Establishing legitimacy is a key goal for new ventures. Entrepreneurs can establish legitimacy for their new ventures by attracting financial backing from investors and using those funds to build value into ventures. The professional communication-focused behavior of delivering an entrepreneurial pitch to potential resource providers represents one of the most important behaviors entrepreneurs engage in while developing a sustainable venture. Effective professional communication skills are essential not only to the development of entrepreneurs but also to those management and finance students destined to enter professional environments requiring interaction with entrepreneurs and start-up ventures. We present an assignment introducing management students to the concept of entrepreneurial pitch as a tool necessary for identifying and implementing legitimacy, framing, and entrepreneurial motivations. The pitching-failed-product-ideas assignment allows students to begin building skills necessary to communicate legitimacy of an organization to an audience of stakeholders and utilize entrepreneurial motivations of enthusiasm, preparedness, and commitment.

Business and professional communication courses hold special opportunities to contribute to students’ development of entrepreneurial mindsets through the use and extension of classical rhetorical theory and praxis. We situate pedagogical activities within the context of the entrepreneurial venture pitch by using Rhetorical Canons of invention, arrangement, style, memory, and delivery to develop oral discourse while recognizing and developing entrepreneurial mindsets. We utilize elements of entrepreneurial mindset development presented by Kuratko et al. and Daspit et al. to introduce business and professional communication instructors to cognitive, behavioral, and emotional aspects contributing to the establishment of entrepreneurial mindsets.

Constructs that are central to entrepreneurship like "opportunities" and "uncertainty" tend to be rather abstract to students and therefore tend not to be fully or well understood. We have increasingly rich and descriptive models for concepts like opportunity recognition, yet our methods for teaching them in the classroom are comparatively less rich. Games are the answer. A Connect-the-Dots card game allows players to immerse themselves in the creative struggles, cognitive processes, and related uncertainties described as being central to most models of opportunity recognition. This card game simulates and immerses students in Baron's (2006) "connect the dots" model of opportunity recognition, allowing students to see opportunities emerge from a complex pattern of changing conditions–changes in technology, economic, political, social, and demographic conditions - and their own education and experiences. With repeated game play, students can develop their capacities to deal with uncertainty and recognize opportunities.

The act of entrepreneurial pitching has achieved global recognition through popular media in television shows like Shark Tank and Dragon’s Den, online pitching platforms such as Global Pitch, Kickstarter, GoFundMe, and Indiegogo. and the social phenomena of global startup incubators and university pitching competitions. In many of these instances the fate of a seemingly promising startup depends on the entrepreneur’s ability to attract resources from strangers, quite often through the entrepreneurial pitch. The stakes are high, not just for the fate of a single new venture, but for the practice of entrepreneurship and our understanding of the processes entrepreneurs use to signal legitimacy to attract resources. We summarize the literature on entrepreneurial pitching research and identify several promising approaches for improving both practice and research in entrepreneurship.

Innovation is a crucial component for the growth and competitive advantage of organizations. Organizations today require effective processes of idea generation and implementation to remain relevant and competitive and, as a result, now search less for workers with highly specialized knowledge and more so for the ability to innovate. Students, especially business students who will lead the next generation of organizations, need to be better prepared with innovation skills to meet these requirements and to sustain successful careers. One promising approach for realizing these goals is design thinking. This article shows how design thinking can be incorporated through an adaptation of a design project experience created by Stanford University’s “d.school” into the undergraduate business classroom. This 1-hour, in-class exercise allowed students to apply design thinking principles that can contribute to their fluency in the design process and their skills in innovative thinking.

