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Full-Text Articles in Entrepreneurial and Small Business Operations

Contextualizing The Categorical Imperative: Category Linkages, Technology Focus, And Resource Acquisition In Nanotechnology Entrepreneurship, Michael Lounsbury, Tyler Wry Jan 2013

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 …


New Practice Creation: An Institutional Approach To Innovation, Michael Lounsbury Jan 2007

New Practice Creation: An Institutional Approach To Innovation, Michael Lounsbury

michael lounsbury

Neoinstitutionalists have developed a rich array of theoretical and empirical insights about how new practices become established via legitimacy and diffusion, but have paid scant attention to their origins. This blind spot has been reinforced by recent work on institutional entrepreneurship which has too often celebrated the actions of a single or small number of actors, and deflected attention away from the emergent, multilevel nature of how new kinds of activities emerge and provide a foundation for the creation of a new practice. In this paper, we examine the case of the creation of active money management practice in the …


Cultural Entrepreneurship: Stories, Legitimacy And The Acquisition Of Resources., Michael Lounsbury, Mary Ann Glynn Jan 2001

Cultural Entrepreneurship: Stories, Legitimacy And The Acquisition Of Resources., Michael Lounsbury, Mary Ann Glynn

michael lounsbury

We define cultural entrepreneurship as the process of storytelling that mediates between extant stocks of entrepreneurial resources and subsequent capital acquisition and wealth creation. We propose a framework that focuses on how entrepreneurial stories facilitate the crafting of a new venture identity that serves as a touchstone upon which legitimacy may be conferred by investors, competitors, and consumers, opening up access to new capital and market opportunities. Stories help create competitive advantage for entrepreneurs through focal content shaped by two key forms of entrepreneurial capital: firm-specific resource capital and industry-level institutional capital. We illustrate our ideas with anecdotal entrepreneurial stories …