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Spinoff firms are a common phenomenon in entrepreneurship where employees leave incumbent parent firms to found their own. Like other types of new firms, such new spinoffs face liabilities of newness and smallness. Previous research has emphasised the role of the initial endowments from their parent firm to overcome such liabilities. In this study, we argue and are the first to show, that, in addition to such endowments, growing an alliance network with firms other than their parents' is also critical for spinoff performance. Specifically, we investigate the performance effect of alliance network growth in newly founded spinoffs using a longitudinal sample of 248 spinoffs and 3370 strategic alliances in the mining industry. Drawing on theory based on the resource adjustment costs of forming alliances, we posit and find a U-shaped relationship between the alliance network growth and spinoff performance, above and beyond the parent firm's influence. We further hypothesise and find that performance effects become stronger with increased time lags between alliance network growth and spinoff performance, and when spinoffs delay growing their alliance networks. Implications for theory and practice are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Given that recent research on entrepreneurial behavior and success has established skill variety as a central human capital factor, researchers, educators, and policymakers have turned their interest to a deeper understanding of the formation of skill variety. Based on human capital theory and the competence growth approach in developmental psychology (highlighting long-term, age-appropriate, and cumulative skill-growth processes), we hypothesize that a broad, early variety orientation in adolescence is a developmental precursor of such entrepreneurial human capital in adulthood. This was confirmed in an analysis of prospective longitudinal data via structural equation modeling and serial mediation tests. We also find that an entrepreneurial constellation of personality traits, but not entrepreneurial parents, predicts early variety orientation, skill variety, and entrepreneurial intentions. By shedding new light on the long-term formation of entrepreneurial human capital, the results suggest that establishing and benefiting from an early variety orientation is not only an important developmental mechanism in entrepreneurial careers but gives those with an entrepreneurial personality an early head start in their vocational entrepreneurial development. Implications for future research and practice are discussed. Plain English Summary: Human capital is important for entrepreneurship. In particular, a varied skill set enables entrepreneurs to tackle the various tasks of starting a new firm. However, no one is born with such a skill set; it develops over time. In this study, we explore the origins of a varied skill set and its development. We find that skill variety in adulthood has its roots in a varied set of interests among teenagers, such as having many hobbies or finding different school subjects important. This growth in skill variety is driven by an entrepreneurial personality. For prospective entrepreneurs, our research suggests that investing in a varied skill set pays off. The implication for research is to look at the developmental process of how people become entrepreneurs. The most important conclusion for policymakers and educators is that educational support programs should center around encouraging especially adolescents and young adults to engage in varied activities and teach varied skills instead of focusing on a narrow curriculum. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As a contribution to research and theorizing on the economic role of new firm formation, we undertake the first ever investigation of regional employment effects of the entry of new social firms. Our study is guided by an established model of the employment effects of new firm entry over time and provides a direct comparison to the employment effects of commercial entrants. Our results show that the net employment effect of new social firms follows a wave pattern over the study's eight-year horizon, apparently produced by the same combination of direct and indirect effects previously theorized for new commercial entrants. The results also indicate that net employment effect per social firm entrant is larger than for commercial firms. The study provides a first empirical assessment of employment creation effects of new social firms and contributes to a more nuanced theoretical understanding of employment effects across types of entrants. By specifying the economic contribution of social firms our study can open up a new track in social entrepreneurship research and provide important input to employment policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on faking behavior and underlying intentions has mostly employed an intraindividual perspective, stressing the role of individual-level predictors. Inspired by theoretical arguments (e.g., from socioecological psychology) and cross-cultural studies, we hypothesize and demonstrate that in addition to individual-level predictors, there are also regional differences in faking intentions (within a country) and systematic links to regional-level features. Specifically, we tested and compared individual- and region-level predictors of