Gendered language shapes entrepreneurial opportunities by influencing perceptions, evaluations, and access to resources. Women entrepreneurs face systemic disadvantages in fundraising and startup-growth opportunities, and linguistic bias might be one contributing mechanism. Yet entrepreneurship-specific dictionaries for studying such patterns remain limited. In this study, we develop and validate a gender-calibrated dictionary for examining gendered language in entrepreneurship. Drawing on startup accelerators’ calls for applications across five global regions (North America, Latin America, Africa, Asia, and Europe), and survey data from entrepreneurs and non-entrepreneurs, we created and validated an entrepreneurship-specific dictionary of stereotypically feminine and masculine-coded words. We benchmark our dictionary against established general-purpose gendered language dictionaries, demonstrating its domain specificity. We illustrate its application by identifying five methodological implications for entrepreneurship research, including: 1) enabling studies grounded in entrepreneurship-specific language rather than tools borrowed from adjacent fields; 2) revealing cross-regional variation in word interpretation; 3) uncovering mismatches between inclusive language and organizational practice; 4) offering vignette-based tools for experiments related to gender; and 5) enabling the integration of semantic meaning and word structure. Together, the dictionary and these illustrative applications offer scholars a context-specific tool for studying gendered language in entrepreneurship and provide practitioners with guidance for evaluating inclusive communication materials.Read the Signals, Change the System: Diagnosing Gender-Coded Language in Entrepreneurship.Entrepreneurship ecosystems often present themselves as meritocratic spaces where the best ideas win. Yet the language used to describe opportunities, whether in accelerator calls, startup competitions, or funding programs, can implicitly signal who is expected to participate. Words emphasizing ambition or competence, often interpreted as of masculine nature, can appear more or less significantly than words such as collaboration or support, often interpreted as of feminine nature. Word choice shapes how opportunities are framed and how entrepreneurs, as the audience of such communication, interpret whether they belong in entrepreneurship ecosystems. If accelerators, incubators and similar organizations are truly serious about broadening participation, the first step is to identify the gender signals embedded in opportunity descriptions.This paper contributes to this aim by introducing a validated dictionary designed to categorize gender-coded language in startup accelerator contexts. Developed from a large corpus of accelerator calls across multiple world regions, the dictionary enables systematic analysis of gendered language in entrepreneurship discourse. It provides researchers with a transparent way to examine patterns in entrepreneurial opportunities, while offering accelerator managers and ecosystem builders a practical tool to audit and reflect on the language used in their own programs. Reading these signals is not the end goal; it is a starting point for designing genuinely inclusive entrepreneurial opportunities.

Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice (ETP) is committed to advancing transparency, replicability, credibility, and rigor in research. To support this commitment, we encourage authors to preregister their research plans, submit empirical studies as Registered Reports, and engage with our evolving editorial processes, such as Registered Revisions. Drawing on practices across multiple disciplines, we offer guidance for integrating these publication formats into our field. We also provide multiple resources to support authors in adopting these approaches and to address the unique challenges of applying such formats to, for example, secondary data. By more widely embracing the Registered Report approach, we envision a future for entrepreneurship research that is characterized by greater credibility, replicability, transparency, and scientific impact. In this editorial, we motivate and, hopefully, guide future work by making a specific call for manuscripts for a virtual special issue of ETP focused on Registered Reports, strengthening ETP's longstanding commitment to methodological innovation. We offer a prospective vision-what we believe would be good for future literature-and our aim is to empower scholars to proactively shape new theoretical and empirical foundations in entrepreneurship research that enhance the credibility and replicability of entrepreneurship research.

Across two studies, preregistered via the Open Science Framework (OSF), we examined whether a stronger growth-oriented mindset of frugality (i.e., believing that the ability to be frugal is a more malleable, versus unchangeable, characteristic) positively relates to entrepreneurs' adaptive responses to setbacks in the context of resourcefulness. In Study 1 (N = 709) and a self-replication in Study 2 (N = 281), we found support for proximal psychological mechanisms predicted by mindset theory. Namely, a stronger growth mindset of frugality predicted entrepreneurs’ lower negative affect, higher expectations for future success, and more mastery-oriented coping in response to a past setback. We conclude with a discussion of implications and new directions for research concerning the psychological determinants of responses to setbacks for entrepreneurs.

