This article examines how entrepreneurs transform technology-based ideas into entrepreneurial opportunities through an inductive field study of six ventures. The observed difficulties of entrepreneurship promotion policies to spur technology-based ventures, has opened a debate on the need of tailored support mechanisms. Dominant perspectives of entrepreneurship that assume the ability of entrepreneurs to accurately plan the opportunity exploitation process, contrast with the limited certainty of technological ideas. This research uses the constructivist view to deepen in the complementary processes that are seen to support technology-based entrepreneur’s conceptualization of the opportunity into an objective reality. The results show how the iteration with knowledgeable peers and consensus building efforts are an essential part of the emergence of the opportunity, changing both entrepreneur's and stakeholders' perception of the initial idea. Consequently, results support the suitability, regardless of the context, to take appropriate measures to introduce social construction support mechanisms to foster technology-based entrepreneurship
A rigorous approach to discovering new opportunities will insure that ones that are a) boundary pushing and b) embraced by the company. The use of iterative deepening learning paradigm is key to this approach.
This article examines how entrepreneurs transform technology-based ideas into entrepreneurial opportunities through an inductive field study of six ventures. The observed difficulties of entrepreneurship promotion policies to spur technology-based ventures, has opened a debate on the need of tailored support mechanisms. Dominant perspectives of entrepreneurship that assume the ability of entrepreneurs to accurately plan the opportunity exploitation process, contrast with the limited certainty of technological ideas. This research uses the constructivist view to deepen in the complementary processes that are seen to support technology-based entrepreneur’s conceptualization of the opportunity into an objective reality. The results show how the iteration with knowledgeable peers and consensus building efforts are an essential part of the emergence of the opportunity, changing both entrepreneur's and stakeholders' perception of the initial idea. Consequently, results support the suitability, regardless of the context, to take appropriate measures to introduce social construction support mechanisms to foster technology-based entrepreneurship
A rigorous approach to discovering new opportunities will insure that ones that are a) boundary pushing and b) embraced by the company. The use of iterative deepening learning paradigm is key to this approach.
Oikos PRI Finance Academy 2015: Unpacking the Black BoxColin Habberton
This presentation was delivered on the 3rd June 2015 as a summary of the paper titled - 'Unpacking the Black Box: An investigaton into the decision-mkaing dynamics of South African institutional investors' - at the oikos PRI Young Scholars Academy hosted by Henley Business School at Reading University
David Rose provided an ovevriew of Governance with regards to Enterprise Architecture.
Presented at the first JISC Emerging Practices workshop (2012/03/29).
http://emergingpractices.jiscinvolve.org/wp/doing-ea-workshop/
Innovation is a practice, a mindset and a set of skills that can be consistently applied, perhaps not by everyone, but many skills can be practiced and strengthened to make you a better innovator.
In 2014, the New Jersey Innovation Institute (NJII) was formed as an NJIT corporation to act as the organizational centerpiece of the New Jersey Institute of Technology’s (NJIT) economic and technology development mission. NJII’s unique design and program scaffold serves as an agile, market-facing interface designed to transform intellectual capital into commercial success. Whether it’s working to solve the grand challenges shared across an entire sector or helping a single company find an innovative way to pursue a new product or market opportunity, NJII brings world-class intellectual and technological resources to bear.
Community Technology Leadership Program pilot kick-offGreg Laudeman
This presentation provides background, goals, structure, and tools for the Community Technology Leadership Program that Eduity is piloting in Chattanooga, with support from the Mozilla Foundation. Our goal is to create an "open source" that any community can implement.
Nikki Rogers provides an overview of her experience, one year on, of being an Enterprise Architect at Bristol University.
Presented at the first JISC Emerging Practices workshop (2012/03/29).
http://emergingpractices.jiscinvolve.org/wp/doing-ea-workshop/
To better prepare policy and decision makers in today’s complex and inter-dependent environments, FTA methods can play a significant role in enabling early warning signal detection and pro-active policy action. This paper analyses the use of different horizon scanning approaches and methods as applied in the SESTI project. A comparative analysis is provided as well as a brief evaluation of meeting the needs of policy-makers in identify areas of intervention by policy formulation. The paper suggests that the selection of the best scanning approaches and methods is subject to contextual and content issues. At the same time, there are certain issues characterising horizon scanning processes, methods and results that should be kept in mind by both practitioners and policy-makers.
