People are choosing to pursue entrepreneurship as a career at increasing rates; yet, we lack an overarching conceptualization of entrepreneurial career success. Instead, scholars rely on a fragmented set of measures and outcomes, limiting cumulative knowledge about the factors that shape persistence and long-term success in entrepreneurial careers. To address this gap, we integrate career success and entrepreneurship research to develop a multidimensional model of entrepreneurial career success. Drawing on an empirically validated multidimensional framework from career literature, we organize the variety of individual success measures that have been used in the entrepreneurship literature, distinguishing entrepreneurial career success from related constructs such as venture performance and well-being. We further identify entrepreneurship-specific dimensions, including legacy and venture satisfaction, that reflect the heterogeneity of entrepreneurial careers and extend existing career success models. Using the ability-motivation-opportunity (AMO) framework, we review antecedents of entrepreneurial career success and suggest patterns of relationships with different objective and subjective success dimensions. We conclude by presenting an integrative model of antecedents, mechanisms, and boundary conditions to guide future research on entrepreneurial career success.

Highly educated refugees who have been uprooted from their country of origin often struggle to secure employment that matches their abilities. Overcoming this sudden loss of achieved work identity is crucial for refugees’ future well-being and integration in the host country. In this study, we identify the behavioral and cognitive practices used by highly educated refugee entrepreneurs to resolve the incongruence between their selves and the host country environment and delineate core conditions that explain why only some complete these identity transformations successfully. Based on an in-depth ethnography at an incubator designed for refugees with entrepreneurial ambitions, we develop theory about how and when highly educated refugees’ past identities enable or constrain their ability to create new work identities in alignment with the new environment. Our findings reveal the critical role played by identity flexibility and a refugee’s attributions of premigration work attainments in this process. Surprisingly, we find that those who attribute prior career accomplishments internally—and are, thus, driven by self-perceptions of being resourceful and adaptive in the past—exhibit only limited identity flexibility. As a result, they struggle the most with reconstructing their identity in ways that aid their integration in the host country.

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

Why do some entrepreneurial ecosystems successfully adjust amid adversity while others languish? By integrating prospect theory into the entrepreneurial ecosystem literature and using a quasi-natural experimental design with a difference-in-difference-in-differences model, our theory and findings reveal that earthquakes reduce entrepreneurship in regions with high household savings, but increase entrepreneurship in regions with low savings, and these between-area differences increase over time. Reconceptualizing the meaning of savings from a resource into a key driver of loss aversion, we thus identify the surprising constraining influence of financial capital in times of adversity, yielding important implications for entrepreneurship research and policymakers. We find that regions with more household savings generate fewer startups after an earthquake. Thus, regional savings explain post-crisis differences in performance between entrepreneurial ecosystems, which is a surprising constraining influence of financial capital in times of adversity. This has important implications for entrepreneurship research and policymakers who seek to develop supportive policies to encourage entrepreneurship as part of broader economic recovery strategies after crises.

Identity work, the process through which entrepreneurs create a coherent and distinctive identity for themselves and their businesses, constitutes an important source of legitimacy. Yet while the ongoing social and spatial contexts in which entrepreneurs operate are increasingly viewed as critical contingencies for understanding their identity work, historical context is largely neglected. We focus on how entrepreneurs in the nascent start-up scene in Phnom Penh, Cambodia employ history in their identity work as they navigate a rapidly changing societal context. Based on three months of qualitative field research, our findings indicate that research participants distance themselves from the older generation by describing them as risk-averse, conventional and distrusting, while they embrace their own generation as innovative, globally oriented, and socially engaged. Through the articulation of these generational identity markers, young entrepreneurs construct and position themselves within a historical narrative of Cambodian development and, in turn, seek legitimacy for themselves, their business ventures, and the broader start-up scene. Our contribution lies in providing a more historically-sensitive understanding of entrepreneurial identity work, proposing generational identity work as a mechanism for entrepreneurs to gain legitimacy, and illuminating the importance of conceptualizing generations as social forces in entrepreneurship studies.

