, catalyze innovation when they efficiently match attributes of the problem or attributes of a domain of problems to modes of organizing problem finding and solution search. Four basic insights drive this approach. First, sourcing from the crowd is, fundamentally, a governance choice. Second, crowdsourcing is an amalgam of both problem finding and problem solving through the crowd. Third, the attributes of focal actors, including the theories of value creation they possess, shape problem formulation, solution-search, and the governance of these processes. Fourth, the act of defining problems reveals, and often generates, a vast residual domain of problems—often unseen by the focal economic actor—that is implicitly deferred to the crowd to find and potentially solve.

The Globalization of Innovation and Entrepreneurial Talent

Venture capitalists find, fund, and assist high-impact entrepreneurs—individuals whose firms are instruments of Schumpeter’s (1939) “creative destruction” and the “creation of new economic spaces” (Acs, 2008). These entrepreneurs form firms characterized by a lack of substantial tangible assets, the expectation of several years of negative earnings, and extremely uncertain prospects. Venture capitalists provide these high-potential ventures with capital, advice, contacts, and experience. They bring to the table a host of financial and organizational “technologies” including screening capabilities, due diligence processes, staged financing, investment syndicates, compensation contracts, and corporate governance practices. Through these activities, venture capitalists help bring unproven, innovative ideas to market, overcoming the uncertainty and risk associated with new business development (Berger & Udell, 1998; Gompers & Lerner, 2001; King & Levine, 1993).

Delaware Incorporation Matters for New Ventures: Evidence from Venture Capital Investment and the Going Public Process

In the United States, corporate actors choose their state of incorporation and are subject to the laws of the state in which they are incorporated. Incorporating in Delaware is a common move for most US firms, especially those interested in attracting venture capital, as the states corporation laws are clearer, more fully defined and business friendly, courts have more experience judging corporate cases, antitakeover laws are less restrictive, and financing or merger deals are more quick and efficient than in most other states. Using a large sample of privately held companies, we empirically investigate the implications of Delaware incorporation and examine its effect on access to VC financing and the process of going public. The results suggest that companies incorporated in Delaware receive more venture financing and attract more involvement from different venture capitalists than entrepreneurial firms incorporated elsewhere. In addition, we find that Delaware incorporated venture-backed firms are more likely to reach the stage of going public, get to that stage faster, and generate more IPO proceeds or higher acquisition values than similar firms incorporated elsewhere. Overall, our study reveals the first empirical evidence about the importance of state laws to privately held, informationally opaque firms seeking venture capital support.

Management in the Age of Machine Intelligence

The purpose of this panel symposium is to explore the implications of machine learning and algorithmic organization on management theory. We have gathered together a diverse collection of scholars ...

Corporate Diversification and Innovation: Managerial Myopia or Inefficient Internal Capital Market

Which is more innovative: the decentralized, diversified corporation or the smaller, more narrowly focused entrepreneurial firm? The finance literature argues that larger, diversified firms have a ...

Toward a Pecking Order Theory of Strategic Resource Deployment

A premise of the capabilities perspective in strategy is that firm-specific capabilities allow some firms to be unusually adept at exploiting growth opportunities. Since few firms have the capacity to internally generate the quantity or variety of strategic resources needed to exploit growth opportunities, the ability to externally acquire complementary resources is critical to the acquisition of competitive advantage. However, the external sourcing of resources exposes the firms strategic resources to risks of expropriation. We argue this threat gives capable firms incentive to use internally generated strategic resources to pursue growth opportunities before turning to external sources. A pecking order theory of strategic resource deployment is implied. Data from a 22-year sample of cross-border investment partnership decisions made by U.S.-based venture capital firms lend support to our theory.