In the search to find the winning formula, managing innovation is based on hard work and reliable data, not entirely on the practice, recognizing necessary but sufficient conditions and context. A set of propositions potentially lay the foundation for a review of the existing basis for measuring performance and success in delivering towards shareholder expectations in today’s knowledge era – however, how does existing concepts, methods, approaches, models, practices and theoretical constructs support investment decision-making for achieving maximum shareholder value and sustained business success, recognizing your specific business context, whether starting up, growing, mature or in turn-around.
Do great technological ideas make great business opportunities? Entrepreneur’...University of Stuttgart
Presentation at: 2013 IEEE International Technology Management Conference & 19th ICE Conference, At Den Hague.
How do technology-based entrepreneurs transform technological ideas into business opportunities? We explore how individual’s self-regulatory focus and institutional forces influence in the opportunity construction process. This research addresses the apparent paradox between the exploration efforts of the entrepreneur to find a use for the technological idea, with the institutional pressure advance to opportunity exploitation. We use an inductive multiple-case study with a sample of three technology-based entrepreneurs to shed some light on the phenomena. The results suggest that there is a two-stage process in the transformation of an idea into an opportunity; entrepreneur’s ability to moderate their self-regulatory focus is seen to play an important role in this process. These findings hold several implications for entrepreneurs and stakeholders interested in promoting technology-based entrepreneurship.
Corporate culture can be defined as the values, norms, attitudes and behavior patterns, that are shared within an organization [Herzog, 2011]. Corporate culture can be seen as the personality of a company that influences people's behavior within the organization, regardless of size and field of action
Oikos PRI Finance Academy 2015: Unpacking the Black BoxColin Habberton
This presentation was delivered on the 3rd June 2015 as a summary of the paper titled - 'Unpacking the Black Box: An investigaton into the decision-mkaing dynamics of South African institutional investors' - at the oikos PRI Young Scholars Academy hosted by Henley Business School at Reading University
David Rose provided an ovevriew of Governance with regards to Enterprise Architecture.
Presented at the first JISC Emerging Practices workshop (2012/03/29).
http://emergingpractices.jiscinvolve.org/wp/doing-ea-workshop/
Innovation is a practice, a mindset and a set of skills that can be consistently applied, perhaps not by everyone, but many skills can be practiced and strengthened to make you a better innovator.
In 2014, the New Jersey Innovation Institute (NJII) was formed as an NJIT corporation to act as the organizational centerpiece of the New Jersey Institute of Technology’s (NJIT) economic and technology development mission. NJII’s unique design and program scaffold serves as an agile, market-facing interface designed to transform intellectual capital into commercial success. Whether it’s working to solve the grand challenges shared across an entire sector or helping a single company find an innovative way to pursue a new product or market opportunity, NJII brings world-class intellectual and technological resources to bear.
Community Technology Leadership Program pilot kick-offGreg Laudeman
This presentation provides background, goals, structure, and tools for the Community Technology Leadership Program that Eduity is piloting in Chattanooga, with support from the Mozilla Foundation. Our goal is to create an "open source" that any community can implement.
Nikki Rogers provides an overview of her experience, one year on, of being an Enterprise Architect at Bristol University.
Presented at the first JISC Emerging Practices workshop (2012/03/29).
http://emergingpractices.jiscinvolve.org/wp/doing-ea-workshop/
To better prepare policy and decision makers in today’s complex and inter-dependent environments, FTA methods can play a significant role in enabling early warning signal detection and pro-active policy action. This paper analyses the use of different horizon scanning approaches and methods as applied in the SESTI project. A comparative analysis is provided as well as a brief evaluation of meeting the needs of policy-makers in identify areas of intervention by policy formulation. The paper suggests that the selection of the best scanning approaches and methods is subject to contextual and content issues. At the same time, there are certain issues characterising horizon scanning processes, methods and results that should be kept in mind by both practitioners and policy-makers.
