We define cultural entrepreneurship as the process of storytelling that mediates between extant stocks of entrepreneurial resources and subsequent capital acquisition and wealth creation. We propose a framework that focuses on how entrepreneurial stories facilitate the crafting of a new venture identity that serves as a touchstone upon which legitimacy may be conferred by investors, competitors, and consumers, opening up access to new capital and market opportunities. Stories help create competitive advantage for entrepreneurs through focal content shaped by two key forms of entrepreneurial capital: firm-specific resource capital and industry-level institutional capital. We illustrate our ideas with anecdotal entrepreneurial stories that range from contemporary high-technology accounts to the evolution of the mutual fund industry. Propositions are offered to guide future empirical research based on our framework. Theoretically, we aim to extend recent efforts to synthesize strategic and institutional perspectives by incorporating insights from contemporary approaches to culture and organizational identity. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. It is a virtual truism that stories of entrepreneurs have long been celebrated in the media, trade

All authors contributed equally. The names are arranged in alphabetical order

Acknowledgements: Both authors contributed equally to the writing of this paper and are listed alphabetically. The research design owes an intellectual debt to the Panel Study of Business Start-ups undertaken by the Entrepreneurial Research Consortium, a temporary voluntary association of 30+ U.S. and non-U.S. universities. The study was financed by

There is progress in entrepreneurship research. Important works in entrepreneurship increasingly appear in highly respected, mainstream journals (see Busenitz et al., forthcoming; Davidsson, Low, & Wright, 2001). There is conceptual development that attracts attention (e.g. Shane & Venkataraman, 2000) and handbooks are compiled, providing the field with more of a common body of knowledge (Acs & Audretsch, 2003a; Westhead & Wright, 2000; Shane, 2000a). Further, there is evidence of methodological improvements (Chandler & Lyon, 2001) and accumulation of meaningful findings on various levels of analysis (Davidsson & Wiklund, 2001). Moreover, due to time lags in publication the reported improvements are likely to be underestimated. This author’s experience as organizer, reviewer and participant in core entrepreneurship conferences on both sides of the Atlantic (e.g., Babson; RENT) suggests that much of the lower end of the quality distribution has either disappeared from the submissions or is screened out in the review process. Much more than used to be the case a few years back we find among the presented papers research that is truly theory-driven; research on the earliest stages of business development, and research that employs methods suitable for causal inference, i.e., experiments and longitudinal designs. This is not to deny that there is confusion, signs of identity crisis, or widespread frustration among entrepreneurship researchers because of a sense that the field of entrepreneurship research has not come “far enough, fast enough ” (Low, 2001) or that we are “getting more pieces of the puzzle, but no picture is emerging ” (Koppl & Minniti, 2003). The literature is full of definitions of entrepreneurship, which differ along a number of dimensions, i.e., whether entrepreneurship should be defined in terms of dispositions, behavior, or outcomes 1; whether it belongs in the economic-commercial domain or can be exercised also in not-forprofit contexts; whether it belongs only in small and/or owner-managed firms or in any 2 organizational context, and whether purpose, growth, risk, innovation or success are necessary criteria for something to qualify as entrepreneurship (Gartner, 1990; Hébert & Link,

An important and intriguing aspect of e-entrepreneurship is the formation of new ventures in the domain of open source software (OSS). Previous research on these ventures has primarily looked at the design of business models, yet has neglected other key questions relating to the management of these firms, despite clear indications that some existing insights on venture management cannot be applied to new ventures in OSS. The purpose of this paper is to explore how three key challenges of venture management -- the liabilities of newness and smallness of start-ups and market entry barriers -- affect new ventures in OSS. Based on empirical data from personal interviews and a large scale survey we find that many of the liabilities that are typically discussed in the entrepreneurship literature are much less of a challenge for new ventures in OSS. Our findings have interesting implications for the emerging theory on e-entrepreneurship, and for entrepreneurs considering to exploit business opportunities in OSS, and more generally business opportunities based on open innovations.

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explanation, prediction, and delight

High-technology companies that discover new technological opportunities face two critical decisions: whether and when to collaborate in exploiting these opportunities. Prior research has examined factors such as transaction costs that determine whether firms decide to collaborate. In this study we aim to understand when firms collaborate in exploiting opportunities. To this end we study the history of 86 biopharmaceutical product development projects. We find that factors that reduce articulation and appropriation uncertainties in these projects- patent protection, high R&D intensity of the firm, partners ’ prior collaboration experience, and support infrastructures in the industry- can speed up collaboration. Interestingly, project specific factors do not seem to affect timing. Key words: technological opportunities, product innovation, collaboration 2 This study examines how high-technology companies exploit technological opportunities. More specifically, we study how two characteristics of technological opportunities – the short window of opportunity and the different perceptions about the value of the opportunity among

leading up to this paper. In his book “Invention, ” Professor Norbert Wiener (1993), commenting on the relative importance accorded to individuals and institutions in historical narratives of science and inventions, asks us to imagine Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet ” without either Romeo or the balcony. 2 The story is just not the same. He likens much of the study of the economic history of science and accounts of inventions as “all balcony and no Romeo. ” The balcony for Norbert Wiener captures the context in which the story unfolds – the culture, the institutions, the constraints and the catalysts that move the plot forward and thicken it. Romeos, for Wiener, play the leading parts in the story, because there is a strong fortuitous element to inventions and there is no inevitability that a possible discovery will be made at a given time and space. Take away either one, Romeo or the balcony, and the whole story falls apart. In a similar vein, we would liken studies of strategic management to “all balcony and no Romeo. ” But if we accuse strategic management of being “all balcony and no Romeo, ” strategic management scholars could legitimately accuse entrepreneurship of being “all Romeo and no balcony.” In this chapter we wish to suggest a point of view from entrepreneurship that will allow

This paper maintains that the consistent application of subjectivism helps to reconcile contemporary entrepreneurship theory with strategic management research in general, and the resource−based view in particular. The paper synthesizes theoretical insights from Austrian economics and Penrose’s (1959) resources approach, arguing that entrepreneurship is inherently subjective and firm specific. This new synthesis describes how entrepreneurship is manifested in teams, and is driven by both heterogeneity of managerial mental models and shared team experiences.