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PurposeThis paper investigates the importance of team formation in entrepreneurship education, and the authors ask: how do different team formation strategies influence teamwork in higher education experiential learning-based entrepreneurship courses?Design/methodology/approachEmploying a multiple case study design, the authors examine 38 student teams from three different entrepreneurship courses with different team formation paths to uncover potential links between team formation and learning outcomes.FindingsThe authors find that team formation mode matters. Randomly assigned teams, while diverse, struggle with handling uncertainty and feedback from potential stakeholders. In contrast, student self-selected teams are less diverse but more robust in handling this pressure. Results suggest that in randomly assigned teams, the entrepreneurial project becomes the team's sole reference point for well-being. Seeking to protect the project, the team's ability to deal with uncertainty and external feedback is limited, stifling development. In student self-select teams, team well-being becomes a discrete reference point. This enables these teams to respond effectively to external project feedback while nurturing team well-being independently.Originality/valueEducation theories' implications about the benefit of team diversity may not apply to experiential learning-based entrepreneurship education's typical level of ambiguity and uncertainty. Therefore, educators may have to reconsider the unique dynamics of team formation strategies to ensure strong teamwork and teamwork outcomes.

As physical distancing is a core measure of containing the spread of COVID-19, this pandemic is a crisis that has uprooted social interaction. While current research mainly focuses on crises as a challenge for entrepreneurial ventures and potential regulatory response mechanisms, we complement this research by addressing the question of how crises in general—and COVID-19’s physical distancing measures in particular—shape entrepreneurial opportunities for social innovation. Based on two rounds of data collection—desktop research mapping out 95 entrepreneurial activities in Germany and four focus groups—we find first that entrepreneurs are proactive agents in alleviating the negative consequences of the COVID-19 crisis. They do so by creating two types of digital social innovation: digital brokering and digitized services. Second, we note that negative societal consequences of crises can be buffered by shifts in entrepreneurs’ strategic orientation through improvised venturing, rapid pivoting and pro-social product extension. Third, we note variance in the persistence of changes with consequences for entrepreneurial opportunities and social innovation: Whereas some social innovation are rather ephemeral, others might endure and promise long-term impacts. We offer key insights for the literature on crisis, social innovation and hybrid organizing as well as on the implications for entrepreneurship practice and policy.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate the nascent market settings from a business model innovation perspective with the research questions: How do incumbents and start-ups make sense of an emerging technology through business model design in a nascent market setting, and how does business model choice influence firm performance? Design/methodology/approach The authors have tracked the development of four case companies in the nascent electric vehicle market from 2009 to 2018 and have conducted interviews and analyzed the archival data. Findings The authors propose a typology of business model choices and performance where the four types of business models distinguish themselves by how the companies innovate or imitate the value proposition of the current industry as well as how they innovate or imitate the business model archetype. In accordance with these different business model choices, the actors express different logics behind their new to the product market space business model choice. These logics represent different understandings of technology potential, customer needs as well as potential for value capture and contribute to and limit the translation of emerging technologies into dominant designs in diverse ways. Originality/value The business model is conceived as a focusing device that can be used to identify market applications for emerging technologies. As new disruptive technologies often require a new to the product market space business model, literature has in recent years put a premium on business model innovation. However, the linkages between emergent technologies and the choice of a novel business model are under investigated especially in relation to how business model choice affects business performance in nascent market settings. This paper aims at filling this gap.

Balancing social and economic missions in the pursuit of growth is one of the greatest challenges faced by social ventures. Although social ventures strive for growth to scale their social impact, pursuing growth often results in mission drift and the sacrifice of social objectives, which in turn eventually undermine the ventures’ raison d’être. In this study, we investigate how and with what outcomes social ventures that pursue growth can manage the balance of social and economic missions. Through a comparative case study of six for-profit social ventures, we find significant differences in how dual missions are selected, connected, and intertwined, leading to varying degrees of mission spillover effects between social and economic missions. Our findings show that two-sided mission spillover effects are a central mechanism in dual mission management, enabling social ventures to pursue balanced growth, avoid mission drift, and achieve social impact. With these findings, this study adds to the emergent literature on social entrepreneurship, dual mission management, and social venture growth.