In the search to find the winning formula, managing innovation is based on hard work and reliable data, not entirely on the practice, recognizing necessary but sufficient conditions and context. A set of propositions potentially lay the foundation for a review of the existing basis for measuring performance and success in delivering towards shareholder expectations in today’s knowledge era – however, how does existing concepts, methods, approaches, models, practices and theoretical constructs support investment decision-making for achieving maximum shareholder value and sustained business success, recognizing your specific business context, whether starting up, growing, mature or in turn-around.
Do great technological ideas make great business opportunities? Entrepreneur’...University of Stuttgart
Presentation at: 2013 IEEE International Technology Management Conference & 19th ICE Conference, At Den Hague.
How do technology-based entrepreneurs transform technological ideas into business opportunities? We explore how individual’s self-regulatory focus and institutional forces influence in the opportunity construction process. This research addresses the apparent paradox between the exploration efforts of the entrepreneur to find a use for the technological idea, with the institutional pressure advance to opportunity exploitation. We use an inductive multiple-case study with a sample of three technology-based entrepreneurs to shed some light on the phenomena. The results suggest that there is a two-stage process in the transformation of an idea into an opportunity; entrepreneur’s ability to moderate their self-regulatory focus is seen to play an important role in this process. These findings hold several implications for entrepreneurs and stakeholders interested in promoting technology-based entrepreneurship.
Corporate culture can be defined as the values, norms, attitudes and behavior patterns, that are shared within an organization [Herzog, 2011]. Corporate culture can be seen as the personality of a company that influences people's behavior within the organization, regardless of size and field of action
Coordination and facilitation of innovation platformsILRI
Presented by Iddo Dror at the SEARCA Forum-workshop on Platforms, Rural Advisory Services, and Knowledge Management: Towards Inclusive and Sustainable Agricultural and Rural Development, Los Banos, 17-19 May 2016
Knowledge Management in Project-Based OrganizationsOlivier Serrat
Projects ought to be vehicles for both practical benefits and organizational learning. However, if an organization is designed for the long term, a project exists only for its duration. Project-based organizations face an awkward dilemma: the project-centric nature of their work makes knowledge management, hence learning, difficult.
A Wall Street Journal article postulates that innovation comes from inside a company through networks—not lone individuals. The authors offers strategies to cultivate innovation, such as making efforts to break down the walls between company departments, rapidly testing and refining ideas, and figure out whether there are people in the chain of command who are hard to work with.
But for most large organizations, this “formula” for innovation is difficult to implement. Change, especially innovative change, is often is met with organizational resistance. Conversely, the culture of the organization often expresses collective frustrations with the limitations of business processes and underlying technologies to support business needs.
Doug Jackson, senior director of the Business Analysis Practice for Robbins Gioia (http://www.robbinsgioia.com), and Paula Pierce, CEO and principal transformation strategist, Peridona Strategies LLC (http://www.periodonastrategies.com), conduct an interactive session on integrating business analysis and organizational change management to create an environment for innovation and successful change. They will examine problems that prevent establishing successful innovation networks and provide an approach using best practices from both disciplines to help organizations harvest and test innovative ideas. They will show you how to:
• Identify the root of change resistance in our organizations
• Identify and capitalize on existing networks
• Apply BA and OCM best practices to create an environment for innovation.
Similar to Changing the script, technology incubators as tech entrepreneurs social catalyzers (20)
In this session, the concept of technology exaptation is introduced. With examples and descriptions, it is argued that exaptation can be a valuable approach to consider new applications for existing technology projects.
This is a session done with the University of Lorraine, Nancy, in 2021.
We summarize insights from different recent reports on what makes it challenging for corporates to work with startups. We point out that some problems might be related to how these collaborations get started, while others are connected to how they are managed. We end by suggesting different steps that can help to rethink these collaborations.
