Ted Baker

Creating Something from Nothing: Resource Construction through Entrepreneurial Bricolage

A field study of 29 resource-constrained firms that varied dramatically in their responses to similar objective environments is used to examine the process by which entrepreneurs in resource-poor environments were able to render unique services by recombining elements at hand for new purposes that challenged institutional definitions and limits. We found that Lévi-Strausss concept of bricolage—making do with what is at hand—explained many of the behaviors we observed in small firms that were able to create something from nothing by exploiting physical, social, or institutional inputs that other firms rejected or ignored. We demonstrate the socially constructed nature of resource environments and the role of bricolage in this construction. Using our field data and the existing literature on bricolage, we advance a formal definition of entrepreneurial bricolage and induce the beginnings of a process model of bricolage and firm growth. Central to our contribution is the notion that companies engaging in bricolage refuse to enact the limitations imposed by dominant definitions of resource environments, suggesting that, for understanding entrepreneurial behavior, a constructivist approach to resource environments is more fruitful than objectivist views.

Improvising firms: bricolage, account giving and improvisational competencies in the founding process

Improvisation occurs when the design and execution of novel activities converge. Drawing on three samples of young firms, this inductive study investigates the existence, channels and implications of strategic improvisation in knowledge-intensive new businesses. Our study suggests that not only may founding itself be improvisational in some cases, but improvisational processes and issues permeate entrepreneurial activity and have non-obvious implications for emergent firm strategies and competencies. We develop propositions in four domains: (1) the occurrence of strategic improvisation; (2) tactical improvisation rising to the level of strategy; (3) network bricolage; and (4) improvisational competencies. This study contributes to research on organizational improvisation, bricolage and entrepreneurship. Theoretically and in practice, both improvisation and bricolage represent potentially rich additions to the vocabulary of entrepreneurial action.

Everyday entrepreneurship : a call for entrepreneurship research to embrace entrepreneurial diversity

This essay contrasts a perspective that places an excessive focus on technology businesses and growth with a view of entrepreneurship that embraces its heterogeneity. We challenge a taken–for–granted belief that only certain kinds of entrepreneurship might lead to wealth and job creation and additionally suggest that these two outcomes (wealth and job creation) need to be placed within a broader context of reasons, purposes, and values for why and how entrepreneurship emerges. We suggest that a wider and nondiscriminatory perspective on what constitutes entrepreneurship will lead to better theory and more insights that are relevant to the phenomenon.

Making the marriage work: the benefits of strategy's takeover of entrepreneurship for strategic organization:

It appears to us that strategy is succeeding in its takeover of the academic field of entrepreneurship. It is doing this by acquiring entrepreneurship’s most important assets ‐ faculty members. Of the entrepreneurship division’s 2035 members, 1000 (49.1 percent) are also members of the Business Policy and Strategy (BPS) division. Further, a recent glance at the Academy of Management postings for entrepreneurship positions found that of the 157 job postings, about two-thirds also listed strategy as a teaching preference. Of these, strategy was listed before

Who's the new kid? The process of developing centrality in venture capitalist deal networks

In this chapter we examine the process by which new firms become central actors within their industry networks. We focus, in particular, on how relatively new venture capital (VC) firms become more central within investment syndication networks. We present a model that captures the relationships among (1) the social capital and status of the new VC firms founders, (2) the VC firms resource endowments, (3) the VC firms ability to forge relationships with other prestigious and central venture capital firms, (4) the visibility-enhancing performance of portfolio firms, and (5) the urgency and effort exhibited by the new VC as it pursues these opportunities. These factors combine to shape a new VCs journey from the periphery to the center of its industry network. To illustrate these processes, we develop in-depth case studies of Benchmark Capital and August Capital, two VC firms founded in 1995. We then elaborate upon the enacted nature of resource and opportunity constraints and conclude with a discussion of how new firms create their own self-fulfilling prophecies.

Come on out of the ghetto, please! – Building the future of entrepreneurship research

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to make the argument that previously marginalized but now flourishing subfields of entrepreneurship research continue to provide insights that can form the basis for future entrepreneurship research that is more broadly practical and critical. What is currently core or “mainstream” in entrepreneurship research would then be seen as an important but rare special case. Design/methodology/approach The essay briefly explores a number of illustrative themes that have emerged and become important in women’s entrepreneurship research (acknowledging that some similar themes have emerged in other subfields). These themes are used to suggest how broader application of such insights to theory-building about entrepreneurship in general – rather than “just” to “women’s entrepreneurship” – might greatly enrich the field. Findings The authors’ arguments suggest that research focused on ghettoized subfields such as women’s entrepreneurship challenge the assumptions of what entrepreneurship is and what it contributes. For example the richer perspective on motivations, goals, and outcomes and on the possibilities of emancipation that currently animate research on women’s entrepreneurship can improve the understanding of all entrepreneurship. Originality/value Too much of current entrepreneurship research is both of limited practical value for “practitioners” and of little “critical value” for scholars interested in how things might work better. The authors argue that by broadening the set of goals, motivations, contexts and accomplishments that are taken as legitimate targets of study, entrepreneurship research can become both more practical and more critical and thus more broadly useful and legitimate.

A measure of entrepreneurial bricolage behavior

PurposeThe majority of emerging and young firms work under resource constraints. This has made researchers highlight the importance of resourcefulness. Perhaps the most important theoretical develo ...

WINNING AN UNFAIR GAME: HOW A RESOURCE-CONSTRAINED PLAYER USES BRICOLAGE TO MANEUVER FOR ADVANTAGE IN A HIGHLY INSTITUTIONALIZED FIELD

In this study we examine how resource-constrained organizations can maneuver for competitive advantage in highly institutionalized fields. Unlike studies of institutional entrepreneurship, we investigate competitive maneuvering by an organization that is unable to alter either the regulative or normative institutions that characterize its field. Using the ‘‘Moneyball’’ phenomenon and recent changes in Major League Baseball as the basis for an intensive case study of entrepreneurial actions taken by the Oakland A’s, we found that the A’s were able to maneuver for advantage by using bricolage and refusing to enact baseball’s cognitive institutions, and that they continued succeeding despite ongoing resource

Contextual Entrepreneurship: An Interdisciplinary Perspective

The need to contextualize research in entrepreneurship has become an important theme during the last decade. In this monograph we position the increasing prominence of “contextual entrepreneurship†research as part of a broader scholarly wave that has previously washed across other fields. The challenges and promises we face as this wave carries us forward are similar in many ways to the challenges faced by researchers in other fields. Based on a review of the current context debate among entrepreneurship scholars and a selective review of other disciplines, we outline and discuss issues in theorizing, operationalising and empirically studying contexts in entrepreneurship research. Researchers have made rapid and substantial – though uneven – progress in contextualizing their work. Unsurprisingly, there is healthy disagreement over what it means to contextualize research and how it should be done, which we see as expressions of competing implicit theories of context. We argue that no overarching theory of what context is or what it means is likely to be very successful. Instead, we suggest briefly that it may be useful to adopt and develop what we label a “critical process approach†to contextualizing entrepreneurship research.

Bridging the valley of death: lessons learned from 14 years of commercialization of technology education

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