International awareness and demands for sustainable development have pushed the sustainability narrative into the forefront of the United Nations&rsquo, Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). As a result, the call for sustainable business practices has never been greater. While businesses are both needed and eager to contribute to sustainable development, current literature lacks insights into how businesses can practice sustainability. This paper aims to fill this gap and develop an understanding of the different categories of sustainability practices that firms adopt, and the potentials and challenges associated with them. Based on a qualitative multiple case study, we identify four categories of sustainability practices including inspiring and informing, productizing, co-creating and system building. We integrate these findings into a sustainability maturity typology, proposing that these four practices are associated with an increasing intensity of sustainability intention, so that firms realize increasing levels of sustainability in the focal business practices as they move from inspiring and informing through to system building. The article concludes by arguing that there is no generic &ldquo, one size fits all&rdquo, approach to support sustainability practices as approaches need to fit a firm&rsquo, s sustainability maturity.

Research on societal grand challenges has become a major theme in management research. Societal grand challenges require joint efforts by private, public, and social sector organizations and are described in the framework of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). One major contributor to this framework are social entrepreneurial ventures. Aligning their interventions and indicators with the SDGs can provide them with great benefits such as facilitating resource mobilization and increasing legitimacy among stakeholders. The majority of research on SDGs tends to understand the SDG framework as inherently good, as a powerful compass and narrative to create social value and take action. However, taking-for-granted that social entrepreneurial ventures readily materialize the SDGs seems to neglect the question of whether they accept the framework and how an utilization may differ among them. Drawing on qualitative interviews of 15 social entrepreneurial ventures, we address this gap and identify three distinct types of SDG utilization, namely SDG evangelism, SDG opportunism, and SDG denial. Our study contributes to research on the intersection of social entrepreneurship and societal grand challenges by uncovering the roles of resourcefulness and deviance in SDG utilization. Furthermore, we identify trust between the United Nations and social entrepreneurial ventures as a determinat for SDG utilization and provide several practical implications.

Purpose Since Sarasvathy’s (2001) research on decision-making logics of expert entrepreneurs, effectuation has become a cornerstone in entrepreneurship education. Effectuation is not only subjectified in entrepreneurship education, but has also become conceptualized as a method in the learning process. The purpose of this paper is to explore how students, who are novice entrepreneurs, react to working effectually and which barriers they face when applying effectual decision-making logics in a university course. Design/methodology/approach A student-centered process course in entrepreneurship with 142 students provides a unique opportunity to explore the phenomena. Participant/teacher observations, written and oral work from the students and finally formal and informal written evaluations of the course by the students provide comprehensive data. Findings The authors find that students experience three barriers to using effectuation. These are: noviceness, regarding the project as a “school project,” perceived lack of legitimacy of both the instructors and the process. Originality/value The contribution of this study is threefold: first, to contribute to the understanding of the applicability of effectuation for novice entrepreneurs in the classroom; second, to articulate the factors that hinder entrepreneurial learning when effectuation is used in a process course; and third, to shed light on the importance of contextual factors for individual learning.

Purpose The purpose of this article is to highlight the key points for succeeding with the freemium business model in online digital business from a strategic point of view. The freemium business model has recently become one of the most dominant business models in online markets. However, entrepreneurs and managers still have a limited understanding of why some freemium business models become successful and sustainable while others do not. Design/methodology/approach The findings and recommendations derive from the study of online digital companies and applications, which either succeeded or failed to develop a sustainable freemium model. These are LinkedIn, Spotify, Box, Eventbrite, Chargify, Gasketball and TravelCrony. Findings The article describes the generic strategy and the key strategic choices that enable and support successful freemium business model execution in an online digital business. Research limitations/implications The research is limited to digital companies applying a freemium business model and offering their products and services online. Practical implications The findings and recommendations can help new and existing companies, first, to evaluate if the freemium business model is feasible for them, and second, to adjust strategies to develop a successful freemium business model and scale it up. Originality/value The article extends the current understanding of the freemium business model logic.