We highlight the role that psychological reactance via the underdog effect (i.e., the need to prove others wrong) plays in eliciting direct and indirect entrepreneurial action. Drawing on psychological reactance theory (PRT), we examine how negative socio-emotional stimuli can result in a strong individual motivation for entrepreneurs to persist with their ventures. Further, we highlight entrepreneurial hustle (direct action), entrepreneurship-related media engagement (indirect action), and obsessive thinking (indirect action) as mediating mechanisms linking the underdog effect to venture persistence. We test our theory-driven model across three studies. Findings from two quasi-experiments (Study 1, N = 424; Study 2, N = 579) which include 15 post-hoc interviews with entrepreneurs as part of Study 2, as well as a time-lagged mediation model (Study 3, N = 417), provide strong evidence consistent with the inference that venture persistence is closely linked to the underdog effect. We discuss multiple theoretical and practical implications that our work illustrates, and we offer numerous future research directions. Executive summary: Persistence is widely recognized as an essential quality for entrepreneurs to have, yet existing research primarily focuses on positive motivators such as passion, self-efficacy, and entrepreneurs' identity. Far less attention has been directed to how negative socio-emotional experiences, like doubt or discouragement, can also fuel entrepreneurial persistence. We add to our understanding of entrepreneurial persistence by elaborating on and testing theory related to underdog entrepreneurs. Specifically, we address the cognitive and self-regulatory aspects of entrepreneurs' motivation from seemingly disempowering external forces, and we explore how entrepreneurs' responses to such negative feedback can drive sustained action. Across three empirical studies and 15 interviews of entrepreneurs, we apply Psychological Reactance Theory (PRT) to explain how individuals are motivated to restore their freedom to act when they feel that their desired behavior is threatened (e.g., doubts of being a successful entrepreneur). We find strong support for our theory-driven model, showing that negative stakeholder feedback can elicit an "underdog effect," motivating entrepreneurs to prove others wrong and ultimately leading to sustained entrepreneurial action (i.e., venture persistence). We find that this motivational process is influenced by the perceived credibility of the naysayer, where low perceived credibility relates to even higher levels of one's desire to prove the naysayer wrong. Finally, in testing our model, we show how the underdog effect translates to sustained action through the conceptual mediators of direct and indirect entrepreneurial action. Here, we highlight entrepreneurial hustle as a proxy of direct entrepreneurial action, and entrepreneurshiprelated media engagement and obsessive thinking about entrepreneurship as two indirect actions linking the underdog effect to venture persistence. Overall, our work provides a new motivational lens for understanding why and how entrepreneurs persist with their ventures. Findings from three empirical studies and a post-hoc analysis highlight how entrepreneurs' internal socio-affective responses towards adversity (i.e., external sources of disempowerment) can become a powerful motivational force to persist. Rather than discouraging entrepreneurs, we find evidence that underdog expectations can cause "boomerang effects" in entrepreneurs' behavior and ultimately sustain their determination to become successful entrepreneurs. This nuanced theoretical approach provides an extension to current theory on underdog entrepreneurs and a more complete view for how entrepreneurial motivation relates to entrepreneur action and venture persistence.