Purpose– The purpose of this paper is to explore the relationship between being a “great place to work” (GPTW) and firm performance. While lists such as the “Fortune 100 best places to work” were initially regarded solely as publicity vehicles for ranked firms, researchers have since tried to untangle the relationship between being a GPTW and firm performance, often by focussing on HRM systems and practices. In contrast, the study focusses on the valuable, rare, costly to imitate, and organization-exploitability aspects of being a trustworthy employer, place where workers take pride in their work and enjoy the people with whom they work.Design/methodology/approach– This study uses four distinct samples of firms drawn from Fortune’s best companies to work for,Glassdoor.com’sEmployees’ Choice Awards, Careerbliss.com’s 50 Happiest Companies in America, and Achievers.com’s 50 Most Engaged Workplaces Awards databases in a longitudinal design to compare performance attributes of listed firms to their respective industry peer groups.Findings– Being a GPTW is associated with greater productivity, growth potential, and higher operating profits.Research limitations/implications– Some GPTW firms are privately held and were excluded from analysis.Practical implications– Rather than focussing on individual HRM practices and techniques, employers may realize greater performance improvements by focussing on building a reputation as a trustworthy employer and fostering an environment where employees take pride in their work and enjoy working with each other.Originality/value– Other GPTW studies have focussed on HRM practices as antecedents to performance outcomes, which may not accurately reflect the attributes of the GPTW construct. This study focusses squarely on the underlying attributes of being a GPTW: employer trustworthiness, worker pride, and camaraderie and how they affect firm performance.

Entrepreneurship education is increasingly shifting from learning about entrepreneurship to developing entrepreneurial skills. One skill all entrepreneurship students need to develop is the ability to assess whether or not there is a market for their new product or service. Recent popular trade books like Eric Ries’s Lean Startup and Ash Maurya’s Running Lean provide insights into how to capture validated learning to determine what people really want. This experiential classroom exercise allows entrepreneurship students ranging from undergraduates to executive MBA candidates to go through an entire cycle of Ries’s build-measure-learn” framework that is central to the lean startup. This exercise consists of five modules—customer persona, value proposition canvas, experiment map, minimum viable product, and running the experiment—that can be completed over five lecture sessions. Students learn how to “run lean,” determine the market for a new product or service, and apply these skills later in new ventures or established firms.

This exercise integrates nicely with lean startup and business plan canvas material, but can also be used to teach traditional business plan concepts. It is optimally designed for an undergraduate Introduction to Entrepreneurship course over a 16-week semester. However, it can be altered to fit a shorter time frame -perhaps as short as six weeks -by reducing the number of opportunities considered in Stage 2, by combining Stages 1 and 2, or by reducing the run time in Stage 4. The exercise can also be easily altered to focus more heavily on specific topics such as entrepreneurial finance or marketing.

Supply chain risk management (SCRM) has become a differentiating competency as networks of interdependent organisations strive to manage and prevent supply chain disruptions. However, research examining cultural and behavioural factors that may improve SCRM practice is still scarce. Drawing on the knowledge-based view of the firm and using survey data from the Chinese electronics industry, this study examines the roles of learning orientation (LO) and supply chain integration (SCI) as complementary parts of a knowledge deployment process that facilitates SCRM. The study findings demonstrate that SCI partially mediates the relationship between LO and SCRM.

This article extends the management construct of cultural intelligence (CQ) to the entrepreneurship literature by examining CQ in the context of commitment to entrepreneurial education as a proxy for entrepreneurial intentions. Using a convenience sample of students enrolled in an entrepreneurship class, we investigated the relationships of international experience, CQ and commitment to entrepreneurial education. Our findings suggest international experience is positively related to CQ (H1) and CQ is positively related to commitment to entrepreneurial education (H2). Additionally, CQ mediates the relationship between international experience and commitment (H3). This research demonstrates the usefulness of CQ within the entrepreneurial context in the expanding global economy. Discussion and areas for future research focus on further testing of the proposed relationships in other entrepreneurial populations. Also, implications for entrepreneurial training and education related to increasing CQ through study and travel/living/working abroad should be explored.