This is a presentation that aims to help PhD students (in management research or related fields) to connect their research questions with the research method that could fit better.
The material is a combination of presentations from other colleagues, credit is explicitly stated in the slides. The presentation also contains material from research papers that are strongly suggested as follow-on readings.
This presentation includes academic material on what constitutes a contribution in academic research. It is the result of inputs from several researchers - see presentation sources for more details and follow-up reading.
In this presentation we introduce some aspects that are relevant for technology entrepreneurship. The focus is on explaining why it matters how entrepreneurs make decisions, i.e. how important it is to reduce biases. We also discuss the importance of being aware of the commercialization choices, and how the presence of incumbents or established industrial players has to be taken into account when making these choices. Finally, we discuss how a market or industry view helps to frame decisions that take into account the implications for the emergence of an industry that can contribute in the further development of the new tech-based company.
Examples are used to illustrate these choices, with a specific focus on the renewable energy and the drone industry.
Presentation on technology entrepreneurship. We use insights from the emergence of the drone industry to explain what is the contribution of new entrants in the creation a new industry. The presentation aims to discuss what can we learn from this case, trying to draw parallelisms with other situation where there has been a technology "meaning" change.
Heuristics Theorizing (Gregory & Muntermann 2014) - Paper Summary PresentationUniversity of Stuttgart
This is a presentation summary of the paper that Gregory & Muntermann wrote on Heuristics Theorizing. The presentation explains how this method could provide support to theorize when researchers are involved in a project that aims to tackle a "wicked" problem and design an artifact. The method is proposed in the context of information systems research but could also be used in other research fields.
Exploring the use of signals in the venture emergence of new technology-based...University of Stuttgart
Presentation at 20th ICE Conference – IEEE TMC Europe Conference 23-25 June 2014, Bergamo, Italy.
Abstract: New technology-based firms have to deal with the
technology development and market search challenges at the same time. The venture emergence in technology entrepreneurship symbolizes that the new venture has been able to find the right fit for its technology and becomes an operating business. The complex nature and dynamism of technology markets suggest the need to look beyond the venture resources in order to explain how new ventures overcomes the market uncertainty towards their technological products, and become operational businesses. We use a multiple case study of three new technology-based firms to explore the use of signals as market creation strategies in the context of venture emergence. The results suggest that entrepreneurs rely on market, technology and social capital signaling to reduce the uncertainty and advance towards venture emergence. This research holds implications for researchers interested in further exploring the integration of marketing, signaling and entrepreneurship theories and for entrepreneurs interested in overcoming the market uncertainty towards their technology, products and venture performance.
Presentation (in Spanish) used at the event celebrated at La Salle BCN Campus in the context of the Global Entrepreneurship Week.
In the session we discussed what are real challenges for Tech-Based entrepreneurs (mostly in the ITC industries) and what are only myths. We benefited from the contributions of a great audience that helped to put in context and alight new opportunities for furhter research. Thanks!!
Honest Reviews of Tim Han LMA Course Program.pptxtimhan337
Personal development courses are widely available today, with each one promising life-changing outcomes. Tim Han’s Life Mastery Achievers (LMA) Course has drawn a lot of interest. In addition to offering my frank assessment of Success Insider’s LMA Course, this piece examines the course’s effects via a variety of Tim Han LMA course reviews and Success Insider comments.
June 3, 2024 Anti-Semitism Letter Sent to MIT President Kornbluth and MIT Cor...Levi Shapiro
Letter from the Congress of the United States regarding Anti-Semitism sent June 3rd to MIT President Sally Kornbluth, MIT Corp Chair, Mark Gorenberg
Dear Dr. Kornbluth and Mr. Gorenberg,
The US House of Representatives is deeply concerned by ongoing and pervasive acts of antisemitic
harassment and intimidation at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Failing to act decisively to ensure a safe learning environment for all students would be a grave dereliction of your responsibilities as President of MIT and Chair of the MIT Corporation.
This Congress will not stand idly by and allow an environment hostile to Jewish students to persist. The House believes that your institution is in violation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, and the inability or
unwillingness to rectify this violation through action requires accountability.
