The BRIDGE Annual
Entrepreneurship Workshop
April 21, 2003 - Indiana University
Indiana Memorial Union (IMU) Oak Suite
The Bloomington-Rotterdam Interactive
Doctoral and Graduate Exchange (BRIDGE) will host its Annual Entrepreneurship
Workshop in Bloomington on April 21, 2003. The purpose of the Workshop is to
bring together leading scholars on entrepreneurship research to present current
and on-going state-of-the art research. A special feature of the Workshop is to
enable highly selected graduate students from both sides of the Atlantic to
participate.
Conference Agenda
(As of April 3, 2003)
8:00 Welcome / Introductions
8:15 "Inheritance
by the Unintended Child: The Impact of Knowledge Transfer on Spin-out
Generation, Development and Performance"
This paper examines the role of
knowledge as a driver of an organization's
formation, and as a subsequent source of its competitive advantage. We
investigate the un-intentional knowledge transfer from an incumbent to a
spin-out (an entrepreneurial venture by an ex-employee), and the impact of
inherited knowledge on spin-out development and performance. Using data from
the disk drive industry, we show that incumbent knowledge capabilities,
related to technology and market pioneering, predict spin-out formation.
Parent's capabilities at the time of spin-out founding positively affect
spin-out knowledge capabilities, and result in spin-outs having higher
probabilities of survival relative to other entrants.
>Read the Paper<
Rajshree Agarwal is from the University of
Illinois at Urbana Champaign.
9:00 "The
Entrepreneurial Theory of the Firm"
For some time now, economists (Smith, 1776; Marshall,
1907), strategic management scholars (Penrose, 1959), and entrepreneurship
scholars (Knight, 1921; Schumpeter, 1936) have studied how various productive
assets in an economy can be used in innovative ways to create new economic
value. The ability of a variety of productive assets—including labor, capital,
and technology—to be sources of new economic value has already been examined
by several scholars (Walras, 1874: Williamson 1985). This paper examines the
ability of another productive asset in the economy—the firm as an organizing
entity—to be a source of such value creation. The purpose of this paper is to
understand the conditions under which organizing a firm can create new
economic value. In the process of addressing this question, an alternative
theory of the firm—drawing on the theory of incomplete contracts (Grossman and
Hart, 1986; Hart and Moore, 1990) in economics and the resource-based view (Werenerfelt,
1984; Rumelt, 1984; Barney, 1986; 1991) in strategic management—is developed.
This theory suggests that firms are created not simply to minimize the costs
associated with not managing an exchange efficiently, but also to realize the
full economic potential—including the potential to create new economic
value—that may exist in an exchange (Zajac and Olsen, 1993).
>Read the Paper<
Dr. Alvarez is from Ohio State University,
Columbus, Ohio.
9:45 Break
10:00 "The
Impact of Geographic Location on the Internationalization of New Ventures"
A recent review of the field of international
entrepreneurship (Zahra & George, 2000) noted a gap in the literature linking
venture location to internationalization, which was surprising given the rise
of areas such as Silicon Valley and the Research Triangle. Our findings
indicate that new ventures located in geographical locations with more
concentrated industry clusters are more likely to go international, to have
higher levels of international sales, and to operate on a greater number of
continents than ventures that are located in geographical locations with less
concentrated industry clustering.
>Read the Paper<
Dr. McDougall is from Indiana University,
Bloomington, Indiana.
10:45 "Strategic
Benefits to Entrepreneurial Firms Issuing Private Equity"
For young technology firms,
acquiring resources can often be costly due to the information asymmetry and
uncertainty that exist surrounding the new technology. We contend that firms
able to issue private equity can better manage their ability to mobilize three
kinds of resources: capital, research partners, and commercial partners. We
investigate the existence of long-term, strategic benefits to private
placements, and a number of factors may determine the long-term effectiveness
of this governance form. Overall, the empirical analyses demonstrated that
private placements provide long-term benefits to firms by reducing hazards
associated with information asymmetry.
>Read the Paper<
Dr. Folta is from Purdue University, West
Lafayette, Indiana.
