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This editorial outlines our perspective on the state of literature as well as suggestions for new contributions to entrepreneurship research in the area of crowd-funded opportunities. Our aim is, first, to outline what we see as best practices for research on crowd-funded entrepreneurial opportunities. Second, we aim to solicit additional articles for the Virtual Special Issue (VSI) on “Crowd-Funded Entrepreneurial Opportunities” in Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice. In contrast to typical editorial articles associated with special issues, we take a prospective approach and outline what we hope (and expect) to see in the literature in the future. Put differently, we are not going to summarize a subset of articles that have been accepted for publication—rather, we are going to delineate the subset of articles to be written that we would, ideally, like to see submitted to top-tier entrepreneurship journals in order to advance the literature. Along the way, we will describe best practices that we anticipate can elevate research in this burgeoning area of inquiry.

Funding Information: We would also like to acknowledge valuable comments on previous versions of the paper from Douglas Cumming, Gokhan Ertug, Isin Guler, Sophie Manigart, Miguel Meuleman, Mike Peng, Brian Pinkham, and Ilan Vertinsky, as well as from the participants of the Academy of Management Meetings in Atlanta and the SMS Special Conference in Hong Kong, and the seminar participants at Aalto University, Copenhagen Business School, Erasmus University Rotterdam, and Tilburg University. Publisher Copyright: © 2021 The Authors Copyright: Copyright 2021 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved. Network status is generally considered to be a valuable firm asset; however, its effects are not well understood in the context of cross-border VC investments, as foreign VC firms can have different statuses in their home and host countries, and prior research has considered only the effects of home-country network status. Theorizing the importance of a foreign VC firm's network status in the host country for cross-border VC investments, we hypothesize a positive performance effect for network status in the host country. Furthermore, we theorize that the performance effect of a VC firm's network status in the host country is stronger in countries with weaker host-country regulatory institutions. We test these hypotheses using a global sample of cross-border VC investments and find support for our arguments.

MAULAN MUKAAN OA-ARTIKKELI. AVAA KUN ILMESTYY VIRALLISESTI Reflecting on common empirical concerns in quantitative entrepreneurship research, recent calls for improved rigor and reproducibility in social science research, and recent methodological developments, we discuss new opportunities for further enhancing rigor in quantitative entrepreneurship research. In addition to highlighting common key concerns of editors and reviewers, we review recent methodological guidelines in the social sciences that offer more in-depth discussions of particular empirical issues and approaches. We conclude by offering a set of best practice recommendations for further enhancing rigor in quantitative entrepreneurship research.

Firms have different ways of addressing issues emerging from outside their regular calendar-driven strategy processes. These practices tend to be unstructured, organization specific, and highly dependent on the characteristics of the strategic issues themselves. Building on three dimensions of cognitive load—intrinsic, germane, and extraneous cognitive load—we extend existing research on strategic issue management by showing how different team-level choices in strategic issue processing and organizational congestion interact in their effects on a firm's strategic issue management performance. Based on an in-depth analysis of all 92 strategic issue decisions in a large multinational firm during a three-year period, we find that organizational disturbances influence strategic issue initiation by top management, which in turn influences the quality of strategic issue management practices and subsequent performance outcomes. We conclude by providing recommendations for managers on how they can decrease the sensitivity of their companies' strategic issue systems to external disturbances.

Syndicating with prior partners through relationally embedded ties may be widespread, but not always optimal when investing across borders especially if few prior partners operate in the focal market. However, the substitutes of relational embeddedness for trust creation in cross-border partner selection are poorly understood. We develop and test a model of how relational embeddedness interacts with structural embeddedness and legal and normative institutions and how relational embeddedness and these three substitutes jointly affect cross-border partner selection in venture capital syndicates. We test the hypotheses in the context of cross-border venture capital syndication in 12 European countries. Our findings based on a case-control analysis suggest that although relational embeddedness is a key driver of future partnering, structural embeddedness and trust generating institutions such as high quality legal frameworks and industry associations facilitate cross-border partnering and diminish the need to rely on relationally embedded ties in cross-border partner selection.