This virtual special issue includes research on the effects of crises, in particular the COVID-19 pandemic, on entrepreneurship, and entrepreneurial responses to deal with consequences of crises. This issue highlights how crises affect entrepreneurs' well-being and reinforce the importance of agency of entrepreneurs and other citizens. The special issue also highlights the need for resilience; the ability of entrepreneurs, organizations, and economies to absorb and adapt to shocks; and how it can be strengthened. We discuss the importance of data in times of crisis and the greater need for engaged scholarship.

This editorial aims to advance the use of qualitative research methods when studying entrepreneurship. First, it outlines four characteristics of the domain of entrepreneurship that qualitative research is uniquely placed to address. In studying these characteristics, we urge researchers to leverage the plurality of different qualitative approaches, including less conventional methods. Second, to help researchers develop high-level theoretical contributions, we point to multiple possible contributions, and highlight how such contributions can be developed through qualitative methods. Thus, we aim to broaden the types of contributions and forms that qualitative entrepreneurship research takes, in ways that move beyond prototypical inductive theory-building.

The question how decisions made by entrepreneurs affect their individual business ventures is essential to research in entrepreneurship. While knowledge on the role of entrepreneurial learning and habits (Aldrich and Yang 2014), the influence of uncertainty on organizing entrepreneurial activities (Alvarez and Barney 2005) and the role of past career practices on entrepreneurial decision making (Engel, van Burg, Kleijn and Khapova 2017) is widely established, yet little is known on how this applies to entrepreneurs “simultaneously owning and engaging in a portfolio of entrepreneurial interests” (Carter and Ram 2003, p. 374). As such, portfolio entrepreneurs are a distinctive group of habitual entrepreneurs whom received increased and sustained scholarly attention over the recent years (Wiklund and Shepherd 2003 and 2008, Baert, Meuleman, Debruyne and Wright 2016, Lechner, Kirschenhofer and Dowling 2016, and Cruz and Justo 2017). However, yet little empirical evidence exists to explain variation within this group of entrepreneurs (Kutzewski, Bahlmann and Stam 2020); nor do we know how and through which practices the formation of business portfolios is affected. We conducted research asking why, how and with what effect, portfolio entrepreneurs engage in their activities. To answer these questions, a comparative multi-case study design was chosen. The research unit comprised management decisions made by individual portfolio entrepreneurs. Based on a case sample comprising the explorative and exploitative activities of 21 portfolio-entrepreneurs with a combined portfolio of 129 companies, this research found ample evidence that various forms of intention (Why?), decision making and coordination (How?) exist simultaneously within the same portfolio (With what effect?). The result of this research contributes to our understanding of how entrepreneurial principles through which portfolio-entrepreneurs organize their activities affect the structure of venture portfolios.

We examine the demise of a multi-stakeholder network that was launched to promote an inclusive dairy market in Ethiopia to better understand why nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) may develop interventions in contexts of poverty that fail to endure after they exit. We identify organizational reflexivity – the capacity to recognize and understand the recursive interplay between an intervention and the local environment – as a key explanatory mechanism for this intervention outcome. Limited reflexivity not only prevented the NGO we studied from properly aligning the intervention with the context ( design failures), but also prevented the organization from adjusting its intervention when negative feedback emerged ( orchestration failures), which eventually evolved into the demise of the network ( maintenance failure). While our study confirms the theoretical premise that NGOs need to contextualize their interventions, we expand current knowledge by highlighting the role of organizational reflexivity in this process. Moreover, by showing how reflexivity deficits can trigger a cascade of failure, especially when intervening in voids where incumbent firms have interests in maintaining the void, our study calls attention to the politicized nature of institutional voids.

