PurposeMany entrepreneurs begin their careers as employees. This study aims to investigate the mechanisms through which employees acquire entrepreneurial capital through their employment experience. Specifically, the authors focus on opportunity prospection behaviors (OPB) - the cognitive and behavioral dispositions associated with discovering and acting upon entrepreneurial opportunities.Design/methodology/approachThe authors conducted a retrospective pretest-posttest survey of 326 Latin-American executives, measuring changes in OPB over a six-month period. Using structural equation modeling, the authors examined how organizational senescence (proxied by firm age) and proximity to the firm's founder (as a mechanism of behavioral imprinting) influence the development of OPB.FindingsThe findings reveal two key dynamics. First, organizational senescence is negatively associated with learning OPB, consistent with the view that bureaucratic structures constrain the acquisition of entrepreneurial behaviors. Second, employees' proximity to the founder significantly enhances OPB acquisition, suggesting that founder imprinting fosters entrepreneurial learning. Importantly, the authors find that social interactions with founders mediate the inverse relationship between the firm age and OPB learning, underscoring the role of entrepreneurial agency in counteracting the inertial forces of organizational senescence.Originality/valueThis study contributes to entrepreneurship and imprinting theory by showing that structural constraints and individual agency shape entrepreneurial learning within organizations. While older firms tend to discourage the acquisition of entrepreneurial capital, the founder's ongoing engagement with employees can counterbalance these effects through social learning and behavioral imprinting mechanisms. The findings offer theoretical and practical insights for sustaining entrepreneurial behaviors in aging organizations.

Research Summary This study examines how academic entrepreneurs refine business ideas in response to external critique and how these responses relate to performance. We develop a framework that links feedback (critique), business-idea changes (pivots), and performance, and test it using detailed data on external stakeholder feedback, changes to the business idea's core and periphery, and commercialization outcomes in 316 academic-led teams. We find that academic entrepreneurs frequently modify their business idea's core in response to negative feedback, and that core changes-rather than peripheral ones-are positively associated with commercialization. Challenging the idea that all entrepreneurs are inertial, we find that academic entrepreneurs both actively embrace and benefit from changes to the business idea's core. By tracing the feedback-response dynamics of business idea components, our study adds granularity to research on pivoting. Managerial Summary Entrepreneurs often face a choice between reworking the core of a business idea and making changes to its periphery. Analyzing 316 academic-led teams seeking to commercialize technologies using the Lean Startup Method, we find that academic-led teams frequently change their idea's core in response to negative feedback-and that only core changes, rather than peripheral changes, are linked to improved commercialization outcomes. Overall, the results show the effectiveness of the Lean Startup Method and demonstrate that focusing feedback on the core of the business idea is an effective way to provide feedback to academic entrepreneurs.

How can entrepreneurs protect their wellbeing during a crisis? Does engaging agility (namely, opportunity agility and planning agility) in response to adversity help entrepreneurs safeguard their wellbeing? Activated by adversity, agility may function as a specific resilience mechanism enabling positive adaption to crisis. We studied 3162 entrepreneurs from 20 countries during the COVID-19 pandemic and found that more severe national lockdowns enhanced firm-level adversity for entrepreneurs and diminished their wellbeing. Moreover, entrepreneurs who combined opportunity agility with planning agility experienced higher wellbeing but planning agility alone lowered wellbeing. Entrepreneur agility offers a new agentic perspective to research on entrepreneur wellbeing.

Purpose Environmental uncertainty (EU) and firm size (FS) generate inertial forces that can push small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to emphasize either exploration or exploitation. In this article, the authors explore how structural (e.g. formal processes, control and discipline) and social (e.g. employee support and decision-making involvement) managerial instruments counteract such inertial forces and enable SME ambidexterity. Building on the organization-context literature, the authors propose a model in which EU and firms' size moderate the relationship between structural and social managerial instruments on SME ambidexterity. Design/methodology/approach The authors examined a moderation model using surveys of chief executive officers (CEOs) and performance archival data from 237 Chilean SMEs. Findings The authors find that the positive effect of structure on SME ambidexterity decreases with FS. In contrast, social instruments have a positive effect on ambidexterity for larger firms, especially for those operating in uncertain environments. In cases in which EU and firms' size reinforce the exploration or exploitation tendencies of SMEs, structural and social instruments play a complementary role in achieving ambidexterity. Originality/value The authors contribute by proposing a contingent mix of structural and social instruments to enable SME ambidexterity. These results inform policymakers and SME managers by suggesting strategies to promote ambidexterity based on firms' size and EU.