The present work is a registered report 1 focused on a replication and extension of the findings in Dimov and Shepherd (2005). Our work tests the hypotheses from the original article in an expanded industry context and with an updated sample. The wider sample includes low- and medium-tech industries, and an expanded time frame as opposed to the original sample based on the high-tech wireless industry in a 5-year span. We used the same estimation technique (OLS regression) from the original article but also expand on it by using multivariate regression and seemingly unrelated regression to model multiple outcomes simultaneously as well as negative binomial analyses to accommodate the count nature of outcome variables—initial public offerings as home runs and bankruptcies as strike outs. We also model more fine-grained outcomes of venture capital (VC) investments (underpricing, 180-day return, market value). Our findings support the inference that general human capital has a significant effect on investment success measures. Furthermore, the findings align with predictions about the relation between general and specific human capital in reducing measures of investment failure. Our replication and extension efforts are crucial in advancing the literature with regard to four key points. First, we find that the types of human capital vary in their influence on VC-related outcomes. Second, by examining alternative measures of VC-related outcomes, we illustrate that the effect of human capital on VC outcomes varies depending on the measure of outcome. Third, our results suggest that the relation between human capital and VC-related outcomes varies by industry type and time to exit. Fourth, our reexamine of the findings from Dimov and Shepherd (2005) seems to illustrate support for hypotheses that were unsupported in the original study.

The opaqueness of author naming and ordering, when coupled with power dynamics, can lead to a number of disadvantages in academic careers. In this commentary, we investigate gender differences in authorship experiences in a large prospective meta-analytic study (k = 46; n = 3,565; 12 countries). We find that women’s and men’s authorship experiences differ significantly with women reporting greater prevalence of problematic behaviors. We present seven actionable recommendations for improving the receipt and reporting of intellectual credit. Such actions are needed to ensure fairness in authorship, which is one of the most powerful factors in academics’ career outcomes.

While we understand the importance of entrepreneurs listening to stakeholders, we lack a sufficient theory-driven understanding of why some entrepreneurs and their ventures can listen to their stakeholders more effectively than others. We offer a listening model of venture growth based on listening theories and the literatures on new ventures and capability development. Listening is initially facilitated by entrepreneurs' cognitive and behavioral processes, but continued venture growth creates a paradox for entrepreneurs. Listening to stakeholders may also deplete entrepreneurs' personal resources, diminishing their listening capacity. This paradox can be overcome by generating their ventures' listening capability—behavioral routines and attention structures for listening—enabling them to acquire and interpret quality information from stakeholders more effectively to build or adapt the capabilities necessary for venture growth. The ventures' listening capability acts as a dynamic capability, which itself can be dynamic. This listening model of venture growth contributes to the entrepreneurship literature on stakeholders, entrepreneurs' abilities, and ventures' capabilities and dynamic capabilities. Executive summary Entrepreneurs need to acquire resources from stakeholders to create and grow their ventures. Therefore, stakeholder enrollment is a critical task for entrepreneurs. The predominant research on stakeholder enrollment has been on entrepreneurs' overt behaviors to secure the support of stakeholders—a unidirectional communication pattern in which entrepreneurs communicate to audiences and stakeholders listen to and decide whether to commit their resources to ventures. However, entrepreneurs need to communicate and listen to their stakeholders. Although scholars recognize the importance of entrepreneurs listening to stakeholders, we lack sufficient understanding of why some entrepreneurs and their ventures can listen to their stakeholders more effectively than others and thus acquire and use stakeholder support critical for venture growth. Therefore, we ask, Why are some entrepreneurial actors more effective at listening to stakeholders than others?To address this question, we integrate theories of listening and the literatures on new ventures and the creation of organizational capabilities to develop a listening model of venture growth. This model explains the importance and the limitations of entrepreneurs' listening ability in acquiring and interpreting stakeholder information for venture growth. Venture members can learn from and formalize entrepreneurs' listening ability to build ventures' listening capability, which overcomes the entrepreneurs' listening limitations. Ventures' listening capability includes acquiring and interpreting stakeholder information to inform and/or change additional capabilities critical for venture growth.Specifically, the model begins with communication from stakeholders to an entrepreneur and their venture. The entrepreneur engages cognitively in listening to the stakeholders' communication and acquiring and interpreting this stakeholder information. The entrepreneur also listens behaviorally, providing back-channeling that encourages the stakeholders to share more high-quality information. The entrepreneur's listening ability can enhance and change the venture's capabilities. However, the entrepreneur's ability to notice and interpret stakeholder information is limited. Other venture members can learn the entrepreneur's cognitive and behavioral listening to represent an organizational-level listening capability. This listening capability is reflected in the venture's routines and attention structures.The venture's listening capability can build and adapt the venture's nonlistening capabilities. The venture's capabilities drive venture growth. Because the listening capability generates and enables the interpretation of more high-quality stakeholder information, the venture can use this information to change its capabilities to obtain or maintain a tight fit with a changing environment. In doing so, the venture's listening capability represents a dynamic capability—listening can change the venture's capabilities.As the venture grows, the strain on the entrepreneur's listening ability further constrains the entrepreneur as a source of information for building and adapting the venture's capabilities. Venture growth also stretches the venture's listening capability, leading to changes in this listening capability and thus building and adapting the venture's nonlistening capabilities for subsequent venture growth. Venture growth can also lead to an increase in stakeholders and, thus, more stakeholder information to be noticed and interpreted by the venture's listening capability and to adapt the venture's nonlistening capabilities if necessary.With this work, we make three primary contributions to the entrepreneurship literature: We provide theoretical insights into (1) the workings of entrepreneurs' listening ability for promoting venture growth; (2) entrepreneurs' learning from their listening ability and formalizing this ability into organizational capabilities, which is critical for information to enact nonlistening capabilities for venture growth; and (3) a venture's listening capability as a dynamic capability.

