Abstract Research Summary This conceptual study develops a process theory of vulnerability acceptance explaining how trust and behavioral uncertainty coevolve as entrepreneurial actors form, interpret, and realize opportunities. Trust is frequently invoked to explain creativity, exploration, and opportunity formation, yet remains theorized through predictability and evaluability, which entrepreneurial opportunities often lack ex ante. We distinguish three forms of vulnerability acceptance: uncertainty creating, releasing, and decreasing trust. Each transforms the uncertainty it engages, which in turn reinforces or unsettles that form, so no form is terminal. Their salience shifts across opportunity formation, interpretive recombination, and realization, and misalignment between a form and the conditions it confronts impairs entrepreneurial progress. Trust thereby becomes a means through which epistemic conditions are produced, not only a response to them. Managerial Summary Entrepreneurship exposes forms of vulnerability that cannot be explained by risk‐based models of trust alone. Entrepreneurs often face the practical question: “Trust them to do what?” The answer depends on the kind of agency they are willing to be vulnerable to, and it changes as an opportunity takes shape. That may mean backing people to take the work somewhere no one can yet specify, relying on others' expertise to make sense of what is emerging, or counting on them to deliver what was agreed. Trust is therefore not only a way of reducing uncertainty but a means of transforming it, and progress depends on recognizing when the prevailing form fits the conditions and when it does not.
In markets where consumers seek both novelty and familiarity in products, entrepreneurs generate prototypes that embody novel ideas but are often filtered out before market release. We propose that these discarded prototypes constitute reservoirs of novel product content that can later be repackaged in more acceptable ways to decision makers and consumer audiences. To evaluate this argument, we analyze the genealogy of U.S. primetime television series from 1955 to 1995, tracing how novelty flows across both broadcast series and unsold pilots. The results show that, conditional on launch, series whose novelty derives more from unsold pilots than from prior series achieve greater market success. These findings support the argument that discarded products can serve as 'hidden' repositories of innovation, shaping future outcomes through recombination and reframing. We discuss implications for entrepreneurship research, emphasizing how creators need to position and frame novelty to gain gatekeeper support and how gatekeepers can avoid systematically undervaluing novel recombinations.MANAGERIAL SUMMARY This study examines how ideas abandoned during product development can become a source of competitive advantage. Our analysis shows that unsold television pilots contain more novel content than aired series, and using novel content from these pilots results in greater audience viewership. Broadly, this suggests that early-stage concepts that do not advance can still inform effective product positioning. For managers and entrepreneurs, the opportunity lies in reusing novel features from these prior efforts and presenting them in ways that make their value recognizable to decision makers. This requires repositioning the idea and explaining why it is more compelling in the current context, how potential risks have been reduced, and what conditions make adoption timely.
Research Summary This paper assesses the ways in which carbon dioxide removal ventures frame their work. Drawing on George Herbert Mead's philosophy of the present, it conceptualizes temporal grammars of novelty as a framing strategy that involves connecting two points in time, namely present and future, to elaborate novelty. Dictionary, dependency parsing, and large language model approaches trace the use of temporal grammars of novelty across the websites of carbon removal companies in the market, and connect this to venture sales volumes. Analyses show that ventures deploying newer technologies and using temporal grammars of novelty have higher sales. In contrast, explicitly causal language does not prove beneficial. This paper addresses a fundamental problem in conceptualizing novelty by arguing that it is referential without being causal, and shows this with reference to the framing strategies deployed by environmental entrepreneurs.Managerial Summary Carbon removal entrepreneurs must convince buyers that novel, often unproven technologies are credible. This paper shows that how they talk about time matters. Analyzing website language and sales across carbon removal ventures, it finds that firms using more speculative technologies sell more when they link present action to future possibility: what they are designing, building, or deploying now, and what this will make possible later, at scale. By contrast, causal language-detailed claims about why or how specific features will produce outcomes-is not helpful and is negatively associated with sales. When framing novelty, pairing present action with future promise is more credible than over-specified causal certainty.
Research Summary The literature on the strategic role of ownership in creating firm value suggests that owners' ultimate decision-making authority allows them to align their firms' strategic orientations with their idiosyncratic judgment. By integrating the strategic ownership literature with social role theory, we theorize how women owners' gender-based judgment influences owner teams' strategic choices depending on the level of ownership (i.e., decision-making authority) collectively held by women owners. Our empirical evidence, based on 42,667 European firms, suggests that greater ownership among women is associated with less risky strategic choices and a stronger social value-creation orientation among owner teams. These relationships are partly contingent on whether or not women hold a block majority. Our findings contribute to the strategic ownership literature and advance research on women's entrepreneurship.Managerial Summary In this study, based on 42,667 European private firms led by owner teams, we investigate how women's ownership affects owner teams' strategic choices. Consistent with established behavioral differences between men and women, we find that greater decision-making authority held by women owners is associated with less risky strategic choices and a stronger social value-creation orientation among owner teams. These associations, to varying extents, are contingent on whether or not women on the team collectively hold a block majority. Our findings help owner teams reflect on how the gender composition of their teams and the distribution of decision-making authority among owners jointly shape strategic choices. We also provide investors with new insights into how different ownership structures ultimately influence firms' broader strategic orientations.
Research Summary Research has long emphasized entrepreneurs' status as a driver of philanthropy. Extending this literature, we examine how status inconsistency-misalignment among perceived economic, social, and political status-is associated with entrepreneurs' philanthropic contributions. We develop two theoretically grounded but competing interpretations: compensation, which suggests that entrepreneurs may increase giving to offset perceived status imbalance, and resentment, which suggests that perceived imbalance may dampen prosocial engagement. Using a national survey of Chinese private entrepreneurs supplemented with qualitative interviews, we find that while higher perceived status in individual dimensions is positively associated with philanthropy, inconsistency across these status dimensions is, on average, negatively associated with it. Moreover, entrepreneurs from farmer backgrounds, compared with those from upper-class origins, exhibit patterns consistent with stronger compensatory giving. These findings underscore the nuanced implications of multidimensional perceived status for entrepreneurial philanthropy.Managerial Summary Entrepreneurs' philanthropic behavior depends not only on how high their perceived status is but also on how consistent it is across different domains. When entrepreneurs experience status inconsistency-for example, being economically successful but perceiving weaker social or political standing-this imbalance may be associated with either efforts to compensate through giving or feelings of resentment that suppress it. Overall, entrepreneurs with unbalanced perceived status tend to give less, yet those from lower-class backgrounds are more inclined to donate in ways consistent with status-balancing motives. Our study highlights how the interplay of economic, social, and political status perceptions relates to entrepreneurial philanthropy.