Edith Penrose eloquently illuminated the challenge a firm’s managers face in productively applying their existing, finite human capital while simultaneously attracting and developing the new human capital needed for growth. The firm’s members must take time away from immediate productive output in the short term in order to realize the long-term benefits of greater productive capacity from human capital. In human capital –intensive firms, such as consulting and investment banking, the pressures and rewards for maximizing returns to existing talent can produce selfish behaviors that can hinder the hiring and development of new members and stand in the way of the firm’s long- term growth. In contrast, firms that can reign in selfish behavior and emphasize an altruistic approach to attracting and developing new members should be able to optimize short-term productivity and long- term growth. The forces of selfish and altruistic behaviors compete against each other to determine the ultimate form of the firm (selfish versus altruistic). Using a simulation program based in mathematical biology, this paper predicts and analyzes (1) the conditions under which selfish or altruistic individuals come to dominate firms and (2) how those outcomes affect firm growth.

Purpose – Intentions capture the motivational factors that influence a given behavior and indicate how hard a person is willing to try in order to perform the behavior. An individual's entrepreneurial intentions are a function of the perceived feasibility and desirability of engaging in a particular entrepreneurial behavior. Because they are perceptual factors, the processes of assessing feasibility and desirability of entrepreneurial behaviors tends to be limited to the cognitive abilities of the specific individual. The purpose of this paper is to use an experimental manipulation to illustrate to students how the simple act of planning can dramatically influence entrepreneurial intentions. Design/methodology/approach – This paper draws from two sections of undergraduate study-abroad students who developed a severe craving for American foods they missed. Both sections assessed the desirability and feasibility of a particular entrepreneurial behavior (organizing an event to get the missed food), but one section was provided with a half-hour of classroom time to plan for the event. Findings – The group of students who engaged in planning activities was significantly more likely to view the behavior as feasible and, in turn, had significantly higher intentions to engage in the behavior. This experiment provided a simple but powerful demonstration to students of how important a role planning plays in shaping entrepreneurial intentions. Originality/value – This study offers a pedagogy that uses students both as participants and the primary audience of a manipulation of perceived feasibility and entrepreneurial intentions. Conducting this simple experiment and sharing the results with students provides dramatic evidence of the power of simple planning.

We empirically examine whether a major government intervention in the small firm credit market yields significantly better results in markets that are less financially developed. The government intervention that we investigate is SBA guaranteed lending. The literature on financing small and medium size enterprises (SMEs) suggests that small firms may be exposed to a particular type of market failure associated with credit rationing. And SMEs in markets that are less financially developed will likely face a greater degree of this market failure. To test our hypothesis, we use the level of bank deposits per capita as our relative measure of financial market development, and we use local market employment rates as our measure of economic performance. After controlling for the appropriate cross-sectional market characteristics, we find that SBA-guaranteed lending has a significantly more (less) positive impact on the average annual level of employment when the local market is relatively less (more) financially developed. This result has important implications for public policy directives concerning where SBA-guaranteed lending should be directed.