This study draws on resource orchestration theory to develop and test a framework that explains when the imitation of business models from other industries increases new venture growth. We propose that extra-industry business model imitation enhances growth when extra-industry business models are bundled together with novel technologies, and when founders possess the necessary industry experience to orchestrate these resource combinations effectively. Using a unique multi-source, time-lagged dataset of 122 Swiss technology ventures from four industries, we find support for our theoretical model and discuss its implications for research at the intersection of business models, competitive imitation, and resource orchestration.

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.

The successful identification and exploitation of commercial activities in a market place is demanding and subject to several potential pitfalls. However, some entrepreneurs choose to do so effectively on even more than one premise simultaneously. Prior research found evidence that many entrepreneurs deploy portfolio activities (Westhead et al. 2003), and that new high-growth ventures frequently arise through portfolio activities of portfolio entrepreneurs (Rosa and Scott 1999a). Furthermore, those portfolio ventures are more likely than both nascent and serial entrepreneurs to report high levels of exporting activities (Robson et al. 2012a), and innovation (Robson et al. 2012b). As a consequence, we need to understand what enables portfolio entrepreneurship (henceforth PE) to succeed. The literature has shown that PE is characterized by unique challenges related to the founding, growth and management of multiple ventures simultaneously (Carter and Ram, 2003). Therefore, it is critical to integrate existing knowledge on these challenges and ways that PE reconcile these challenges. However, prior work has most often focused on contrasting PE with other forms of entrepreneurship (Westhead et al. 2003). What we need is a dedicated review of the PE field that provides an understanding of antecedents, mechanisms and outcomes across the multiple levels within portfolio entrepreneurship.