applicant faking intentions (N = 4860 MTurk workers) across the largest 50 Metropolitan Statistical Areas of the USA using multi-level techniques. We found individual-level effects of conscientiousness, competitive worldviews, and religiosity on individual-level faking intentions. On the regional level, macro-psychological conscientiousness was negatively associated with the average faking intentions in a region, while macro-psychological competitive worldviews (i.e., the prevailing competitive worldviews in a region) showed a positive relationship. Additionally, macro-psychological competitive worldviews predicted individual-level faking intentions even when controlling for individual-level competitive worldviews. No effects were found for regional parameters such as the economic situation of a region. We discuss implications for research and personnel selection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is increasing interest in the potential of artificial intelligence and Big Data (e.g., generated via social media) to help understand economic outcomes. But can artificial intelligence models based on publicly available Big Data identify geographical differences in entrepreneurial personality or culture? We use a machine learning model based on 1.5 billion tweets by 5.25 million users to estimate the Big Five personality traits and an entrepreneurial personality profile for 1772 US counties. The Twitter-based personality estimates show substantial relationships to county-level entrepreneurship activity, accounting for 20% (entrepreneurial personality profile) and 32% (Big Five traits) of the variance in local entrepreneurship, even when controlling for other factors that affect entrepreneurship. Whereas more research is clearly needed, our findings have initial implications for research and practice concerned with entrepreneurial regions and eco-systems, and regional economic outcomes interacting with local culture. The results suggest, for example, that social media datasets and artificial intelligence methods have the potential to deliver comparable information on the personality and culture of regions than studies based on millions of questionnaire-based personality tests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While the disruptive potential of artificial intelligence (AI) and big data has been receiving growing attention and concern in a variety of research and application fields over the last few years, it has not received much scrutiny in contemporary entrepreneurship research so far. Here we present some reflections and a collection of papers on the role of AI and big data for this emerging area in the study and application of entrepreneurship research. While being mindful of the potentially overwhelming nature of the rapid progress in machine intelligence and other big data technologies for contemporary structures in entrepreneurship research, we put an emphasis on the reciprocity of the co-evolving fields of entrepreneurship research and practice. How can AI and big data contribute to a productive transformation of the research field and the real-world phenomena (e.g., "smart entrepreneurship")? We also discuss, however, ethical issues as well as challenges around a potential contradiction between entrepreneurial uncertainty and rule-driven AI rationality. The editorial gives researchers and practitioners orientation and showcases avenues and examples for concrete research in this field. At the same time, however, it is not unlikely that we will encounter unforeseeable and currently inexplicable developments in the field soon. We call on entrepreneurship scholars, educators, and practitioners to proactively prepare for future scenarios. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Regional personality differences have been linked to regional entrepreneurship in Western countries. Here, we offer a first analysis of the relationship between regional personality and manifest and latent entrepreneurship in China. Because Western research has highlighted the role of an entrepreneurial constellation of the Big Five traits, we compare region-level correlates of Big Five scores with corresponding correlates of indigenous "Confucian" traits, interpersonal relatedness, and its sub-facets traditionalism, Renqing, face, discipline, and harmony. We utilize personality data collected from a representative sample (N = 26,405) of 44 major Chinese cities. We find substantial, meaningful, and robust negative correlations of interpersonal relatedness and its sub-facet traditionalism, face, and discipline with indicators of both manifest entrepreneurship (e.g., rate of newly registered individually owned businesses) and latent entrepreneurship (e.g., number of entrepreneurship-related search queries in the leading Chinese internet search engine: Baidu.com). Robustness checks using the geographical distance to the Forbidden City in Beijing as an exogenous instrument for regional "Confucian" traits supported our findings. In contrast, regional levels in the Big Five traits and in an entrepreneurial Big Five profile were rather irrelevant (e.g., openness was negatively associated with indicators of manifest entrepreneurship). Our study indicates the usefulness of an indigenous personality approach in the study of entrepreneurship in China. The present results give rise to the idea that in populations in China with less emphasis on traditional Confucian