11:30 Lunch
1:00 "The role
of social capital and gender in linking financial suppliers and entrepreneurial
firms: a framework for future research"
Equity capital fuels growth
companies and yields high returns for investors. The process of equity
investment and ultimate harvesting of innovate companies has created
significant wealth among fund investors, venture capitalists, angels, and new
entrepreneurs. Extensive research investigates all phases of the venture
capital investment process, industry characteristics and returns to
investors. Surprisingly absent from current research are studies including
women, on both the supply (equity provider) and demand (equity seeker) sides.
Women make significant contribution to the US economy in the workforce and as
business owners, yet research about women as recipients of equity capital and
providers of equity is extremely scarce. This raises a question—are women
being left out of the wealth creation process? Our paper addresses this
question by exploring women’s role in supply and demand of equity capital. We
utilize a social capital perspective to develop a conceptual framework and
focus our analysis on early stage and angel investment. The paper concludes
with directions for future research.
>Read the Paper<
Dr. Gatewood is from Indiana University,
Bloomington, Indiana.
1:45 "Commitment
or control? Human resource management practices in female- and male-led
businesses"
This paper investigates the extent to which HRM
differs between female- and male-led businesses. A Control-Commitment
Continuum consisting of several HRM dimensions is proposed. To test to what
extent HRM systems and ?specific? practices in female- and male-led businesses
differ with respect to commitment-orientation, use is made of a panel of
approximately 2,000 Dutch entrepreneurs. Contrary to what is generally
believed, we find that HRM in female-led firms is more control-oriented than
in male-led firms.
>Read the Paper<
Ms. Ingrid Verheul is from Erasmus University,
Rotterdam and the EIM Small Business Consultancy, The Netherlands.
2:30 Break
2:45 "University
Spillovers: Strategic Location and New Firm Performance"
This study examines the impact of locational choice as
a firm strategy to access knowledge spillovers from universities. Based on a
large data set of young high-technology start-ups publicly listed in Germany,
this paper tests the propositions that not only geographic proximity to the
university matters, but also that the degree to which locational choice
matters is shaped by the field and type of knowledge spillover. The role of
geographic proximity as a locational strategy is more important in accessing
and absorbing knowledge spillovers from publications in scholarly journals in
the social sciences than in the natural sciences. By contrast, geographic
proximity is more important in accessing human capital embodied in university
graduates in the natural sciences than in the social sciences. The results
suggest that locational proximity to a university effects firm performance.
>Read the Paper<
Dr. Audretsch is from Indiana University, Bloomington,
Indiana.
3:30
"Various ways to leave the nest"
Following up on earlier studies of the occurrence and
performance of startups that 'spin' or 'spawn' from incumbent firms, this
study compares three types of start-ups and their long run performance. We
compare startups that begin with help from their 'mums', start-ups that
compete with their 'mums' right from their birth and start-ups that don't have
a mum at all. >Read
the Paper<
Dr. Meijaard is from the EIM Small Business
Consultancy, The Netherlands.
4:15 "Post-Materialism:
a Cultural Factor influencing Self-Employment across Nations.”
The study of predictors of self-employment at the
country level has been dominated by economic influences. The relative
stability of differences in self-employment across countries suggests that
other forces such as institutional and/or cultural factors are at play. The
objective of this paper is to explore how post-materialism explains
differences in entrepreneurial activity across countries. Self-employment is
defined as the percent of a country’s population that is self-employed, using
a broad definition that also includes CEOs of both unincorporated and legally
incorporated establishments. The measure for post-materialism is based upon
Inglehart’s four-item post-materialism index. Because of the known
interactions between economic, cultural, and social factors found in previous
research, a set of economic and social factors is included to investigate the
independent role post-materialism plays in prediction of self-employment
levels. In particular, education, life satisfaction, church attendance and
political (left or right) extremism are used as control variables in our
analyses using data of 14 OECD countries over in recent period. Findings
confirm the significance of post-materialism in predicting self-employment
even when controlling for these other factors. However, strong covariation
between post-materialism and social factors makes it difficult to clearly
discriminate between these effects.
>Read the Paper<
Dr. Thurik is from Erasmus University, Rotterdam,
and the EIM Small Business Consultancy, The Netherlands.
5:00 Conclusion / Wrapping Up
5:30- 7:00
Reception La Casa de
Audretsch
for conference speakers,
students, and Stephanie Shipp