This study draws on resource orchestration theory to develop and test a framework that explains when the imitation of business models from other industries increases new venture growth. We propose that extra-industry business model imitation enhances growth when extra-industry business models are bundled together with novel technologies, and when founders possess the necessary industry experience to orchestrate these resource combinations effectively. Using a unique multi-source, time-lagged dataset of 122 Swiss technology ventures from four industries, we find support for our theoretical model and discuss its implications for research at the intersection of business models, competitive imitation, and resource orchestration. “Picasso had a saying – ‘good artists copy, great artists steal’ – and we have always been shameless about stealing great ideas.” (Steve Jobs, Co-founder of Apple Computer) Strategy scholars are increasingly invoking the business model construct to understand how firms capitalize upon new market opportunities (Foss and Saebi, 2017; Zott et al., 2011). Defined as ‘the logic of the firm, the way it operates and how it creates and captures value for its stakeholders’ (Casadesus-Masanell and Ricart, 2010: 196), the business model represents a new facet of innovation (Chesbrough, 2010; Haefliger and Baden-Fuller, 2013) and captures attributes of real firms that have a ‘direct real impact on business operations’ (Massa et al., 2017: 76). Developing a business model is a key design challenge for any firm, particularly for new ventures that commercialize new technologies (Zott and Amit, 2007), and can entail significant risks (Teece, 2010). Understanding how new ventures can develop innovative business models that also facilitate growth is thus an important area of research. Recent research has suggested that “imitating”, “replicating”, or “copying” existing models may enable new ventures to develop innovative business models (Baden-Fuller and Morgan, 2010; Casadesus-Masanell and Zhu, 2013). Besides the anecdotal evidence indicating that business models are frequently replicated (Chesbrough, 2010), however, most work has focused on how firms can prevent imitation of their own models (Teece, 2010). By contrast, there has been little research on whether business model imitation is a performance-enhancing strategy in its own right. This is surprising, because ‘especially founders of new firms search widely for examples of other business models from which to copy elements’ (Amit and Zott, 2015: 339). Given the prevalence of business model imitation in business practice and the limited research on its consequences for performance (Foss and Saebi, 2017), there is thus a strong need for systematic research that clarifies the impact of business model imitation on new venture growth. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lrp.2019.02.005 Received 6 July 2017; Received in revised form 11 January 2019; Accepted 19 February 2019 ∗ Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: karolin.frankenberger@unisg.ch (K. Frankenberger), w.stam@vu.nl (W. Stam). Long Range Planning xxx (xxxx) xxx–xxx 0024-6301/ © 2019 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Please cite this article as: Karolin Frankenberger and Wouter Stam, Long Range Planning, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lrp.2019.02.005 Although imitation lies at the heart of strategy research, existing theories offer conflicting predictions about its impact on performance (Posen et al., 2013). On the one hand, scholars have long argued that imitation is a strategy used by inferior firms to catch up with industry leaders (Porter, 1991), and that it only hurts performance by reducing firms' competitive differentiation (Deephouse, 1999). Indeed, new ventures that imitate existing business models are often criticized for lacking innovation and dismissed as “copycats” or “clone factories.” On the other hand, a more positive view of imitation is starting to emerge, with some even arguing that ‘imitation bests innovation’ (Flannery, 2010) and that ‘imitation is one of the shrewdest ways to become a successful entrepreneur’ (Moules, 2012). This research suggests that imitation is often partial at most and may actually improve a firm's performance (Posen et al., 2013; Shenkar, 2010). Given these conflicting views, this study seeks to improve our theoretical understanding of the link between business model imitation and new venture growth in two ways. First, prior research tends to assume that imitation occurs within a single industry and thus reduces firms’ competitive differentiation (Porter, 1991), thereby ignoring the fact that entrepreneurs often adopt novel business model rationales from other industries (Amit and Zott, 2015). While scholars have suggested that the risks and rewards of extra-industry imitation are greater than those of intra-industry imitation (Enkel and Mezger, 2013), they have yet to explore systematically how extra-industry business model imitation impacts venture growth. The first aim of this study is thus to extend prior work on intra-industry imitation by developing and testing theory about the impact of extra-industry business model imitation on venture growth. We posit that extra-industry business model imitation may bring new ventures a unique mix of novelty and legitimacy benefits that enhance growth. Second, prior work has paid little attention to the boundary conditions that govern when particular forms of business model innovation enhance firm performance (Foss and Saebi, 2017). It is important to identify such contingencies, because this can help us to reconcile conflicting findings in the field (e.g., Velu, 2015; Wei et al., 2014) and promote more theory-driven research (Massa et al., 2017). The second aim of this study is thus to develop and test a theoretical framework that clarifies how new ventures can successfully leverage extra-industry business model imitation for growth. To do so, we draw on the emerging “resource orchestration” perspective in resource-based theory (Sirmon et al., 2011), which maintains that the conversion of a venture's resources into higher performance is dependent upon on how these resources are configured and deployed (Sirmon et al., 2007; Wales et al., 2013). We propose that extra-industry business model imitation leads to increased growth when the replicated business models are combined with novel technologies and when the founders possess the industry experience needed to orchestrate these resource bundles effectively. We thus extend prior work on resource orchestration that has highlighted the potential value of bundling resources (Baert et al., 2016; Carnes et al., 2017) by revealing the critical role of founders' career experiences in realizing the value created by combining extra-industry business models with novel technologies. In pursuing these two aims, we address Foss and Saebi (2017) call for more systematic research on how entrepreneurs can develop innovative business models and on the boundary conditions governing their performance outcomes. By drawing on resource orchestration theory to explain when extra-industry business model imitation leads to higher growth, we heighten theoretical understanding of the contingent value of imitation for developing performance-enhancing business models in the new-venture context (Amit and Zott, 2015). Theory and hypothesis development First, we briefly review the literature on business models and competitive imitation, before theorizing about the link between extra-industry business model imitation and venture growth. We then introduce resource orchestration theory to develop a contingency framework that clarifies how new ventures can better leverage business model imitation to achieve growth. Business models as profit-related attributes of real firms Recent years have seen the emergence of a rapidly-growing but fragmented literature on business models (Foss and Saebi, 2017; Zott et al., 2011). This research views the business model as a key design challenge that involves the making of numerous design choices in relation to firms' value propositions, modes of value creation, and value capture strategies (Chesbrough, 2010; Teece, 2010). Reviewing this literature, Massa et al. (2017) identify three major interpretations of the business model construct, ranging from business models as attributes of real firms to business models as cognitive/linguistic schemas or as formal conceptual representations. In this paper, we interpret business models as “attributes of real firms” and focus specifically on profit models, i.e., simplified representations of a firm's logic for generating revenues and earning profits (Casadesus-Masanell and Zhu, 2013). Researchers who follow this interpretation classify business models as archetypes—basic configurations of firm attributes designed to create and capture value—and study their differential impact on firm performance (Casadesus-Masanell and Zhu, 2013; Zott and Amit, 2007). In the case of profit models, well-known archetypes include “razor and blade”, “subscription”, “freemium”, or “pay as you go” (McGrath, 2010; Teece, 2010). Given that imitation involves a firm's attempt to appropriate the attributes of another firm (Posen et al., 2013), conceptualizing business models as profit-related attributes of real firms is consistent with our focus on business model imitation. The specific case of business model imitation is thus based on the assumption that business models are observable firm attributes that can be subject to imitation. This assumption appears particularly reasonable in the case of profit models, which are easier to observe and understand than the other more detailed, causally-ambiguous activities and processes that underlie a firm's business model (Casadesus-Masanell and Zhu, 2013). One potential criticism of our focus on profit models is that it only represents a partial view of business models, as it seems to K. Frankenberger and W. Stam Long Range Pla

