Open Access

The business plan is one of the most frequently available artifacts to innovation intermediaries of technology-based ventures' presentations in their early stages [1]–[4]. Agreement on the evaluations of venturing projects based on the business plans highly depends on the individual perspective of the readers [5], [6]. One reason is that little empirical proof exists for descriptions in business plans that suggest survival of early-stage technology ventures [7]–[9]. We identified descriptions of transaction relations [10]–[13] as an anchor of the snapshot model business plan to business reality [13]. In the early-stage, surviving ventures are building transaction relations to human resources, financial resources, and suppliers on the input side, and customers on the output side of the business towards a stronger ego-centric value network [10]–[13]. We conceptualized a multidimensional measurement instrument that evaluates the maturity of this ego-centric value networks based on the transaction relations of different strength levels that are described in business plans of early-stage technology ventures [13]. In this paper, the research design and the instrument are purified to achieve high agreement in the evaluation of business plans [14]–[16]. As a result, we present an overall research design that can reach acceptable quality for quantitative research. The paper so contributes to the literature on business analysis in the early-stage of technology-based ventures and the research technique of content analysis.

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.

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.

The business model canvas (BMC) and the lean start-up manifesto (LSM) have been changing both the entrepreneurial education and, on the practical side, the mindset in setting up innovative ventures since the burst of the dot-com bubble. However, few empirical insights on the business model implementation patterns that distinguish between digital and non-digital innovative ventures exist. Connecting practical management tools to network theory as well as to the theory of organizational learning, this paper investigates evolution patterns of digital and non-digital business models out of the deal flow of an innovation intermediary. For this purpose, a multi-dimensional quantitative content analysis research design is applied to 242 ventures' business plans. The measured strength of transaction relations to customers, suppliers, people, and financiers has been combined with performance indicators of the sampled ventures. The results indicate that in order to succeed, digital ventures iterate their business on the market early and search for investment afterwards. Contrariwise, non-digital ventures already need financial investments in the early stages to set up a product ready to be tested on the market. In both groups we found strong evidence that specific evolutionary patterns relate to higher rates of success.

Corporate entrepreneurship (CE) supports the strategic renewal of established companies. Corporate venturing represents one key concept of CE that supports companies to strengthen their innovation capabilities. For the successful implementation of corporate ventures dual structures are recommended. The question, how the interface should be designed, plays a crucial role. Although it seems to be an important factor, this aspect requires further attention. One relevant element of the interface design are the different roles of the individuals that are interacting within the interface. This study is based on nine interviews that are representing six internal corporate ventures within one large German corporate from the ICT sector. The results that were mirrored with short case studies of 25 additional companies of the data sample, contribute to a better understanding of the interface design by adding insights about roles in corporate entrepreneurship. This deeper understanding about roles allows to draw conclusions on the interface design from a structural point of view.

Vortrag auf dem Doktorandenkolloquium des Kooperativen Promotionskollegs der HTWG, 09.07.2015