Responses to climate change have shifted significantly towards renewable energy, even while progress remains slower than predicted. Improving advances here requires joint efforts by private, public and social sector organizations. Yet, many of these collaborations fail or fall short of their potential. This in-depth case study of the electric vehicle infrastructure provider Better Place finds that creating successful stakeholder commitment across sectors has a paradoxical outcome. While collaboration allows for resource mobilization and legitimacy creation as theorized in prior literature, this contribution uncovers two types of tension related to gaining stakeholder commitment which lead to negative organizational outcomes: flexibility-stakeholder commitment tensions and learning-stakeholder commitment tensions. The article contributes to environmental entrepreneurship literature by showing how successful partnership creation can limit the creation of sustainable solutions to extensive environmental challenges; and it proposes how new forms of organizing can assist environmental entrepreneurs in creating the impact they wish to achieve.

Management and health care literature is increasingly preoccupied with leadership as a collective social process, and related leadership concepts such as distributed leadership have therefore recently gained momentum. This paper investigates how formal, i.e. transformational, transactional and empowering, leadership styles affect employees’ perceived agency in distributed leadership, and whether these associations are mediated by employees’ perceived organizational efficacy. Based on large-scale survey data from a study at one of Scandinavia’s largest public hospitals (N = 1,147), our results show that all leadership styles had a significant positive impact on employees’ perceived agency in distributed leadership. Further, organizational efficacy related negatively to employees’ perceived agency in distributed leadership; however, a mediatory impact of this on the formal leadership styles-distributed leadership relationship was not detected. These results emphasize the importance of formal leaders to enhance employee involvement in various leadership functions; still, employees might prefer to participate in leadership functions when they perceive that the organization is struggling to achieve its goals.

This article examines the relationship between transformational, transactional, and empowering leadership and the innovative behavior of public sector employees. Instead of investigating their association individually, this article focuses on the interaction between different types of leadership. The analysis is based on a survey from one of Denmark’s largest hospitals (n = 1,647). The main result is that empowering leadership, which focuses on employee capacity, moderates the association between transformational leadership, which is directed at motivation, and innovative behavior. The findings emphasize the importance of not only focusing on a single leadership style but also understanding how they work in combination.

Business models are a current hot topic, and their design has become a keyto performance. In fact, business model design is often associated with innovation.Many firms, though, fail to realize the full potential of their current business modelsimply because they are not aware of it. Nevertheless, Google succeeded in realizingits business model’s full potential by offering its main service, Internet search,completely for free while capturing value from secondary opportunities such asGoogle AdWords. Especially for new ventures and SMEs, capturing value from secondary opportunities or business model sophistication is of critical importance toward increasing the pool of resources at hand and giving momentum to the firm’s development. But what are these opportunities, and where can they be found? Based on various examples including Google, Ryanair, the Super Girl Contest on Hunan TV, and Spreadshirt, this article develops a framework that introduces five business modelsophistication strategies: (1) uncover additional functions of your product, (2)identify strategic benefits for third parties, (3) take advantage of economies ofscope, (4) utilize cross-selling opportunities, and (5) involve users and the crowd. Allfive strategies place a strong emphasis on stakeholder commitment.

