The Role of University-Industry Contract Research Narratives in Determining Resourcefulness

Narratives are an important facilitator of entrepreneurial resourcefulness. Specifically, entrepreneurial narratives are a conduit to persuade individuals to part with resources to support entrepreneurial action. We investigate the narrative discourse of university-industry contract research proposals. University-industry contract research depends on the individual academic’s decision to contract with the venture. Of particular importance, is the speed at which the academic decides to contract with the venture, which we define as speed to decision. Ventures that can increase the speed to decision are able to gain access to valuable resources quicker, which supports their orchestration. Utilizing Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) software, we explore the narrative content of 3,420 industry-initiated contract research proposals submitted to Scottish Universities to understand how the narratives of contract research proposals determines the speed of contract research acceptance or rejection (i.e., the speed to decision). Our findings reveal that contract research proposals associated with entrepreneurial-orientated language (EOL) and specific cognitive-orientated language (COL) determines decision-making speed which, in turn, determines contract research proposal outcome/acceptance. Additionally, the interaction effects of EOL and COL within contract research proposals influences decision-making speed. Our research imparts important contributions to entrepreneurship theory, as well as having practice and policy implications.