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Entrepreneurs use business pitches to persuade investors to provide resources to their firms. Scholars have examined how pitches attract investments. What is less appreciated is that successful pitches also can increase network ties - but tie formation may vary by stage. Drawing from extensive field work and the literature on framing, we hypothesize that entrepreneurial frames used at various stages of firm development attract different types of resources. We test our hypotheses on a database of 79 social entrepreneurs pitching impact investors. We show that when early-stage entrepreneurs pitch with higher social emphasis, they increase social ties with investors. Conversely, when late-stage entrepreneurs pitch with lower social emphasis, they acquire more financial capital. These findings suggest that entrepreneurs' pitching can be a proactive strategy for forming new ties -- but how strategies resonate with investors varies by stage. In contrast to theories of resource acquisition that focus on the importance of preexisting networks in acquiring the resources needed for new venture formation, our research explains how entrepreneurs can leverage open, competitive pitches to form new relationships with investors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The evaluation of novel technologies is central to ensuring that resources are allocated properly in addressing society's problems. Despite its importance, challenges still exist that lead to promising innovations not getting properly evaluated and dying prematurely. Instead of a static, linear, box-ticking exercise, the evaluation process for novel innovations is mired with complexities. To address the current gaps in this growing research area, this presenter symposium will bring together top scholars to clarify current challenges in assessing novel innovations. The four presentations will holistically cover different aspects of novelty evaluation: evaluators' advice-seeking with biased seekers and informants, evaluator's thinking processes that rely on different information processing strategies, the way evaluations are affected by innovators' social position, and how the process of entrepreneurial strategy formation unfolds under complex uncertain situations. This symposium will encourage future research in underexplored areas such as the role of the evaluators, the innovators, the context, and the idea itself in this process. * The Role of Evaluators in Discounting Inventor's Bias in Valuing Their Technological Solutions * Presenter: Stefano Benigni; Imperial College Business School * Presenter: Paola Criscuolo; Imperial College London * Presenter: Markus Perkmann; Imperial College London * When does Intuitive Thinking Work for Creative Forecasting? * Presenter: Qi Zhang; Erasmus U. Rotterdam * Presenter: Daan Alexander Stam; Erasmus U. Rotterdam * Presenter: Dirk Deichmann; Erasmus U. Rotterdam * Professional Logics and Collective Strategy Schemas During Industry Incubation * Presenter: Bart Clarysse; ETH Zürich * Presenter: Jana Thiel; ETH Zürich * Novelty Evaluation & Narrative Strategies: The Outsider Challenge * Presenter: Gino Cattani; New York U. * Presenter: Denise Falchetti; George Washington U. * Presenter: Simone Ferriani; U. of Bologna [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The last two decades have seen increasing calls for commercial enterprises to create value beyond that which can be captured by their shareholders. While effective approaches to generating stakeholder value at the organization level are increasingly well-understood, relatively little empirical research examines the factors that influence how direct social impact can be generated at the individual level, i.e., by private sector founders, managers, and employees acting outside their corporate affiliations. The papers in this symposium address this gap through two lenses. First, they explore how individual-level characteristics, either formed in early life or developed through earlier career experiences, shape entrepreneurs' choices about how to create public and/or private value at a later stage in their careers. Second, they focus on critical events in the entrepreneurial process and examine how they facilitate action-taking by individuals with philanthropic preferences to make social impact. Collectively, the papers in this symposium highlight different pathways on which entrepreneurs might embark at an advanced stage in their careers to create value beyond their current for-profit entrepreneurial endeavors, including engaging in philanthropy, and supporting the larger entrepreneurial ecosystem as experienced founders, joiners, and impact investors. * Who Gives Back? Evidence from India on Successful Entrepreneurial Exit & Involvement in Philanthropy * Presenter: Leena Kinger Hans; Indian School of Business * Presenter: Balagopal Vissa; INSEAD * Spinning an Entrepreneurial Career: The Role of Motivation & Attribution in Entrepreneurial Careers * Presenter: Hyeonsuh Lee; West Virginia U. * Presenter: Sonali Shah; U. of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign * Forming Ties for Impact: