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Contextualizing The Categorical Imperative: Category Linkages, Technology Focus, And Resource Acquisition In Nanotechnology Entrepreneurship, Michael Lounsbury, Tyler Wry

michael lounsbury

This paper examines the role of category affiliations in entrepreneurial resource acquisition. Pace existing studies, we suggest category spanning will cause firms to be overlooked or discounted because evaluators assume that they have less expertise than their category-focused competitors; a phenomenon known as the ‘categorical imperative’. We suggest, however, that categories can be related both vertically and horizontally, and that this has important implications for understanding how the actors that span between them are evaluated. Studying startup ventures in nanotube technology,we showthat venture capital investments were affected by a firm's position across patent classes that were related at both of …