Postsecondary education is a unique opportunity for students to learn and have their ideas and beliefs challenged. However, universities receiving hundreds of millions of federal funds annually have denied
students that opportunity and have been hijacked to become venues for the promotion of terrorism, antisemitic harassment and intimidation, unlawful encampments, and in some cases, assaults and riots.
The House of Representatives will not countenance the use of federal funds to indoctrinate students into hateful, antisemitic, anti-American supporters of terrorism. Investigations into campus antisemitism by the Committee on Education and the Workforce and the Committee on Ways and Means have been expanded into a Congress-wide probe across all relevant jurisdictions to address this national crisis. The undersigned Committees will conduct oversight into the use of federal funds at MIT and its learning environment under authorities granted to each Committee.
• The Committee on Education and the Workforce has been investigating your institution since December 7, 2023. The Committee has broad jurisdiction over postsecondary education, including its compliance with Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, campus safety concerns over disruptions to the learning environment, and the awarding of federal student aid under the Higher Education Act.
• The Committee on Oversight and Accountability is investigating the sources of funding and other support flowing to groups espousing pro-Hamas propaganda and engaged in antisemitic harassment and intimidation of students. The Committee on Oversight and Accountability is the principal oversight committee of the US House of Representatives and has broad authority to investigate “any matter” at “any time” under House Rule X.
• The Committee on Ways and Means has been investigating several universities since November 15, 2023, when the Committee held a hearing entitled From Ivory Towers to Dark Corners: Investigating the Nexus Between Antisemitism, Tax-Exempt Universities, and Terror Financing. The Committee followed the hearing with letters to those institutions on January 10, 202
A Strategic Approach: GenAI in EducationPeter Windle
Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies such as Generative AI, Image Generators and Large Language Models have had a dramatic impact on teaching, learning and assessment over the past 18 months. The most immediate threat AI posed was to Academic Integrity with Higher Education Institutes (HEIs) focusing their efforts on combating the use of GenAI in assessment. Guidelines were developed for staff and students, policies put in place too. Innovative educators have forged paths in the use of Generative AI for teaching, learning and assessments leading to pockets of transformation springing up across HEIs, often with little or no top-down guidance, support or direction.
This Gasta posits a strategic approach to integrating AI into HEIs to prepare staff, students and the curriculum for an evolving world and workplace. We will highlight the advantages of working with these technologies beyond the realm of teaching, learning and assessment by considering prompt engineering skills, industry impact, curriculum changes, and the need for staff upskilling. In contrast, not engaging strategically with Generative AI poses risks, including falling behind peers, missed opportunities and failing to ensure our graduates remain employable. The rapid evolution of AI technologies necessitates a proactive and strategic approach if we are to remain relevant.
2024.06.01 Introducing a competency framework for languag learning materials ...Sandy Millin
http://sandymillin.wordpress.com/iateflwebinar2024
Published classroom materials form the basis of syllabuses, drive teacher professional development, and have a potentially huge influence on learners, teachers and education systems. All teachers also create their own materials, whether a few sentences on a blackboard, a highly-structured fully-realised online course, or anything in between. Despite this, the knowledge and skills needed to create effective language learning materials are rarely part of teacher training, and are mostly learnt by trial and error.
Knowledge and skills frameworks, generally called competency frameworks, for ELT teachers, trainers and managers have existed for a few years now. However, until I created one for my MA dissertation, there wasn’t one drawing together what we need to know and do to be able to effectively produce language learning materials.
This webinar will introduce you to my framework, highlighting the key competencies I identified from my research. It will also show how anybody involved in language teaching (any language, not just English!), teacher training, managing schools or developing language learning materials can benefit from using the framework.
Operation “Blue Star” is the only event in the history of Independent India where the state went into war with its own people. Even after about 40 years it is not clear if it was culmination of states anger over people of the region, a political game of power or start of dictatorial chapter in the democratic setup.
