According to Acs and Audretsch (2005), connect existing stock of knowledge (the past) to new applications (the future) is the essence of innovative entrepreneurship. But what if future applications don’t look like a linear factor growth that can be easily detected, but instead as a chaotic sum of choices of many actors that are more or less in the same situation of uncertainty about the future? Should the entrepreneurial process be considered just like a gambling type of game (Barney, 1986)? No doubt, luck and serendipity (Denrell et al., 2003), play an important role as in all human activity, but very few would consider people like Steve Jobs just a lucky man. Entrepreneurial process in high tech kind of business is not merely a process of discovery, eventually by chance, an entrepreneurial opportunity, but is about creation of an entrepreneurial opportunity (Sarasvathy et al. 2005). To create an entrepreneurial opportunity requires a peculiar set of entrepreneurial capabilities and strategies (Alvarez, Barney, 2007). Especially in the exploration phase of a technology's life (March, 1991; Noteboom, 2000), where you have to challenge the "status quo", you need cooperation and you have to leverage on networks (Baum et al., 2000). If we consider that technologies are built on technologies (Arthur, 2009), we can understand that high tech companies are permanently suspended from a state of vicious circle (no subject available upstream to improve the enabling technologies for your and downstream to consider your as an enabling technology for them), and a virtuous circle in which instead, all are in line each other. What might make a difference between a vicious circle and a virtuous one is then the capability to activate a co-creation process of building an entrepreneurial opportunity. Co-creation is a form of entrepreneurial process typical of high tech start up, where the key issue is about coordinating (no matter through which kind of network,...) time, direction and level of efforts of other partners in developing existing technology to be part of a virtuous circle. Investing in what has been defined an UU world (Zeckhauser, 2006) is very risky (Knight, 1921) and a sidecar kind of investment strategy is a golden rule. The objective of this paper will be that of identifying, through a small panel of cases of Italian high tech start up, different models of setting out a sidecar investment and escalating commitment strategy to co-create a new technology-based opportunity.

Recruiting partners for co-evolution: leveraging on sidecar investments and escalating commitment

PARENTE, Roberto
2013-01-01

Abstract

According to Acs and Audretsch (2005), connect existing stock of knowledge (the past) to new applications (the future) is the essence of innovative entrepreneurship. But what if future applications don’t look like a linear factor growth that can be easily detected, but instead as a chaotic sum of choices of many actors that are more or less in the same situation of uncertainty about the future? Should the entrepreneurial process be considered just like a gambling type of game (Barney, 1986)? No doubt, luck and serendipity (Denrell et al., 2003), play an important role as in all human activity, but very few would consider people like Steve Jobs just a lucky man. Entrepreneurial process in high tech kind of business is not merely a process of discovery, eventually by chance, an entrepreneurial opportunity, but is about creation of an entrepreneurial opportunity (Sarasvathy et al. 2005). To create an entrepreneurial opportunity requires a peculiar set of entrepreneurial capabilities and strategies (Alvarez, Barney, 2007). Especially in the exploration phase of a technology's life (March, 1991; Noteboom, 2000), where you have to challenge the "status quo", you need cooperation and you have to leverage on networks (Baum et al., 2000). If we consider that technologies are built on technologies (Arthur, 2009), we can understand that high tech companies are permanently suspended from a state of vicious circle (no subject available upstream to improve the enabling technologies for your and downstream to consider your as an enabling technology for them), and a virtuous circle in which instead, all are in line each other. What might make a difference between a vicious circle and a virtuous one is then the capability to activate a co-creation process of building an entrepreneurial opportunity. Co-creation is a form of entrepreneurial process typical of high tech start up, where the key issue is about coordinating (no matter through which kind of network,...) time, direction and level of efforts of other partners in developing existing technology to be part of a virtuous circle. Investing in what has been defined an UU world (Zeckhauser, 2006) is very risky (Knight, 1921) and a sidecar kind of investment strategy is a golden rule. The objective of this paper will be that of identifying, through a small panel of cases of Italian high tech start up, different models of setting out a sidecar investment and escalating commitment strategy to co-create a new technology-based opportunity.
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Utilizza questo identificativo per citare o creare un link a questo documento: https://hdl.handle.net/11386/4501059
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