In e-business freemium business models have become legitimate. However, current research provides little insight on how the free and premium offering should be employed to lead to growth and success in the long run. The presented research aims to fill this gap by investigating how the property ‘free’ was employed in young entrepreneurial ventures’ business models in the initial life-cycle stages – opportunity recognition, market entry, and market exploitation. We find that various forms of freemium business models are employed through the initial life-cycle stages of a new venture for reasons of trial-and-error, learning, exploration, legitimization and resource acquisition. A freemium business model can also serve as a nascent business model, though without a sustainable monetization component, for finding a sustainable business model through a series of dynamic adjustments. With our findings we contribute to the business model literature in three ways: First, our empirical findings show the many-sidedness of the component ‘free’ in freemium business models. Free users are of importance for network building, exploration and exploitation and growth over time. Moreover, free users enable directly and indirectly further resource acquisition. Second, while previous literature has taken a static perspective, we contribute by illustrating the dynamic process of strategic business model design for growth. Finally, we introduce the concept of the nascent business model which is new to the literature. W e-biznesie modele biznesowe Freemium stały się legalne. Jednak obecne badania dostarczają znikomej wiedzy na temat sposobu w jaki oferta free i premium powinna być użyta, by w dłuższej perspektywie doprowadziła do wzrostu i sukcesu firmy. Prezentowane badanie ma na celu wypełnienie tej luki poprzez zbadanie, w jaki sposób cecha "free" została zastosowana w modelach biznesowych młodej przedsiębiorczości w początkowej fazie etapów cyklu życia – rozpoznaniu możliwości, wejścia na rynek, i eksploatacji rynku. Uważamy, że różne formy modeli biznesowych Freemium są stosowane w początkowych etapach cyklu życia nowego przedsięwzięcia z powodu prób i błędów, uczenia się, poszukiwania, legitymizacji i pozyskiwania zasobów. Model biznesowy Freemium może również służyć jako powstający model biznesowy, choć bez trwałego komponentu monetyzacji, może być wykorzystany w celu znalezienia trwałego modelu biznesowego poprzez serię dynamicznych zmian. Nasze ustalenia to wkład w literaturę dotyczącą modelu biznesowego na trzy sposoby: po pierwsze, nasze badania empiryczne pokazują wielowymiarowość komponentu "free" w modelach biznesowych Freemium. Darmowi użytkownicy mają znaczenie dla budowania sieci, poszukiwania i eksploatacji oraz rozwoju z upływem czasu. Ponadto, tacy użytkownicy umożliwiają, bezpośrednio i pośrednio, dalsze pozyskiwanie zasobów. Po drugie, podczas gdy dotychczasowa literatura prezentowała perspektywę statyczną, nasz wkład ilustruje dynamiczny proces projektu strategicznego modelu biznesowego na rzecz jego wzrostu. Wreszcie, wprowadzamy pojęcie powstającego modelu biznesowego, który jest nowy w literaturze.

One management challenge that differentiates social ventures from their commercial counterparts is combining a social mission with a commercial one. In pursuing dual missions, social ventures are c...

Sub-theme 27: Business Models and Strategies: Organizations and Alternative Forms of Organizing

In this research note we aim at clarifying the SLRs underlying approach and rational in order to discuss the challenges of using systematic literature reviews in the field of entrepreneurship. We describe three main challenges when undertaking systematic literature reviews in the field of entrepreneurship. First, identifying relevant research is very difficult in a field where there is definitional disagreement of phenomena and constructs is present. Second, due to the heterogeneity of the entrepreneurship field the specification of inclusion and exclusion criteria becomes an arduous task. Third, there is a tendency to be systematic in search but not in the analysis of the literature reviewed which leads to merely descriptive accounts of the literature. Based on these challenges we argue that more caution must be exercised both with respect to when we use systematic literature reviews and how we use them, and also in promoting SLR as a de facto standard of how to do literature reviews in the entrepreneurship field. We close this research note with some recommendations of when systematic literature reviews might have the potential to lead to independent contributions of its own.

Business model innovation is undoubtedly of strategic importance in innovation management. However, little is known on how in fact how companies experiment and innovate with regards to their business models. To shed more light on this issue, we have conducted a qualitative study of the newspaper industry in Denmark. Business model innovation became imperative for the traditional newspaper publishers after many years of the declining readership and revenues. We collected rich primary and secondary data from various sources during 2010-2012. Our analysis suggests that changing business models in its various parts does not guarantee a successful business model change and may even harm the existing well-functioning business model. To innovate a business model successfully, managers need to secure the business logic flow and its feedback loops.

This paper explores how success in legitimacy building can create restrictions and problems for new venture’s development in highly volatile settings. Through a longitudinal single in-depth case study in the nascent e-mobility market, we uncover unwanted effects of this process. In a nascent market entrepreneurs need to engage in legitimization activities targeted both at the emerging firm and the emerging industry in which it operates. The gaining of legitimacy from various stakeholders had two consequences: overconfidence which led to misunderstanding of commitment and a lack of learning as well as the loss of flexibility due to premature contractual and identity commitment. Through a longitudinal study, we illustrate how the gaining of legitimacy can blind entrepreneurs towards understanding their stakeholder’s motivations as well as their customer’s feedback, and highlights limits of the dynamic model of effectual transformation. We finish the paper by offering propositions for the refinement of effec...