Social networks affect firm performance by providing access to valuable resources. One way to build a social network is to enter into a business incubator. In this paper, we study the relationship between the founders’ perceived value of their intra-incubator social network, their actual intra-incubator social network, and firm performance. In addition, we study how these effects are moderated by: a) the entrepreneurial experience of the founder, b) the dynamism of the market in which the firm operates, c) the age of the firm, d) the size of the firm, and e) the amount of time the firm has been located in the incubator. Finally, while prior studies do not systematically distinguish between different dimensions of intra-incubator networks, we explore how our findings differ when distinguishing between 7 key dimensions of intra-incubator networks: 1) ideas for product development, 2) information about market trends, 3) how to manage my company, and information about potential new 4) colleagues/personnel, 5) customers, 6) suppliers, and 7) investors.

This study advances research on networks and innovation of entrepreneurial firms by examining how industry-level alliance networks influence the optimal configuration of entrepreneurs’ personal networks. Specifically, we hypothesize that new venture innovation increases when entrepreneurs form managerial ties to either firms with brokerage positions in the industry’s alliance network (i.e., “brokers”) or firms that have no alliances (i.e., “isolates”). We also argue that a focal venture’s alliance network centrality increases the innovation benefits of managerial ties to brokers, yet diminishes the value of managerial ties to isolates. Implications for research on networks and innovation in entrepreneurship are discussed.

Drawing on a multi-method case study of a development organization that worked for an inclusive dairy value chain in Ethiopia, this paper examines the role of Network Administrative Organizations (NAOs) in building multi-stakeholder networks to address social challenges in emerging markets. We highlight how NAOs promote the exchange of knowledge as well as the development of the governance capacity among network participants by organizing event-series. We further identify the boundary conditions for the success of these activities. Not only are internal and external network legitimacy relevant as existing literature suggests but we also found that the legitimacy of the NAO itself is critical for explaining the efficacy of multi-stakeholder networks. Overall, this article contributes to the literature on cross-sector collaborations by uncovering the evolution and outcomes of purposefully engineered multi-stakeholder networks by NAOs.

This study extends research on business model innovation by examining under what conditions new ventures gain performance benefits from imitating business models that originate from other industries. We propose that extraindustry business model imitation particularly improves performance when entrepreneurs have access to complementary assets that allow ventures to successfully adapt copied business models to the focal industry. Accordingly, we theorize that founders with prior industry experience will reap greater and more sustainable performance benefits from business model imitation than inexperienced entrepreneurs. Using a unique multi-source, time-lagged dataset of 122 Swiss ventures from four industries, we find support for our theory.