Over the past several decades, information technology (IT) has enabled management innovations such as Business Process Reengineering, Knowledge Management, Inventory Management, Total Quality Management, Balanced Score Card, Customer Relationship Management, and Enterprise Resource Planning. Collectively these IT-enabled innovations represent a central phenomenon in the study of organizations and their performance. However, their potential influence on the literature (and vice versa) is not well understood. As such, their presumed contributions to firm performance have been difficult to isolate theoretically and measure empirically. Therefore, in this paper we study this co-evolutionary influence and interplay through a review of over 1,500 articles appearing in popular Management Information Systems (MIS) and Strategic Management journals and concurrent practitioner press releases and industry trade journals. Through this review, we identify a substantial interplay between phenomena and theory, which improves our understanding of the co-evolution of theory and practice. We offer a discussion of our findings and their implications for future research and practice.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to perform empirical tests to explore the influence of social integration mechanisms on organizations’ absorptive capacities theorized by Zahra and George.Design/methodology/approachThis study uses a cross‐sectional design to test the relationships between potential absorptive capacity, three social integration mechanisms (cross‐functional teams, participation in decision making, and self‐managing teams), and realized absorptive capacity, in a sample of 92 organizations that bid competitively to provide products and services to a US university.FindingsAn organization's use of cross‐functional teams is negatively related to its realized absorptive capacity and negatively moderates the relationship between potential and realized absorptive capacity. Self‐managing teams negatively moderate the relationship between an organization's potential absorptive capacity and its realized absorptive capacity.Research limitations/implicationsThe cross‐sectional design allows tests of relatedness but does not support cause‐and‐effect inferences.Practical implicationsManagers who follow the prescriptive implications of using social integration mechanisms to enhance their organization's absorptive capacity may actually hinder it. The type of social integration mechanism is an important consideration for managers of firm strategies.Originality/valueThis study extends and challenges the literature on absorptive capacity through its empirical analysis of the role of social integration mechanisms on an organization's absorptive capacity. Social integration mechanisms can have mixed moderating effects on the absorptive capacity development process, and potential absorptive capacity is not easily transformed into realized absorptive capacity. This study expands the context of absorptive capacity beyond R&D settings and incorporates a task environment that allows a direct linking of inputs and outputs.

Purpose– Research in strategic management has provided a wealth of contributions to the study of competition between firms, yet most strategic management theories were developed and refined for large firm contexts. This suggests the assumed theoretical relationships between strategy preference and performance may break down in the small business setting.Design/methodology/approach– The paper uses a data set from the National Federation of Independent Businesses to test hypotheses relating the strategy preferences of 754 small firms with the performance outcomes of survival and expected growth.Findings– Small businesses can focus on both survival and growth when they pursue competency-based strategies, but they risk their very survival when pursuing flexibility-based strategies. Virtually all small firms pursue strategies to compete, but some of the strategies they follow to pursue growth endanger their survival.Research limitations/implications– Because of life-cycle and resource endowment factors, researchers should carefully parse differences between large and small firms when studying the relationship between strategy preferences and organizational performance.Practical implications– Small business owners should be aware that their choices of strategies to pursue growth may lead to unintended consequences, such as the demise of their firms.Originality/value– The paper demonstrates to researchers and practitioners how strategic preferences that presumably allow larger firms both to survive and grow do not have the same effects for smaller firms. The paper establishes boundary conditions for the effectiveness of flexibility strategies on performance in terms of firm size.

PurposeThe past 25 years have witnessed a dramatic rise in the dominance of big‐box retailers in the global retail sector and the decline of small retailers. The purpose of this paper is to explore how the intensity of competition with big box retailers moderates the relationship of strategy choice to expected growth.Design/methodology/approachThis study uses cross‐sectional survey data from a group of 199 small retailers in the USA. Hypotheses are tested using linear regression of expected growth on the use of three growth‐oriented strategies. These relationships are subjected to tests of the moderating effect of direct competition with big box retailers.FindingsThis study shows that small retailers pursue strategies of offering previously unavailable goods or services, high quality, and better service to pursue future growth. The interaction effect of strategy with directness of competition with big box retailers, however, has a negative and significant effect on expected growth.Research limitations/implicationsThe data set is from 2003 and is cross‐sectional. Future research on small retailers' strategic preferences should reflect a more recent competitive landscape and employ longitudinal data sets to establish cause‐and‐effect relationships.Practical implicationsSmall retailers need to understand that the strategies they use to pursue growth essentially become strategies for mere survival when competing directly against big box retailers. One small retailer's growth strategy is another small retailer's survival strategy, depending on direct competition with a big box retailer.Originality/valueThis study provides support for the argument that small retailers should pursue growth‐oriented strategies that create value and differentiate them from big box retailers. Under direct competition from big box retailers, however, these growth‐oriented strategies seemingly become mere means for survival. Small retailers need to be aware of blind spots that prevent them from understanding strategy‐performance relationships.