Research Summary To explain heterogeneity in real options reasoning (ROR) across entrepreneurial ventures, we propose a microfoundational model to explore the relationships between a firm leader's search propensity, perceived uncertainty and the firm-level ROR-based behaviors. Using a panel survey of 134 founder-CEOs of new ventures, we find that founder-CEOs' search propensity is positively related to ROR-based behaviors in their ventures. Moreover, we find that founder-CEOs' perceived effect uncertainty is positively related to the ROR-based behaviors, but perceived response uncertainty is negatively related to the ROR-based behaviors, revealing the importance of considering distinct types of uncertainty in entrepreneurs' ROR. Our microfoundational model advances the ROR literature by delineating how individual-level factors may drive ROR in firms that face uncertainty. Managerial Summary Flexibility is key to startup success. However, entrepreneurs craft and embed flexibility to different degrees and under different situations. In order to explain this heterogeneity, we study the roles of entrepreneurs' individual characteristics. Particularly, we study search propensity and perceived uncertainty (distinguishing among different types) in relation to flexibility, formally known as real options reasoning (ROR). Analysis of 134 founder-CEOs of new ventures in Start-Up Chile showed that founder-CEOs' search propensity is positively related to ROR in their ventures. Moreover, founder-CEOs' perceived uncertainty is related to ROR in ways that depend on the type of uncertainty the entrepreneurs perceive; thus, not all types of uncertainties relate positively to ROR. Such findings carry managerial implications to those who want to understand why certain startups are more flexible.

We study how entrepreneurs and their well-being are impacted by crises and which entrepreneurs are able to safeguard their well-being. We examine the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic in a multilevel study of 3,149 entrepreneurs from 20 countries and draw attention to entrepreneur agility (flexible and adaptive action) both as a crisis response strategy and as a possible way for entrepreneurs to protect their well-being. We find that agile entrepreneurs, especially those that recognized new opportunities for their business in the pandemic, had better well-being during the pandemic (life satisfaction and vitality). Our findings offer further insights into agility as a response to adversity and whether it is enabled by cultural contexts supporting agility and entrepreneurs' human capital.

Rational heuristics or simple rules have been theorized to aid entrepreneurial decision-making in uncertain and dynamic environments. While theoretically appealing, prior research has not moved much beyond theorizing and making inferences using case studies. This paper quantitatively explores the validity of rational heuristics as a strategic tool for new venture performance. We model the way in which organizations create simple rules using a machine leaning algorithm that replicates the Bayesian updating process by which individuals craft simple rules for everyday decision-making. To contrast the effectiveness of our modeled rational heuristics, we compare our results against a traditional, expert judge based decision-making process. We find that rational heuristics are systematically more successful than experts in predicting new venture performance and can be applied in a quick and frugal manner, much like the theory predicts.

This paper studies the hypothesis-based probing of business opportunities known as the Lean Startup Method. It shines the spotlight on how early-stage venture teams engage with the method, and specifically how this process differs as a function of team composition. We use detailed longitudinal data on 152 NSF-supported founding teams that use the lean startup method over an entrepreneurial intervention period of eight weeks. Findings show that the execution of the method is positively related with objectivizing the perceived opportunity, as well as coming up with new hypotheses about portions of the perceived opportunity landscape not originally considered. The evidence also suggests that teams predominated with management experts are less likely to engage with the lean startup method, especially when many of their assumptions about the business opportunity remain untested. Paradoxically, it is these same teams that would be able to extract the most learning from use of the method if they engaged with it in the first place. This paper provides nuanced understanding of how the different steps of the lean startup method work, and how teams potentially differ in the use of this method.

This chapter by Michael Leatherbee and Juanita Gonzalez-Uribe addresses issues relating to the selection of entrepreneurs and their ventures for entry into accelerators. Commonly, accelerators select start-ups among a broader group of applicants. The assumption is that through the selection process, accelerators are able to discriminate between high- and low-potential start-ups. Thus, the expectation is that accelerators are an effective medium for capturing the upside potential of the select few start-ups that promise to deliver the highest value in the future. That upside potential may be materialized through attractive equity investments or increased socio-economic development, depending on the mission of the accelerator. Typically, the selection process relies on a set of objective criteria predetermined by the accelerator, which are applied by one or more entrepreneurship experts who act as judges or evaluators of the applicant pool. First the authors describe the different selection stages and methods typically managed by business accelerators. They then go on to explore the multiple important issues that must be taken into account when designing and managing selection processes. Comprehending these issues may help to understand the challenges and limitations of current selection methods, and to avoid potential pitfalls and unintended consequences.

This study focuses on the identification of business opportunities when entrepreneurs’ perceived level of environmental uncertainty changes. We suggest that within persons, exploration mediates this relationship and entrepreneurial self-efficacy moderates whether entrepreneurs explore more or less with increasing uncertainty. To test our moderated mediation model we conducted a monthly field study with 121 early-stage entrepreneurs. Multilevel regression analyses reveal that an increase in the level of perceived uncertainty within entrepreneurs predicted the identification of opportunities through exploration for entrepreneurs high in self-efficacy, but not for those low in self-efficacy. Entrepreneurial self-efficacy acts as a personal resource that helps entrepreneurs to transform increasing perceptions of uncertainty into exploration and opportunity identification.

This study investigates the antecedents of an entrepreneur’s day-level innovative behavior. Drawing on 2,420 data points from a 10-day experience sampling study with 121 entrepreneurs, we find that sleep quality is a precursor to an entrepreneur’s subsequent innovative behavior, in accordance with the effort-recovery model. Moreover, sleep quality is positively related to high-activation positive moods (e.g., enthusiastic, inspired) and negatively related to high-activation negative moods (e.g., tension, anxiety). Our multilevel structural equation model indicates that high-activation positive moods mediate the relationship between sleep quality and innovative behavior on a given day. These results are relevant for managing entrepreneurial performance.