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How do attitudes of habitual high-technology entrepreneurs to early-stage failure differ in Silicon Valley, Cambridge and Munich?
Get PDFEntrepreneurs develop new technology ventures in uncertain conditions with unproven technologies and limited resources. The majority of such ventures fail, yet entrepreneurship is regarded as a national (and regional) engine for economic growth. This thesis aims to examine entrepreneurs’ attitudes to failure in order to reveal insight on how entrepreneurs learn and how they identify subsequent opportunities, and investigate possible regional differences in such attitudes and entrepreneurial responses.
There is much literature on entrepreneurial failure but relatively little that is focused on attitudes to failure, the high-technology industry, or international comparisons. This thesis examines how entrepreneurs’ attitudes to failure in early-stage technology companies differ in the USA (Silicon Valley), UK (Cambridge) and Germany (Munich), and implications for entrepreneurial learning and opportunity identification in these regions. Interviews with habitual entrepreneurs explore their experiences of failed ventures, using a methodology from qualitative psychology - Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) - for the gathering and analysis of data to reveal emergent trends. This analysis is then used to compare attitudes to failure within and between each region, and a preliminary conceptual framework is proposed for analyzing future experiences of entrepreneurial failure.
Findings from this idiographic study suggest that although each entrepreneur’s experience of and attitudes to failure is unique, there are more commonalities than differences between regions.
Furthermore, these findings reveal the importance of the use of language and narrative in the analysis of such accounts. In addition, the results allow reflection on the appropriateness and limitations of methodologies such as IPA for this subject.
This thesis contributes to theory by examining ‘effectuation’ as a way to understand these experiences, and discussing the impact of findings in relation to attribution theory, prospect theory and real-options theory. This thesis contributes to practice by augmenting existing knowledge of entrepreneurial failure through the comparative (regional) approach and the industry-specific (high-technology) focus. It may also improve the preparedness of new practitioners and entrepreneurs, with positive implications for future entrepreneurial success
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How do innovation management consultants modify the relationship between R&D and marketing participants as a consequence of their intervention?
Get PDFThis thesis describes how Innovation Management Consultants (IMCs) can promote changes in R&D/marketing relationships. The research was motivated by the scarce number of studies about the impact of IMCs on organisational relationships in general, and particularly on R&D and marketing relationships.
This thesis contributes to knowledge in four strands of literature: technology management, organisational change, management consulting and conflict studies. Firstly, its main contribution is to technology management literature. Empirical evidence indicates that IMCs can modify the relationship between R&D and marketing functions, even though they are not hired explicitly for that purpose. Nonetheless, the main impact on the relationship is perceived at the personal level and it is dependent on the format of the intervention process. Additionally, the changes in the R&D/marketing relationship and its continuity seem to be conditional upon contextual factors such as specific company and consultant characteristics, as well as the nature of the consultant-client relationship.
Secondly, this study has added to scholarly knowledge in organisational change by providing empirical evidence that IMCs advocate for the same dynamics used by Organisational Development (OD) consultants. The results highlight the importance of a facilitative-participative approach and organisational learning to generate change. The results suggest that certain OD theories such as sociotechnical systems theories and Lewin’s model can be used to explain the effect of IMCs on intra-organisational relationships.
Thirdly, this research also augments knowledge about IMCs in management consulting literature because it provides evidence about the activities conducted by IMCs and their unexpected effects within client organisations. This addresses a gap identified in the literature, since the contributions of this type of Management Consultant (MC) have not been significantly investigated and the focus of previous studies has been on expected results.
Finally, this research contributes to the area of conflict studies, particularly to the intersection between R&D/marketing integration and conflict, since it provides certain evidence about some IMCs’ mediation techniques that can be used to diminish conflict between different areas within an organisation.
The research followed an inductive approach to understanding the changes that IMCs can promote in R&D/marketing relationships in large firms. The research is based on empirical evidence gathered through twelve case studies, feedback interviews and a small-scale survey. A framework describing the possible changes that IMCs can promote in the R&D/Marketing relationship was then built from grounded, within-case, and cross-case analysis.
Lastly, in order to verify the observations obtained during the case studies, as well as the pertinence of the proposed framework, a set of eight feedback interviews with company participants and IMCs were carried out, as well as a small-scale survey. The results of these verification activities indicate that the proposed framework is reasonably complete and its elements are coherent
Business Models for the Commercialisation of Digital Technologies in Established Markets: 3D Food-Printing.
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Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Get PDF“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Get PDFWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Access to external capital for techno start-ups: evidences from the UK
No full textHow should new technology based firms (NTBFs) finance their business? Some high-tech entrepreneurs choose debt instead of equity in order to preserve their chance of high returns in the future, accepting the greater risks involved. However, some experts believe that the riskier the project, the more entrepreneurs should seek VC support. Our work attempts to answer this question and build a framework helping technology-based entrepreneurs match their business plans with the most appropriate financial strategy. We relate to the pecking order and financial rationing theories. Many attempts to understand them have been developed, but with dominant focus on investor’s supply and their decisional criteria, and few determinants normally investigated at a time. Our approach is novel because it is firm centric and holistic, evaluating the relationship between firm’s profile and the optimal investor. Through multiple indepth case studies on UK NTBFs, and their critical discussion, we provide entrepreneurs with a robust assessment tool to navigate the complex scenario of financial alternatives available to NTBFs. The research investigates and discusses the role played in the fund raising process by entrepreneur’s profile, technology, features of the business plan and market; it can also help investors understand entrepreneur’s motivations and expectations. Our contribution is twofold: first, the model is made of reliable assessment criteria for complex and ambiguous dimensions such as technological risk and market focus; secondly, we develop a holistic approach with understanding of both the firm’s and investor’s points of view
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Get PDFWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
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