Digital equity crowdfunding platforms have brought an unprecedented number of international investment opportunities to investors’ reach. Although most equity crowdfunding investments are still made domestically, cross-border investments often have a decisive role for campaign success. We therefore ask what drives cross-border investments and theorize how investors’ attention directs their investment choices. Using a unique dataset, we leverage several complementary approaches to show that companies’ ability to catch investors’ attention strongly drives cross-border investments. First, our campaign-level analyses highlight the importance of international visibility for receiving cross-border investments. Second, our dyadic investment-level analyses show positive effects of campaign visibility in investor countries and entrepreneur-investor co-nationality on tie formation. Third, our randomized field experiment shows that company-investor co-nationality increases prospective investors’ responsiveness to a cross-border investment opportunity.

If partnering with local firms is an intuitive strategy with which to mitigate uncertainty in foreign ventures, then why don’t organizations always partner with local firms, especially in uncertain...

Research summary: Prior literature drawing on the behavioral theory of the firm has not considered how resource constraints impact the direction of organizational change in response to performance shortfalls relative to aspirations. We argue that decreasing financial resources resulting from substantial performance shortfalls and the absence or availability of slack resources together affect the emphasis on different types of organizational change in response to performance shortfalls. Using data on the acquisition and divestment behavior of 530 companies in the information and communications technology sector from 1992 to 2014, we find that the frequency of resource-consuming acquisitions and of resource-freeing divestments are affected differently by performance below aspirations and that these relationships are moderated by the level of financial slack. Managerial summary: This paper examines whether firms respond to performance shortfalls with acquisitions or divestments. We argue and show that the closer the firm is to the aspired level of performance, the more likely it is to respond with resource-consuming acquisitions to close the performance gap, whereas the further it is from aspired performance, the more likely the firm is to respond with divestments to free resources. Financial slack weakens these relationships between performance relative to aspirations and acquisitions or divestments such that it increases the likelihood of a response through acquisitions while it reduces the likelihood of a response through divestments. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Research on the choice between alliances and acquisitions suggests that alliances are the preferred governance mode when information asymmetry increases information costs and the risk of adverse se...

Technological discontinuities pose serious challenges to top managers’ attention. These discontinuities, which often occur at the fringes of an industry, are usually driven by innovative and (often) venture capital-backed start-ups creating new products and transforming existing industries in ways that are difficult for incumbent managers to understand against the backdrop of their existing cognitive schemata. However, failing to appreciate and embrace successful technological discontinuities might endanger incumbents’ very existence. Extending the attention-based view, we explore whether and how interorganizational relationships guide top managers’ attention either to or away from technological discontinuities. We propose that homophilous relationships (e.g., alliances with industry peers) should exhibit a negative relationship with incumbents’ timely attention to technological discontinuities, whereas heterophilous relationships (e.g., with venture capitalists as a result of coinvestments) should exhibit a positive relationship. Furthermore, we hypothesize that the status of the partners strengthens the effect of homophilous and heterophilous relationships with the timely attention of top managers to technological discontinuities. Based on a longitudinal study of the incumbents in four information and communications technology industry sectors, we find that heterophilous ties through corporate venture capital (CVC), coinvesting with high-status venture capital firms, exhibit a strong positive relationship with timely attention. CVC, when it connects senior management to high-status venture capitalists through coinvestments, has a special role in directing top managers’ attention to technological discontinuities and ensuing business opportunities. Implications for the understanding of the role of interorganizational ties as structural determinants of top managers’ attention are discussed.

This paper reviews the literature on the emergence of industries and the theoretical and methodological approaches employed. The analysis reveals that industry emergence can be depicted as a three-stage process. In the first, initial stage, a disruption to the existing industrial order triggers the second, the co-evolutionary stage, which includes four sub-processes related to developments in technology, markets, activity networks and industry identity. The convergence of these sub-processes leads to the third stage, a growth stage and the birth of a new industry. While these three stages and the four sub-processes are well covered in the literature, the authors find that there is a lack of understanding in terms of the transitions between the stages, the interactions and interdependencies between sub-processes and moderating factors of industry emergence. Future research can bridge these gaps by exploring the different origins and initial conditions of industries, the processes and interactions in the earliest stages of industry emergence, and the role of facilitating and managing industry emergence. This implies a shift in the research focus from the industries that have emerged to the nascent processes of emergence.