Cognitive and Emotional Resonance between Entrepreneurs and Investors * Presenter: Esther Leibel; Boston U. * Presenter: Denise Falchetti; George Washington U. * The Making of Social Entrepreneurs: Big Tech Acquisitions & Founder Mobility into Social Initiatives * Presenter: Ming zhu Wang; Washington U. in St. Louis, Olin Business School * Presenter: Daniel Walter Elfenbein; Washington U. in St. Louis [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Entrepreneurs use business pitches to persuade and gain support from investors. While scholars have examined what makes business pitches successful, they have narrowly defined success as financial capital acquisition. Yet, different types of entrepreneurs (i.e., early-stage vs. late-stage entrepreneurs) need different types of resources. In a qualitative field study of social entrepreneurs, we identify social ties formation as a key outcome of the relationship between early-stage entrepreneurs and investors, one that is key to access other resources. Building on our qualitative findings and the literature on strategic ties formation, we theorize that firms use language referencing relational processes when they prioritize investor relational commitment, while they use language referencing money when they seek investor financial commitment. We test our hypotheses on a database of in person, one-to-many pitches of social entrepreneurs. We find that early-stage firms attract a broader range of investors and a higher amount of financial resources. Also, the benefits of using relational language are higher for early-stage firms who seek to acquire investor relational commitment, whereas later-stage firms using financial language can reduce their disadvantage with respect to the acquisition of financial commitment. These findings add to the literature on strategic ties formation by increasing our understandings of pitches as a proactive networking tool for less-endowed firms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although it is reasonable to assume that candidates' status and audience-candidates social proximity combine to shape recognition in peer-based evaluative settings, exactly how these two factors combine is unclear because alternative theoretical perspectives that point to different explanatory mechanisms coexist in the literature. Our objective in this study is to shed light on this question using a mix-method approach. We first examine field data on the conferral of prestigious awards in a peer-based evaluative contest ' 'The Silver Tag' ' one of the main peer-based digital advertising awards contests in Norway. We find the existence of a negative interaction between status and social proximity. We then offer more direct evidence of the causal mechanisms responsible this finding by conduction two experiments. In the first experiment, we replicate the main pattern of effects observed in the field study with stricter controls. In the second experiment, we document how the interaction effect is contingent on the nature of the evaluative setting. When audience members' decisions are not in the public domain, social proximity does not temper the effect of status on candidates' recognition, but it does when decisions are made in the public domain (i.e., audience member have to justify them before the other members). We conclude by discussing several implications of our study for research on the socio-psychological processes underlying the evaluation of creativity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When is novelty more likely to elicit a favorable evaluation? Building on social psychology research, which shows that mental construals influence evaluation and decision-making, we argue that the appeal of novel ideas and the willingness to invest in them vary with the mental processes through which audiences evaluate them. We conducted a series of experiments to study how different levels of mental construals shift the evaluation outcomes. Our findings show that evaluators appreciate more (i.e., like more and are more willing to invest in) highly novel ideas when those ideas are framed in concrete "How" terms; whereas the evaluator's appreciation of incremental ideas increases with abstract "Why" framing. That is, which type of linguistic framing is more or less effective depends on the degree of novelty (high vs. low) of those ideas. Also, we find that when novelty is framed in "How" terms evaluators prefer more novel ideas over incremental ones, but when novelty is framed in "Why" terms this difference disappears, suggesting that an abstract framing decreases the appeal gap between the more novel and the less novel ideas. Finally, we unpack the underlying cognitive process by providing evidence of the mediating role of perceived usefulness. Focusing on the framing of novel ideas and marrying it with construal level theory offers a number of contributions to research on innovation and entrepreneurship and, more generally, social evaluation. In particular, we generate insights into how innovators can deploy linguistic strategies to shape audiences' perceptions of their novelty claims. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]