The people of Punjab felt alienated from main stream due to denial of their just demands during a long democratic struggle since independence. As it happen all over the word, it led to militant struggle with great loss of lives of military, police and civilian personnel. Killing of Indira Gandhi and massacre of innocent Sikhs in Delhi and other India cities was also associated with this movement.
How to Make a Field invisible in Odoo 17Celine George
It is possible to hide or invisible some fields in odoo. Commonly using “invisible” attribute in the field definition to invisible the fields. This slide will show how to make a field invisible in odoo 17.
Overview on Edible Vaccine: Pros & Cons with Mechanism
Changing the script, technology incubators as tech entrepreneurs social catalyzers
1. Changing the script, technology incubators as
tech entrepreneurs social catalyzers
The 1st Annual Conference on Entrepreneurship and Innovation
“Incubators, Innovation and Regional Development”
Rouen – June 11- 12th
Ferran Giones (1), Zhao Zhou (2), Dr. Francesc Miralles (1), Dr. Bernhard Katzy (2)
(1) La Salle (Innova Institute) – Ramon Llull University (fgiones@salleurl.edu)
(2) CeTIM - Leiden University (zhao.zhou@cetim.org)
3. Motivation
• Diverse public & private technology entrepreneurship
initiatives have been introduced, BUT, only few are seen as
successful.
• Limited understanding on technology entrepreneurship processes.
• Observed difficulties for entrepreneurs to describe a-priori objective
opportunities in tech-based ventures.
• Entrepreneurship scholars suggest two ways to advance the
understanding of entrepreneurship process:
• Development of alternative theory.
• Introduce further contextualization.
• Despite these efforts, connection between context, theory
development and policy implications remains insufficiently
addressed.
13/04/11
4. Literature Review (1/4)
• Dominant perspective in entrepreneurship (Shane &
Venkataraman 2000):
• Discovery View: opportunities are objective, available to all those who
can see them (alertness concept).
• Opportunity identification as a central piece of entrepreneurship.
• Entrepreneurs work by planning (do business plans) and organizing
the needed resources to exploit an objective opportunity.
4
5. Literature Review (2/4)
• Discovery view is the dominant logic among institutions
involved in entrepreneurship (Honig & Karlsson 2004):
• Entrepreneurs aiming to get legitimacy and access resources follow
established rules / norms.
• Organizations that control resources follow the traditional
management objective opportunity logic.
• As a result:
• Entrepreneurship policies (inspired in the dominant logic) to foster
entrepreneurship obtain mixed results:
• Differences between low/high tech entrepreneurship results (Shane
2009).
• Although, also seen to foster job creation and have positive effects on
venture performance (Löfsten & Lindelöf 2002).
5
6. Literature Review (3/4)
• Such traditional view struggles to explain tech-based
entrepreneurship:
• Limited usefulness of Business Plans (Lange 2007), instead rely on
bricolage/improvisation mechanisms.
• Opportunities are subjective, till they complete an emergence process
to become objective (closer to Creation View).
• Need for a theoretical enrichment in entrepreneurship to
further explore influence linkages:
• Alternative theories to explain opportunity identification (Sarasvathy
2001).
• Further exploration of the influence of the context in the early-stages
of the entrepreneurship process (Welter 2011).
6
7. Literature Review (4/4)
• Constructivist view has been proposed as a useful view to
approach this problem (Wood & McKinley 2010):
• Introduces social context (structure) besides the entrepreneur
(individual) in the opportunity construction.
• Opportunity objectification as a result of a two step social
construction process:
• Opportunity conceptualization + objectification with knowledgeable
peers.
• But still in the conceptual level, early-stage theorizing.
7
8. Research Question
• Thus, the constructivist view provides lenses to explore what
role incubators play in entrepreneur's social construction of
the opportunity.
• Do incubators policies influence on the processes of
entrepreneur’s opportunity construction?
• Are they a constrain due to competing logics between tech-based
entrepreneurs logics and the incubator logics? Or a catalyzer of tech-
based opportunities?
8
9. Method & Data
• Method:
• Exploratory objective.
• Inductive approach, multiple-case study with technology-based
entrepreneurs (6 cases in total).