Standards are central to many information technology (IT) applications, and the development processes for these standards play a key role in the evolution of information systems (IS). We model the development of IT standards by technology suppliers as a coevolutionary technological search process under supply-side network effects, and we examine how the characteristics of the standards development process influence its outcomes. In line with common intuition and prior research, we find that perfect coordination among suppliers generally facilitates convergence on the best available standard. However, for complex IT standards, we make a novel contribution and find that this “best available” standard may be inferior to alternative, undiscovered solutions because coordination may lead to an overly narrow search. Consistent with prior research, we also find that either highly influential organizations or highly influential alliances and consortia can coordinate standard selection in order to prevent network effects from generating lock-in to an inferior option and to help set the best of the known alternatives as the standard. However, in contrast to the previous literature, we find that when coordination is imperfect and controlled by a moderately influential organization or consortium, it may lead to a technological lock-in dynamic in which suppliers adhere to an inferior solution and are subsequently unable to reverse this commitment, even when a technologically superior alternative emerges later in the search process. Further, we reveal the following paradox involving intellectual property rights (IPR) and related imitation costs: Although imitation costs can lead to the emergence of multiple standards, thereby reducing social welfare in the short term, this effect may have long-term benefits by broadening the search for future generations of a standard.

We investigate how CEO entrepreneurial orientation affects firm value creation and how this relationship is moderated by three sources of CEO entrenchment. We conducted a longitudinal analysis of S&P 500 firms between 1999 and 2007, and, in line with our predictions, we found that CEO entrepreneurial orientation enhances firm value creation and that this positive effect is reduced when CEOs are entrenched (1) due to corporate governance provisions that protect them from the majority will of shareholders, (2) due to substantial ownership that provides them too much decision–making power, and (3) because their family has substantial holdings in the corporation.

Contributing to the literature on local bias and financial networks, we examine how direct and indirect network ties of financial intermediaries mitigate the effects of distance and preference for local investments. In our analysis of cross-border venture capital exits, we find that proximity within networks facilitates cross-border transactions, which suggests that network distance is an important dimension of distance in addition to its geographical and cultural dimensions. The results also suggest that network distance affects the reach and quality of mediated information: indirect ties to partners' partners, with their broad reach, facilitate the identification of investment opportunities, whereas direct ties, which have certification effects, facilitate quality assessment.

We extend the research on the drivers of holding period firm-level returns in private equity (PE)-backed buyouts by examining deal-, industry-, and macroeconomic-level drivers and their interaction. To conduct our study, we use a comprehensive and hand-collected dataset covering exited buyouts in the UK between 1995–2004, and we control for sample selection and investment risk. Our study shows that governance variables generally have a limited role in driving value creation but that use of a ratchet is positively related to both equity and enterprise value returns; we also find that leverage has a positive impact on median and top-quartile equity returns. Moreover, returns are driven by the size of the buyout and the acquisitions made during the holding period. With respect to macroeconomic and industry level factors, industry growth particularly drives buyout returns. However, the effect of industry growth is not uniform; its influence is particularly strong in insider-driven and divisional buyouts, in addition to top-quartile transactions.

We examine how determinants of absorptive capacity influence learning in alliances over time. Using longitudinal patent cross-citation data, we find an inverted U-shaped pattern over time that is influenced by firm-level and relational factors. Technological similarity only modestly increases learning in the initial stages of a relationship, but moderate levels substantially increase knowledge flows later in the alliance. High technological diversity is related to higher initial learning rates, but the effects diminish over time. Somewhat surprisingly, research and development intensity is negatively related to initial learning rates but has a considerable positive effect later in the relationship. We suggest that initial learning rates in alliances may be constrained by the capacity to absorb knowledge, while later-stage outcomes are constrained by exploitation capacity. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

While recent literature has advocated the transfer of venture capital (VC) practices and structures to corporate venture (CV) units, the wisdom of this advice has not been subject to rigorous empirical scrutiny. We test the implications of the VC model for CV unit performance using a longitudinal database combining survey, archival, and survival data on 95 CV units. VC model elements of high-powered incentives, autonomous organization, investment syndication, investment staging, and specialization were each associated with higher CV unit performance. Critically, different elements of the VC model predicted improvements in either strategic or financial performance in CV units. Survival of the CV unit was strongly associated with employing the VC model, partially mediated by enhanced performance. Copyright © 2009 Strategic Management Society.

Recent literature has advocated the transfer of venture capital (VC) practices and structures to corporate venture (CV) units but this advice has not been empirically validated. We test the perform...