Researchers have widely acknowledged entrepreneurial alertness (EA) as one of the most influential aspects of the key concept of opportunity recognition. Systematic literature reviews and meta-analysis have demonstrated quite unambiguously that alertness leads to entrepreneurial actions, which facilitates the overall entrepreneurial process. In this paper, we provide an overview of the extant research on EA. We also introduce the seven new papers included in this special issue of Asia Pacific Journal of Management on entrepreneurial alertness. These manuscripts offer a broad range of novel insights into the conceptualization, measurement, and nomological network of, as well as the antecedents and consequences of, EA in the context of the Asia Pacific region. We also discuss common themes and directions for future research on EA.

The prevalence of loneliness is rising, with both individual and societal costs, including a substantial mental health toll. Perhaps not surprisingly, given this upsurge, research focused on loneliness is proliferating. Of particular interest are the characteristics of lonely individuals and where to intercede to reduce loneliness. Interventions often focus on enhancing social skills, providing social support, offering opportunities for social interaction, and addressing maladaptive cognitions. In the current study, we seek to add to the literature on the importance of beliefs by focusing on individual differences in the meaning assigned to the nature of loneliness. Specifically, we investigate mindsets, first developing and validating a new Mindsets of Loneliness Assessment Tool (M-LAT) across two studies (N = 243; N = 382) using primarily university students. Analyses revealed four factors, which we call Lonely Attribute Mindset (LM_Attribute), Lonely People Mindset (LM_Person), Loneliness as Enhancing Mindset (LM_Enhancing), and Loneliness as Debilitating Mindset (LM_Debilitating). Lonely People and Debilitating Mindsets tended to correlate the strongest with social and psychological wellbeing. We discuss the need for future work investigating if mindset interventions targeting both of these types of mindsets can be leveraged to improve wellbeing, especially in the face of loneliness.

Despite many calls, functional brain magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies are relatively rare in the domain of entrepreneurship research. This methodological brief presents the brain-imaging method of resting-state fMRI (rs-fMRI) and illustrates its application in neuroentrepreneurship for the first time. In contrast to the traditional task-based fMRI approach, rs-fMRI observes the brain in the absence of cognitive tasks or presentation of stimuli, which offers benefits for improving our understanding of the entrepreneurial mind. Here, we describe the method and provide methodological motivations for performing brain resting-state functional neuroimaging studies on entrepreneurs. In addition, we illustrate the use of seed-based correlation analysis, one of the most common analytical approaches for analyzing rs-fMRI data. In this illustration, we show that habitual entrepreneurs have increased functional connectivity between the insula (a region associated with cognitive flexibility) and the anterior prefrontal cortex (a key region for explorative choice) as compared to managers. This increased connectivity could help promote flexible behavior. Thus in brief, we provide an exemplar of a novel way to expand our understanding of the brain in the domain of entrepreneurship. We discuss possible directions for future research and challenges to be addressed to facilitate the inclusion of re-fMRI studies into neuroentrepreneurship.