values and norms, the development of an active entrepreneurial culture is more accelerated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Societies around the globe respond to the contemporary technological and economic change by defining entrepreneurship and innovation as core principles for future competitive advantage. Does this rise of the “entrepreneurial society” also imply that entrepreneurial personalities are becoming increasingly widespread and powerful in political leadership? Joseph A. Schumpeter already argued that highly influential entrepreneurs are unique and show a certain personality pattern that can be described as being not only high in creativity and change orientation but also high in competitiveness and rule-breaking. It is interesting to ask whether such Schumpeterian personalities indeed play an increasingly important role in political leadership, given that daily routines of policy leaders, at least at first glance, usually require rather non-entrepreneurial strategies such as careful, risk-averse diplomacy. To address this question, we first survey the existing literature on personality and political leadership. We further present a novel personality analysis of an influential business leader that recently made a transition to political leadership: Donald J. Trump, the incumbent US president. Employing a language-based, computerized method of analyzing Twitter statements, we compare his online personality to the online personality of other influential entrepreneurs and business managers, who do not engage in political leadership. The results indicate that Trump is indeed distinct in that he shows stronger features of a Schumpeterian personality. However, he is also comparatively high in Neuroticism. We discuss these findings focusing on the potential implications of a concentration of entrepreneurial mindsets in political leadership. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Understanding the psychological nature and development of the individual entrepreneur is at the core of contemporary entrepreneurship research. Since the individual functions as a totality of his or her single characteristics (involving the interplay of biological, psychosocial, and context-related levels), a person-oriented approach focusing on intraindividual dynamics seems to be particularly fruitful to infer realistic implications for practice such as entrepreneurship education and promotion. Applying a person-oriented perspective, this paper integrates existing psychological approaches to entrepreneurship and presents a new, person-oriented model of entrepreneurship, the Entrepreneurial Personality System (EPS). In the empirical part, this model guided us to bridge two separate research streams dealing with entrepreneurial personality: research on broad traits like the Big Five and research on specific traits like risk-taking, self-efficacy, and internal locus of control. We examine a gravity effect of broad traits, as assumed in the EPS framework, by analyzing large personality data sets from three countries. The results reveal a consistent gravity effect of an intraindividual entrepreneurial Big Five profile on the more malleable psychological factors. Implications for entrepreneurship research and practice are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What are the entrepreneurial places in the USA? Although seminal theorizing on the determinants of entrepreneurship gives culture a unique and important role, systematic empirical evidence linking the distinct cultural identity of regions to their local entrepreneurial spirit and vitality is still scarce. This study offers a first, systematic overview on the nexus between regional cultural identity and latent and manifest entrepreneurship across the USA. To directly assess regional cultural identity, we apply the American Nations and Patchwork Community Types approaches and explore in which way these distinct spatially based cultural regions are reflected by significant differences in entrepreneurial activity and underlying biologically based propensities. We combine annual entrepreneurship rates at the county level with personality data collected in a large-scale, Internet-based study of 3,457,270 US residents. The findings suggest that entrepreneurship culture reflects the dynamic interplay between the region's cultural identity and its latent and manifest entrepreneurship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Given the importance of entrepreneurial thinking and acting as a meta-skill in the future world of work, we focus on the emerging entrepreneurial mind-set in the transition to adulthood. We study the role of personality characteristics and age-appropriate entrepreneurial competencies (leadership, self-esteem, creativity, and proactivity motivation) in the prediction of entrepreneurial alertness and career intention. Using two-wave longitudinal data from high schools in Helsinki, Finland ( N = 523), we tested a mediation model with competencies as mediators between personality and entrepreneurial alertness and intention. The findings suggest that entrepreneurial alertness and career intention (a) are rather independent career development constructs of the emerging entrepreneurial mind-set, (b) are both an expression of an entrepreneurial personality structure, and (c) are predicted by different underlying competencies: leadership and self-esteem mediated the personality-entrepreneurial