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New Technology-Based Firms (NTBFs) learn their business in the early-stages of their life-cycle. As a central element of the entrepreneurial learning process, the business model describes the value-creation functions that are conceptualized in different stages of the NTBF’s life-cycle. Transaction relations connect the model with the business reality and ideally mature in strength over time to a functioning value-network. This chapter describes the development of a research design that determines, extracts, and evaluates semantics constructs of this entrepreneurial learning out of a convenient sample and three cohorts of business plans submitted to a business plan award between 2008 and 2010. The analysis shows empirical evidence for the survival and growth of those NTBFs that exhibit a balanced status of entrepreneurial learning in the maturity of the value-network that can be characterized as early startup-stage. The empirical findings of the network theory based business plan analysis will allow for a better explanation of the performance in the entrepreneurial process that is discussed for NTBFs based on theory of organizational learning.
Business coaching is believed to effectively improve survival and success chances of new technology-based firms (NTBFs). However, not much empirical evidence on the support measure's effectiveness is available. Therefore, a pragmatic two-armed Randomized Controlled Trial (RCT) to test the effect of tactical business coaching on NTBF survival capabilities was designed and, for the most part, carried out. However, due to a lower than expected sample size and great attrition between groups, the RCT reveals deviations from the trial design that impede a thorough data assessment. Based on the data given, a first data analysis does not reveal significant differences in survival capability between the two groups. Thus, to provide guidance for future RCTs in business contexts, lessons learned about how to deal with trickle samples and experiment constellations with third parties carrying out the intervention are drawn.
This paper builds upon the widely-used resource-based approach to explaining survival of new technology-based firms (NTBFs). However, instead of looking at the NTBF's initial resource configuration, a process-oriented perspective is taken by focusing on the entrepreneur's ability to transform resources in response to triggers resulting from market interactions. Transaction relations reflect these interactions and are thus operationalized with a suggested method for measuring the status of venture emergence (VE) applicable to early-stage NTBFs. NTBFs' value network maturity is reflected in the number and strength of their transaction relations in the four market dimensions customer, investor, partner, and human resource. Business plans of NTBFs represent the artifact that contains this data in the form of transaction relation descriptions. Using content analysis, a multi-step combined human and computer coding process has been developed to annotate and classify transaction relations from business plans in order to empirically determine NTBFs' status of VE. Results of the business plan analysis suggest that the level of transaction relations allows to draw conclusions on the VE status. Moreover, applying the developed process, first analysis of a business plan coding test shows that the transaction relation based VE status significantly relates to NTBF survival capability.
Technology-based ventures provide an important route for successful technology transfer [1], [2]. Their founders are supported in successful technology commercialization by innovation intermediaries [3]. Accordingly, the performance of an innovation system, at least to some extent, depends on the efficiency of these intermediaries in terms of the impact of their scarce resources on the survival and growth of technology-based ventures. To increase their efficiency, intermediaries typically optimize their "intake" by requesting a formal business plan to base their selection on as a hygiene factor [4]-[7]. Thus, some scholars argue that written business plans show significant distortion as being produced only to attract support from innovation intermediaries [6], [8]. Accordingly, they rarely serve for these addressees as a source of information for analyzing the strengths and weaknesses of ventures, in order to derive actionable conclusions and more effectively support ventures [9], [10]. Addressees search for different indicators in business plans for their evaluation [11]. The descriptions of these indicators only evince little empirical proof for the performance of technology-based venture's [8], [12]. This gap is herein addressed, in contrast to the lacking empirical insight, as the most frequently produced artifact of early-stage technology ventures is at the same time a written business plan [10], [13]. This paper addresses this gap by conceptualizing transaction relations described in the written business plan as a means for working around the inevitable inaccuracies and uncertainties that delimit the explanatory abilities [14] of the snapshot model [10] presented by a business plan. Using a qualitative content analysis, we derive from the descriptions of transaction relations in a written business plan valid indicators for the maturity of the venture's value-network in different dimensions [15]. To this extent, this paper presents the findings from a pre-study that was conducted based on a sample of forty business plans from an overall population of 800 business plans in a longitudinal sample from one of Europe's most active innovation systems, the regional State of Baden-Württemberg. Such findings may be used by innovation intermediaries to enhance their efficiency, by enabling these to not only derive individual support strategies for business acceleration but also to analyze the impact of support measures by reliably monitoring maturity progress in venture activities.
We examine to what extent a transaction relation-based value network maturity status of New Technology-Based Firms (NTBFs) is related to their survival. A specific challenge of NTBFs is their lack of market-orientation, which is why the maturity of the ties they form towards the market in terms of customers, financiers, personnel and partners is supposed to be a strong indicator for survival. We analyze a sample of 170 NTBFs by capturing their value network status from business plans and defining their survival status using secondary research. Simple statistical tests and regressions suggest that the official registration of the business is a pre-step for survival that requires industry-specific value network dimension strengths. A sub-sample survival analysis shows that for all NTBFs that have reached registration, regardless of their industry, a stronger customer value network maturity dimension prevents from failure and is thus a significant predictor for survival. Moreover, the analyses partly support the idea that NTBFs from the IT sector are less dependent on a strong value network in the financier dimension to survive. The results are of relevance for both practitioners and researchers in the innovation system: a better understanding of the factors impacting on NTBF survival can help to provide more tailored support services for young firms, increase the effectiveness of resource allocations, and provide a basis for further research.
This paper broadens the resource-based approach to explaining survival of new technology-based firms (NTBFs) by focusing on the entrepreneur's ability to transform resources in response to triggers resulting from market interactions. Network theory is used to define a construct that allows determining the status of venture emergence (VE).The operationalization of the VE construct is built on the firm's value network maturity in the four market dimensions customer, investor, partner, and human resource. Business plans of NTBFs represent the artifact that contains this data in the form of transaction relation descriptions. Using content analysis, a multi-step combined human and computer coding process has been developed to empirically determine NTBFs' status of VE.Results of the business plan analysis suggests that the level of transaction relations allows to draw conclusions on the status of VE. Moreover, applying the developed process, a business plan coding test shows that the transaction relation based VE status significantly relates to NTBFs' survival capabilities.
Vortrag auf dem Doktorandenkolloquium des Kooperativen Promotionskollegs der HTWG, 09.07.2015
Growth is a key indicator of the prosperity of an economy. In today's Germany the " Gründerzeit " still describes a period of enormous economic growth. Factors that lead to growth haven't been investigated in the context of the different life cycle stages of early-stage technology ventures so far. This paper proposes a model of early-stage ventures' growth based on factors. From a theoretical angle, we look at the business from the market-based view (MBV) and the resource-based view (RBV) on strategy in the longitudinal perspective of the business life cycle. With this view we get to know what are the stage specific needs and processes of new technology based ventures in order to provide appropriate support. We tested different potential growth indicators for the model with a questionnaire-based survey which was answered by 68 high-tech entrepreneurs. The results suggest that growth factors are stage specific in their relevance. While leading to growth in one stage, certain factors evince no or even negative influence on growth in other stages. Moreover, RBV factors as seen more relevant for the growth than the MBV factors. Further research requires a large and representative population to validate the results. Keywords:-growth factors, early-stage ventures, market-based view, resources based view.