Entrepreneurship has entered a new era shaped by artificial intelligence (AI), demanding accelerated scholarly advances to keep pace with this transformative technology—yet this demands that academics bridge the gap between the AI revolution’s ambiguities and meaningful scholarly contributions. To motivate and guide future research on AI’s transformative role in entrepreneurship, we introduce an ongoing special issue in Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice ( ETP) and outline multiple compelling opportunities for future research. Unlike typical editorials, we offer a prospective vision—rather than retrospective, after the articles have been accepted and published—at this project’s outset, to empower the field to prospect and establish new scholarly foundations in the relatively uncharted world of AI in the domain of entrepreneurship. Accordingly, we highlight the “AI PEN” (Prospecting and Establishing Nexus) as a desirable research approach to advance this literature going forward. We hope, and anticipate, that our invitation to submit proposals to this special issue facilitates novel empirical as well as theory-focused contributions to the literature.

There is debate in the literature regarding when impression management motivates networking performance for self and others, and how well individuals perform tasks when the driving motivation is to look good. We take a novel approach to this quandary, integrate social exchange with sensemaking theories and research, and examine how networking group characteristics enable entrepreneurs to make sense of, and interpret, their collective environment and subsequently determine how they should behave to look their best. We identify collective altruism as an important group characteristic affecting how impression management tactics influence entrepreneurs’ willingness to help fellow group members. Findings from a sample of entrepreneurs ( n = 189) engaged in Business Network International (BNI) groups ( k = 24), illustrate that the relationship between entrepreneurs’ exemplification and the revenue they generate for others’ ventures and their own was more strongly positive when collective altruism was higher. Similarly, the effects of entrepreneur supplication and intimidation on revenue generated for others’ ventures were positive in groups with higher collective altruism. We discuss implications for theory and practice.

How are entrepreneurs able to optimize their ability to persuade angel investors to commit resources? Narrative transportation theory suggests that familiar elements of a story can change an audience's perceptions of, and attitudes about, the opportunity by influencing their cognition. When experiencing the effects of narrative transportation, individuals are “transported” into the story and begin to accept the narrative world as created by the story in lieu of personal knowledge, experiences, or real-world facts. In an entrepreneurship context, we posit that if investors are narratively transported through a familiar pitch narrative, they may envisage a favorable outcome of what is pitched and adapt the opportunity in their minds with the result of, ultimately, committing resources. The findings from our study of investors who watched and reported on multiple pitches suggest that cognitive processes induced by narrative transportation explain the relationship between familiarity and entrepreneurial opportunity adaptation, which—in turn—increase the likelihood of angels' resource commitment. The key insight of our study reveals that when the investors are mentally transported into the story contained within a pitch narrative, they will be more likely to adapt the opportunity and more likely to commit their resources.

Network positioning is a critical factor in achieving success in entrepreneurship. The position of network structural holes involves bridging gaps between unconnected groups and bestows social capital and brokering advantages. Although research suggests that certain types of individuals may be more likely to take advantage of structural holes, limited research has examined how personal tendencies are linked to structural hole occupancy. Drawing on a synthesis of socioanalytic theory and a social network perspective, findings from a study of 233 entrepreneurs engaged in 24 business networking groups confirm that structural hole occupancy is positively linked to venture performance and that entrepreneurs perceived to have egotistical tendencies are more likely to seek out social ties that facilitate structural holes. The results extend social network perspectives on entrepreneurship by suggesting that those perceived to have egotistical tendencies gain success by seeking out strategic relationships. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.

In this special issue, we aim to explore the topic of rationality and its manifestations in entrepreneurship. The six articles in this special issue cover a range of questions about rationality – what it is, where it comes from, how it influences decision-making as well as understanding contextual factors that influence it. Reflecting our call for submissions as well as the accepted articles included in this special issue, we recognize, but also depart from, rationality's origins in economics to provide a range of perspectives on rationality in the entrepreneurship process. We also discuss common themes and future research directions for the field.