intention link, and leadership, creativity, and proactivity motivation the personality-entrepreneurial alertness link. Consistent with the balanced skill approach to entrepreneurship, the intraindividual variety of these competencies was also a valid mediator; it did not show incremental predictive power though. Implications for research and practice are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To study the interplay between age and culture as driver of self-employment motivation, we examine cross-sectional age differences (young to late adulthood) in self-employment desirability and feasibility beliefs across different cultures. We utilize individual-level data from the 2012 Flash Eurobarometer survey collected in 21 countries (total N = 13,963 individuals) and culture-level data from the GLOBE project. Our results from multi-level regression analyses show similar curvilinear lifespan patterns in both desirability and feasibility beliefs, with a peak in young adulthood and a strong decline toward late adulthood. This general pattern of age differences in these motivational factors, however, differs significantly across cultural dimensions of uncertainty avoidance, institutional collectivism and performance orientation. Notwithstanding the limitations of cross-sectional data, the present results indicate that individual factors motivating self-employment are systematically intertwined with, and embedded in, both age and culture. Implications for theory and practice are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: To combine the identity and the theory of planned behavior (TPB) approaches to entrepreneurship, we investigated unique main effects as well as moderating effects of an entrepreneurial self-identity in the TPB-entrepreneurship framework. We also investigated predictors of an entrepreneurial self-identity. Design/methodology/approach: Considering a process model of entrepreneurship, we analyzed two cross-sectional T1 samples of German scientists with regard to two central tasks along the entrepreneurial process (business idea development and business founding) via path model analyses as well as data from follow-up surveys collected at T2 and T3 via regression analyses. Findings: Self-identity predicted founding intentions, above and beyond the effect of the TPB variables. Moreover, self-identity showed a characteristic moderating effect with TPB-intention predictors. Their effect was weaker or even zero at low levels of self-identity. In addition, self-identity forecasted behavior, but had no unique main or moderating effect on behavior in the TPB framework. Self-identity was predictable by past behavior, personality structure, recalled adolescent competencies, and early parental role models. Moreover, an engagement in entrepreneurial activity led to an increase in self-identity over time. Implications: The results suggest that self-identity operates as a motivational factor in entrepreneurial transitions that interacts with TPB variables in a characteristic way. An entrepreneurial self-identity develops from an early developmental stage on, but also during the working life. Originality/value: This study is unique because it integrates the occupational self-concept/self-identity construct into the TPB-entrepreneurship approach, and also delivers new implications concerning how to foster entrepreneurial motivations more effectively by taking the developing occupational self-concept into account. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article seeks to better understand the link between regional characteristics and individual entrepreneurship. We combine individual-level Global Entrepreneurship Monitor data for Western Germany with regional-level data, using multilevel analysis to test our hypotheses. We find no direct link between regional knowledge creation, the economic context and an entrepreneurial culture on the one side and individual business start-up intentions and start-up activity on the other side. However, our findings point to the importance of an indirect effect of regional characteristics as knowledge creation, the economic context and an entrepreneurial culture have an effect on the individual perception of founding opportunities, which in turn predicted start-up intentions and activity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the effects and origins of balanced skills among nascent entrepreneurs. In a first step we apply Lazear's jack-of-all-trades theory to investigate performance effects of a balanced skill set. Second, we investigate potential sources of balanced skills, thereby testing the investment hypothesis against the endowment hypothesis. Analyzing data on high-potential nascent projects, we find support for the notion that balanced skills are important for making progress in the venture creation process. Regarding the origins of balanced skills, the data support both hypotheses. In line with the investment hypothesis, an early interest in an entrepreneurial career, prior managerial and entrepreneurial experience are significantly related with a more balanced skill set. Supporting the endowment hypothesis, an entrepreneurial personality profile indicating entrepreneurial talent is correlated with a balanced skill set. Our results thus hint at the need for theories on the origins of a balanced skill set that integrate both views. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]