• Sample:
• Entrepreneur cases in telecom (2), electronics (2) and software (2).
• 3 in China (WuxiTech) and 3 in Spain (BarceloTech).
• Entrepreneur profiles: novice (4) and experienced (2), academic
researchers (2) and technology managers (4).
• Data collection & analysis:
• Interviews and secondary sources collected in 2009-2011
(entrepreneurs and incubators managers).
• Stories: from “initial idea” to “objective opportunity”.
• Individual case stories and inter-incubator comparison.
9
10. Results – incubators as context
• Observed incubators policies and context differences:
• BarceloTech – Engineering school and business partners, from 2001,
objective to support tech-venture development.
• Observation of a “discovery view” dominant logic:
• Evaluate business plans proposals and assess suitability of business idea.
• Organize Investor presentations.
• Support in R&D grants applications.
• Access to low-cost office space upon milestones achievement.
• WuxiTech – Program sponsored by regional government, started in
2009, position Wuxi as high-tech cluster.
• Activities oriented to attract talent and create entrepreneurial ecosystem:
• Initial funding (award) + access to government loan (VC like).
• Provision of services to facilitate entrepreneur development: administrative,
recruiting, legal, finance advise.
• Further funding linked to milestones achievements.
10
11. Results – general findings
• Constructivist view (Wood & McKinley 2010) sheds light on
key processes on tech-based opportunity objectification:
• Interaction to test viability of the idea with trusted peers.
• Peer selection based on past interactions and access readiness.
• Sensemaking process, informal and formal, puts in value peers
knowledge base to assess opportunity realism.
• Cases in WuxiTech and BarceloTech show:
• Value of pre-existing networks in conceptualization (as in Newbert &
Tornikoski 2010).
“talking with an entrepreneur in integrated circuits that I knew from prior
research projects” Winet Founder.
• Use of consensus building activities to gain legitimacy in uncertain
environments (also in line with Institutional theory):
“A third party evaluates the technology and raises the confidence level on
the idea” Powchip founder.
11
12. Results – context comparison findings (1/2)
• BarceloTech activities and policy describe consistent action
logic - discovery view.
• Expectation for a business plan and a well defined a priori business
opportunity (as described in Honig & Karlsson 2004).
• Experience entrepreneurs with contacts in both technology and
market fit well with support mechanisms (predictive + plan capability):
“it was my previous business partner that insisted on exploring together
the changes that internet and digital TV would produce”
“we met for over a month to draw our business plan and technological
architecture” DigiTV Founder
• Novice entrepreneurs with academic background struggled to reach
opportunity objectification, migrating partially to more supportive
social context to restart the process (move to US / Silicon Valley).
• Thus, fit with incubator dominant logic would accelerate the
opportunity objectification process.
12
13. Results – context comparison findings (2/2)
• WuxiTech action logic was to rely on entrepreneurs capability
(recruited talent) with few rules/norms in how to advance in
their entrepreneurship process.
• Entrepreneurs benefited from their existing ties with overseas and
national networks for opportunity conceptualization and early
validation (in line with De Carolis & Saparito 2006):
“the information flow within the Silicon Valley, among different networks,
communities, allow you easily grasp what is happening out there” Mars
Founder
“conversations with colleagues, and the experts from Chinese Academy of
Science have made me more confident on the viability of my technological
concept” Hying founder
• Thus, in absence of a dominant logic, entrepreneurs rely on
social networking capability & resources to accelerate the
opportunity objectification process.
13
14. Conclusions
• Need to enrich entrepreneurship and context research:
• Constructivist view uncovers opportunity emergence social process.
• Valid perspective to explore uncertain tech-based entrepreneurship.
• Incubators policies as constrain or catalyzer:
• Need for fit with entrepreneurial profile, in particular in tech-based
ventures in incubators with a dominant logic.
• Highlights the value of entrepreneur social capital/network in early
stages of the opportunity objectification.
• Take into account the “social construction” of opportunity:
• Provide support to iteration & consensus building processes
regardless of lack of a-priori clear opportunity.
14