The first communication an entrepreneur often has with a potential investor is submitting a one-page executive summary for consideration. Subsequently, the potential investor or investment group chooses which venture ideas to further consider by inviting a pitch deck or an actual business pitch. This investment funnel is competitive and, accordingly, anything we as scholars can share with entrepreneurs seeking advice about how to optimize that initial executive summary to increase chances of getting to the pitch would be immensely valuable. Unfortunately, scant research has focused on this opportunity-introduction stage, and there is precious little we can prescribe for entrepreneurs seeking investment. To address this, we developed four executive summaries that varied only in the type of capital mentioned. We found that executive summaries that mentioned human capital more prominently were viewed as more cognitively legitimate and as deserving of a higher opportunity-recognition valuation. Put succinctly, consistent both with our theorized findings from our Open Science Framework preregistered experiment (N = 367) and with our qualitative follow-up study, we found that human capital signals have a greater positive influence on potential investors’ decisions relative to social capital, intellectual capital, and financial capital. We discuss the practical and theoretical implications of this novel insight and include prescriptive recommendations for entrepreneurs.

As growth mindset interventions increase in scope and popularity, scientists and policymakers are asking: Are these interventions effective? To answer this question properly, the field needs to understand the meaningful heterogeneity in effects. In the present systematic review and meta-analysis, we focused on two key moderators with adequate data to test: Subsamples expected to benefit most and implementation fidelity. We also specified a process model that can be generative for theory. We included articles published between 2002 (first mindset intervention) through the end of 2020 that reported an effect for a growth mindset intervention, used a randomized design, and featured at least one of the qualifying outcomes. Our search yielded 53 independent samples testing distinct interventions. We reported cumulative effect sizes for multiple outcomes (i.e., mindsets, motivation, behavior, end results), with a focus on three primary end results (i.e., improved academic achievement, mental health, or social functioning). Multilevel metaregression analyses with targeted subsamples and high fidelity for academic achievement yielded, d = 0.14, 95% CI [.06, .22]; for mental health, d = 0.32, 95% CI [.10, .54]. Results highlighted the extensive variation in effects to be expected from future interventions. Namely, 95% prediction intervals for focal effects ranged from -0.08 to 0.35 for academic achievement and from 0.07 to 0.57 for mental health. The literature is too nascent for moderators for social functioning, but average effects are d = 0.36, 95% CI [.03, .68], 95% PI [-.50, 1.22]. We conclude with a discussion of heterogeneity and the limitations of meta-analyses. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

It is intuitively appealing and common in the literature to describe social ties as one large category that represents multiple constructs which have similar relations across operationalizations. However, that approach does not capture the nuance in the literature and might obscure notable differences between subjective and objective network tie measures, and how those differences extend to relations with venture-level outcomes. Drawing upon novel objective measures of network ties derived from analyses of entrepreneurs’ Gmail data, we offer an empirical assessment of subjective social ties relative to objective social ties. In examining how those assessments relate to multiple metrics of venture performance, we look at both subjective and objective measures. We find that objective network measures predict overall subjective (but not objective) venture performance at an average of r = .31 (for network size) and r = .29 (for network engagement). We delve into the implications of our work, and discuss how future research can progress more effectively and efficiently with an eye towards the practical usefulness of our findings for entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship service organizations.

Entrepreneurship involves cooperative efforts in which multiple stakeholders and resources are brought together to develop a valuable product or service. Accordingly, one key process through which entrepreneurs make progress exploiting their opportunities is by identifying, selecting, enrolling, and coordinating a network of stakeholders. However, although there is a widespread realization that bringing new ventures to life requires multiple stakeholders, precious little academic research has taken a holistic approach to stakeholder engagement. In this special issue we: (a) suggest that stakeholder theory provides a novel lens for viewing the critical entrepreneurial behavior of engaging stakeholders—and taking shared responsibility for an unmet opportunity, (b) describe the intriguing articles that encompass this special issue, and (c) offer our thoughts on directions for future research at the intersection of stakeholder theory and entrepreneurship.