Unicorns, Gazelles, and Other Distractions on the Way to Understanding Real Entrepreneurship in the United States
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NVC summary of papers
Paper 1 - Unicorns, Gazelles, and Other Distractions on the Way to Understanding Real
Entrepreneurship in the United States
The purpose of this article is to address what we believe to be scholars’ misplaced attention on the
extreme and their neglect of the mundane in the study of entrepreneurship.
We conclude that the obsession with IPOs and VCs manifested in specialized entrepreneurship
journals was making its presence felt in more general-interest journals published by the Academy of
Management.
The infatuation with high-capitalization start-ups persists, despite their uncertain fate at the hands of
the people doing the actual investing. In academia, where research time and funds are limited
resources, far too much effort is devoted to understanding the handful of business start-ups that
experience high growth or public offerings, and far too little effort is devoted to understanding the
millions of start-ups that struggle alongside them. These business start-ups are organizations and, as
such, are worthy of attention as units whose origins, growth, and survival constitute a fundamental
part of the fabric of U.S. society.
The development of the entrepreneurship field has much in common with the process underlying the
growth of scientific/intellectual movements (SIMs), as described by Frickel and Gross (2005). A SIM is
a collective effort to pursue research programs and projects while overcoming resistance from others
in the scientific/intellectual community.
Three theoretical presuppositions for the analysis of SIMs are particularly relevant to the emergence
of entrepreneurship as a field. First, the popularity of an idea rests not only on the extent to which it
is scientifically valid, but also on social processes that institutionalize specific routes for pursuing that
idea. Second, the ultimate shape of a SIM is contingent on the historical circumstances within which
it emerges. We believe the decade of the 1990s had a major effect on the field and slanted it toward
a narrower definition of entrepreneurship. Third, the wider cultural and political environment
critically affects the emergence of a SIM. Concern in the United States over economic growth,
particularly employment growth, has strongly affected the field and its priorities.
Many of the debates in the 1990s reflected the field’s attempt to distinguish itself from the field of
small business studies, which had been the traditional home of people studying business start-ups.
Some scholars argue that high capitalization and high-growth businesses are the proper focus of
entrepreneurship studies. They distinguish such businesses from so called “lifestyle” or traditional
businesses, which are purportedly founded by people content with low growth and low returns to
their enterprises.
High-growth and highly capitalized firms are certainly attractive entities to study, but confining
studies of entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial ventures to high-growth companies introducesa
strong selection bias into research. Growth is an outcome of an uncertain process, and research has
shown that it is difficult to predict which firms will grow. Understanding which activities lead to
successful start-up and growth, in varying environments, requires that researchers cast as wide a net
as possible, beginning with even very modest and unlikely start-up efforts.
Finally, the emphasis on high-growth enterprises contributes to a view of entrepreneurs as unusual,
even heroic, personalities.
In contrast to “creativity,” which is defined as the capacity to generate novel ideas, innovation is
about the translation of those ideas into viable and successful products, processes, systems, and
institutions.
, Innovation is typically a classification of activities as new to a particular set of users and a particular
environment, and is thus relative to existing conditions (Rogers, 1995). A priori, it is difficult to
classify which acts are innovative and which are not until they have been introduced and others’
reactions gauged.
Using new institutional theory helps us appreciate how infrequent truly radical entrepreneurial
innovation is, while at the same time helping us understand the difficulties facing entrepreneurs with
innovative intentions.
Following Kirzner (1997), some scholars have argued that opportunity recognition or opportunity
formation constitutes the heart of entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial activities. From this
perspective, the critical issue is not initial capitalization but rather the ability of some individuals to
detect potentially valuable opportunities overlooked by others.
For example, Shane and Venkataraman (2000, p. 220) argued that “although recognition of
entrepreneurial opportunities is a subjective process, the opportunities themselves are objective
phenomena that are not known to all parties at all times.”
Some researchers counsel focusing on what it is that entrepreneurs are trying to do, which is to
found a new organization. From this perspective, entrepreneurs are people who create new social
entities. This view fits the conventional use of the term entrepreneur, referring to those who found
an organization, regardless of its size.
Treating entrepreneurship as the creation of new organizations changes the focus of
entrepreneurship research from studying outcomes to studying the initiation of organizing processes
that could result in new social entities.
Thus, we typically identify founders only after we have already identified their organizations. If we
study entrepreneurs only after their organizations have attracted enough public notice to be included
in standard sampling frames, we overlook a critical phase in the founding process.
>> deze paper gaat vooral heel erg over de selection bias in entrepreneurship research. Er wordt te
veel gekeken naar de ondernemingen die heel groot en succesvol zijn geworden, en daardoor niet
genoeg naar de bedrijven die klein zijn gebleven of niet succesvol. Dit geeft een vervormd beeld over
de realiteit van het ondernemen.
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