Knowledge that Transforms

Hybrid entrepreneurship—pursuing a venture while maintaining paid employment—can enhance or undermine well-being. Based on a longitudinal, qualitative study, we identify two distinct trajectories shaped by envisioned future selves: delayed entrepreneurial gratification with cumulative strains on well-being, and present gratification with supportive effects on well-being. Drawing on role identity theory, we theorize how role internalization and identity centrality relate to the well-being experiences of hybrid entrepreneurs and introduce gratification and rationalization as ways to handle strains on well-being. Our findings offer a deeper understanding of the divergent well-being experiences in hybrid entrepreneurship.

High-impact entrepreneurship research stands or falls with data quality. Yet research design and data collection choices often force researchers into trade-offs among relevance, validity, and replicability. Reliance on existing databases constrains the questions we can study, while primary data collection to address new questions often struggles to deliver high-quality, large, and representative samples. Increasingly, the most tangible contributions come from unique, high-quality data that answer novel, important questions. We present a 5I framework (Invest, Integrate, Innovate, Incentivize, Impact), offering guidance for authors, reviewers, and editors to navigate these trade-offs and build unique datasets that enable relevant, valid, and replicable research.

Hybrid entrepreneurship as a side hustle is a widespread yet understudied coping strategy among low-income wage workers. This study examines how loss aversion is associated with such side-hustle activities and their links to well-being. We conducted a mixed-method study in Bangladesh. Quantitative analysis, based on surveys and lab experiments, indicates that loss aversion is associated with a higher likelihood of engaging in hybrid entrepreneurship, which is in turn linked to higher well-being. Qualitative analysis, based on in-depth interviews, illustrates mechanisms that may underlie these associations. Together, these findings provide insights into the protective role of hybrid entrepreneurship in poverty contexts.

We investigate how environmentally oriented ventures (EOVs) acquire financial resources through equity crowdfunding (ECF) and allocate resources to job creation. Our results suggest that EOVs raise 22.20% to 34.70% more funding and increase headcount by 18.06% to 61.95% relative to non-environmentally oriented ventures. We argue that environmental orientation may increase demand for labor, through the ongoing development of environmental capabilities, and labor supply, by making EOVs more attractive employers. Our evidence is more consistent with a supply explanation as EOVs find it somewhat easier to hire in tight labor markets. Our study highlights how ECF has real-economic impact through job creation. JEL classification: L26, M13, M14, M51

This study investigates how online and offline shareholder activism influences a firm’s innovation focus—on exploration or exploitation—in family and non-family firms. We theorize, from a mixed gamble perspective, that such activisms pose distinctive threats to a firm’s economic and non-economic interests. We analyze 7,887 firm-year observations from Chinese listed firms (2012–2022) and find that non-family firms are more likely than family firms to shift toward exploitation in response to offline activism, and family firms are more inclined to focus on exploration when facing online activism. Additionally, second-generation family firms are found to be more responsive than first-generation firms to both forms of shareholder activism.

Current theorizing on learning during hybrid entrepreneurship is limited in explaining the circumstances under which entrepreneurs’ well-being benefits from a preceding phase in hybrid entrepreneurship. Using existing theory on entrepreneurial learning and role conflict, we argue that interfering demands from roles outside entrepreneurship constrain hybrid entrepreneurs’ ability to transform experiences into skills that protect their well-being when they enter full entrepreneurship. Moreover, we argue that interfering role demands affect female and male hybrid entrepreneurs differently. We test the hypotheses using panel data. Our study contributes to entrepreneurship research on hybrid entrepreneurship, well-being, role conflict, and gender differences.

Although we know a great deal about creating ventures that can generate financial wealth for entrepreneurs, we have largely excluded, ignored, or “danced around” the creation of nonprofit ventures (with some important exceptions). We propose research to explore how initiating, engaging, and performing nonprofit venturing may differ from for-profit venturing and how some nonprofit entrepreneurs and their ventures differ from other nonprofit entrepreneurs and their ventures. We hope this essay convinces some entrepreneurship scholars that investigating the creation of nonprofit ventures is valuable and can add richness and vibrancy to the entrepreneurship field.

Despite its importance to the functioning of entrepreneurial ecosystems (EEs), the orchestration of networks remains a largely undertheorized topic. To address this “omission,” we sought to explain the interplay between networks, their orchestrators, and their implications for ecosystem outcomes. To do so, we conducted an in-depth case study of the Agtech Valley EE in Brazil. From our study, we developed theoretical insights on the notion of “ecosystem coherence” as a foundational driver of EE structuration. Findings revealed two dimensions of ecosystem coherence: capabilities coherence (based on organizational and cognitive proximities) and relationship coherence (based on institutional and social proximities).

Entrepreneurship has entered a new era shaped by artificial intelligence (AI), demanding accelerated scholarly advances to keep pace with this transformative technology—yet this demands that academics bridge the gap between the AI revolution’s ambiguities and meaningful scholarly contributions. To motivate and guide future research on AI’s transformative role in entrepreneurship, we introduce an ongoing special issue in Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice ( ETP ) and outline multiple compelling opportunities for future research. Unlike typical editorials, we offer a prospective vision—rather than retrospective, after the articles have been accepted and published—at this project’s outset, to empower the field to prospect and establish new scholarly foundations in the relatively uncharted world of AI in the domain of entrepreneurship. Accordingly, we highlight the “AI PEN” ( P rospecting and E stablishing N exus) as a desirable research approach to advance this literature going forward. We hope, and anticipate, that our invitation to submit proposals to this special issue facilitates novel empirical as well as theory-focused contributions to the literature.

This study investigates how spatial and digital affordances within entrepreneurial ecosystems (EEs) enable early-stage hybrid ventures to overcome the liability of hybridity and to secure funding from both philanthropic and equity funding sources. Using a simultaneous equation model with a U.S.-based sample of 2,723 hybrid ventures, we demonstrate that philanthropic and equity funding exhibit a statistically and economically significant complementary relationship. We further find that accelerator participation weakens this complementary relationship, while social media utilization strengthens it. These findings highlight the mechanisms through which EE-based affordances enhance hybrid ventures’ ability to navigate competing institutional logics and attract diverse funding sources.