We investigate the effect of innovativeness on crowdfunding outcomes. Because crowdfunding campaigns characterized by greater incremental innovativeness are more comprehensible and generate more user value for typical crowdfunders, incremental innovativeness may result in more favorable funding outcomes. By comparison, campaigns that feature greater radical innovativeness are riskier to develop, harder for crowdfunders to understand and result in less favorable funding outcomes. This negative effect of radical innovativeness may be mitigated by incremental innovativeness, which may help crowdfunders to understand and appreciate radical innovativeness more. A sample of 334 Kickstarter campaigns provides support for our hypotheses.

To advance understanding of the entrepreneurship process in developing economies, this article evaluates whether registered enterprises that initially avoid the cost of registration, and focus their resources on overcoming other liabilities of newness, lay a stronger foundation for subsequent growth. Analyzing World Bank Enterprise Survey data across 127 countries, and controlling for other firm performance determinants, registered enterprises that started up unregistered and spent longer operating unregistered are revealed to have significantly higher subsequent annual sales, employment, and productivity growth rates compared with those that registered from the outset. The theoretical and policy implications are then discussed.

The explosion of crowdfunding within entrepreneurial circles is attracting increased academic interest in the nature of crowdfunding, its antecedents, and its consequences. In an effort to help researchers concentrate their inquiry on the most promising questions and theories involving crowdfunding, we surveyed key thought leaders within the entrepreneurship field—the Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice editorial review board—regarding what inquiry they believe is needed. Their responses offer implications for crowdfunding research. For example, cross–disciplinary work is one approach that board members believe holds high potential. In response, we outline a cross–disciplinary research agenda that can inform scholarly efforts.