Examining an increasingly prevalent but under-researched phenomenon, cross-border venture capital investments, it is observed that local venture capitalists typically invest first, followed by foreign venture capitalists in later rounds. A model is developed that explains the role of a domestic venture capital investor in attracting foreign investors and which also accounts for the impact of various circumstances on the importance of this role. In our model based on analysis of nine cross-border venture capital-backed companies, local venture capitalists have several important roles in increasing the venture's cross-border investment readiness including advice to operational management and contributing contacts and local market knowledge. The importance of these roles is mitigated if the entrepreneurial team is highly experienced or if the home market is not important for the venture. The prominence of the local investor has signalling value. Finally, the local investor's international social capital faci...

An increasing number of firms are making initial public offerings in foreign markets to circumvent constraints in the availability of capital and to provide an exit for their investors. However, previous research on foreign initial public offerings and their determinants is very limited. In this paper, we contribute to this literature by demonstrating that international experience of the management team and pre-IPO ownership by foreign investors are positively related to foreign initial public offerings. We test our hypotheses using data on initial public offerings of European companies from 1991–2001. The results support our hypotheses. The findings have important implications for entrepreneurs, investors, and public policy.

Policy makers have become increasingly concerned at the lack of risk capital available to new and early-stage entrepreneurial ventures. As a public response to a perceived market failure, several governments have set up programs to channel equity finance to capital constrained but high potential, young enterprises. Critically, government support is often directed through the agency of private venture capital funds. We examine the profit distribution and compensation structures used in these hybrid public/private funds. We appraise government policy makers’ ability to use these structures to improve the expected returns in market failure areas in order to attract private sector investors and professional managers to participate in these funds. The results derived from our simulation study suggest that such asymmetric profit sharing models can only resolve relatively modest market failures unless the programs also manage to attract highly competent investors who are able to produce above average gross returns in market failure areas.

Examining temporal patterns of interorganizational knowledge-flows, we find an inverted U-shape over time. R&D spending, industry relatedness, and relationship form influence both magnitude and tim...

This article proposes that the attention allocated by venture capitalists to portfolio companies impacts their performance. The article develops arguments for optimal portfolio size and for the moderating roles of syndication frequency and role. The hypotheses receive support from analyses employing longitudinal data of the leading U.S. venture capital firms. Our results indicate the value of venture capitalist involvement and give guidance for its optimal allocation and syndication.

Cross–border venture capital has become increasingly common in recent years. Little is known, however, about the antecedents of venture capitalists’ commitment to portfolio firms in international settings. We used a multiple case study to build a grounded model of interorganizational commitment in cross–border syndication networks. The model proposes that changes in a venture's prospects influence investors’ commitment levels. This relationship is amplified by the remoteness of the investor and is mitigated by the investor's embeddedness in local syndication networks and the relative investment size. The model contributes to the literature on cross–border venture capital and interorganizational commitment in international settings.

New ventures compete by creating innovative products. Liabilities of newness and inexperience, limited resources, rapid technological obsolescence and constantly changing market conditions often encourage new ventures to license other companies' technologies to complement and augment their internally developed innovations. Building on the knowledge-based view of the firm, we propose that the intensity of new ventures' use of inward licensing reflects the demands of their industries and competitive strategies. The results of an empirical study of 361 US new ventures show that industry characteristics and competitive strategy influence their inward licensing as a means of lowering costs and maintaining strategic flexibility while building their capabilities.

Despite of the significant role of informal venture capital in the financing of new entrepreneurial ventures, there is little research explaining the factors determining the propensity of individuals to make microangel investments. Building on two theoretical frameworks, a social psychological theory of planned behavior and an economic theory on the determinants of demand for risky assets in household portfolios, we develop a set of hypotheses predicting the propensity of individuals to make informal investments in new businesses owned by others. In our analysis we test whether the determinants of micro-angel investments are similar when investing in a business owned by a close family member versus more distant business. The hypotheses are tested using data from 6007 interviews of Finnish adults carried out in the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor program in 2000–2002. The findings show that the theoretical frameworks have more power in explaining investments in firms not owned by close family members. The study provides new understanding of the differences in the drivers of different types of micro-angel investments.

Many of the fastest growing global ventures are backed by cross-border venture capitalists. However, the role of foreign investors in internationalization has not been examined in prior research. To address this gap, we carried out a multiple case study to produce a grounded theory of the effects of foreign investors in new venture internationalization. Our findings suggest that foreign venture capitalists located in a venture's target market of internationalization can be valuable for the venture by legitimizing the unknown new venture in that market. However, foreign investors tend to drive portfolio companies towards their home markets, and the benefits may turn into disadvantages if the target market differs from the home markets of the foreign investors.