Knowledge that Transforms

Immigrant entrepreneurship is a crucial topic of interest for academics, policymakers, and the popular press. Discussions of related topics often use intersectionality to explain the compounding effects of multiple “oppressed” identities; the current study provides some novel insights into how intersectional effects can also confer unique advantages to immigrant populations in the United States. We examine intersectional effects across immigrants' higher education, their home country's entrepreneurial culture, and the host country's state-level institutional environment on the probability that people become entrepreneurs. With a sample constructed from multiple sources and spanning 2005 to 2019, this research explores the channels that affect immigrants' self-selection into entrepreneurship. Although higher education and entrepreneurial cultural background positively affect new venture creation, state-level institutional barriers, like E-Verify mandates, create heterogeneous effects across immigrant groups. Furthermore, the entrepreneurial culture of immigrants' home countries leaves a lasting impression on venture creation, particularly when combined with higher education and even in the face of institutional barriers. This study offers policy makers relevant insights for how to augment the contributions of immigrant entrepreneurs and enhance the positive spillovers of new venture creation.

Despite the significant interest in the composition and dynamics of new venture boards, our understanding of when directors exit the boards of new ventures is limited. Drawing on the organizational life cycles framework and resource dependence arguments, we posit that key life cycle events alter a venture's resource needs and dependencies on the board, occasioning director exit. Specifically, we argue that SBIR funding, Venture Capital rounds of funding, and first alliance act as markers of new venture evolution that render existing dependencies obsolete, increasing the likelihood of director exit. Interviews with board members in the semiconductor industry informed and substantiated our theoretical claims. The results show that SBIR funding and subsequent rounds of VC funding are linked to an increased likelihood of director exit, whereas a venture's first alliance is not. The paper sheds light on the interdependencies between the board's life cycle and the life cycle of the new venture.

This study investigates whether and how female directors influence the performance of male-led new ventures. Guided by resource dependence theory, which sees boards as providers of key resources and advice, we shift the focus adopted in prior research on female directors' strategic roles in public firms to argue that, in male-led new ventures, their influence is more operationally focused. Using data from Sweden and an instrumental variable approach that exploits the random assignment of a child's sex at birth among male founders, we find that greater female board representation is positively associated with the performance of male-led new ventures. Further analyses suggest this effect operates primarily through workforce development—namely, the hiring of skilled female employees and the provision of competitive compensation. Notably, even a single female director has a measurable impact. This study underscores the distinct role of female directors in entrepreneurial settings as opposed to established firms, illuminating the mechanisms through which female presence in the boardroom positively affects the early life stages of organizations. We hope our research serves as a basis for future research to explore further the roles played by female directors that are particularly relevant at the startup stage.

Regulatory institutions are double-edged swords: stricter regulations can improve entrepreneurs' access to key resources but also constrain their discretion. Past research has focused on the individual and/or independent influence of regulatory institutions, calling for stricter regulation or deregulation. However, institutional theory suggests that the full configuration of regulatory institutions, including their possibly complex interactions, drives the trade-off between resource access and the constraints imposed by resource providers. Using an inductive approach and fsQCA analysis, we aim to better understand how configurations of regulatory institutions and contextual conditions influence high-growth entrepreneurship (HGE) rates across European countries. We find that three distinct configurations explain high country-level HGE rates, which include different regulatory institutions that sometimes work in opposing ways and do not necessarily work universally across contexts. Overall, this study deepens research at the nexus of institutional theory and high-growth entrepreneurship.

Whether individuals grew up as first-born or later-born siblings in their families can influence their behavior well into adulthood. This study examines the impact of birth order on networking behavior and entrepreneurial action , integrating birth order theory with psychological threat response theories. It suggests that first-born and later-born entrepreneurs inherently differ in their social responses to the uncertainties and threats of entrepreneurship, which affects how intensively they engage in networking behavior and entrepreneurial action. Three empirical studies involving over 900 entrepreneurs were conducted using between-family analysis. The results indicate that later-borns, overall, exhibit more adaptive behavior than first-borns when navigating the challenges of entrepreneurship: Especially when facing severe threatening obstacles, later-born entrepreneurs tend to intensify their efforts to build, seek, and use external networks, which enables them to engage in more entrepreneurial action. This study offers new insights into the relationship between birth order and entrepreneurship, enhancing our understanding of why some individuals may respond more adaptively to threats, network more intensively, and exploit opportunities more actively than others.

This article investigates the impact of obesity stereotypes on angel investment decisions. Drawing from the stereotype literature and expectancy violation theory, we propose that angel investors tend to evaluate founders with obesity worse because they perceive them as high in warmth but low in competence (and competence matters more for angel investors' evaluations). However, we also suggest that founders with obesity who violate low-competence stereotypes through high-competence displays can offset negative obesity stereotypes without affecting positive ones, leading to overall higher evaluations. The results from two field studies show that angel investors penalize founders with obesity but that the effect is ameliorated for those presenting high-tech ventures. A follow-up experiment using AI-generated, photorealistic manipulations of founders' body types identifies perceived competence and warmth as mechanisms that explain the effects. Collectively, these findings contribute to the literature streams on appearance in entrepreneurial finance , stereotypes and their violations, and entrepreneurial research methods.

Drawing on a qualitative case study of hype around an entrepreneurial venture, we develop a three-phase process model detailing how firm-level hype influences volatility in perceived legitimacy. We detail how hype over a new venture's practices, including coupling and decoupling, may boost legitimacy in the short term, but may also lead to long-term risks of accelerated legitimacy loss. Positively, hype amplifies excitement over new business models that may use decoupling to solve existing problems in new ways, thereby rapidly inflating perceived legitimacy. Negatively, hype triggers moral questioning, whistleblowing, and moral panicking over decoupled practices that contradict core institutional logics, thereby accelerating perceived legitimacy loss. We highlight the dynamism and intensity of hype's influence on perceived legitimacy and question the viability of decoupling as a long-term strategy for new ventures in contexts of institutional pluralism. • The dynamic relationships between hype, venture coupling and decoupling practices, and perceptions of venture legitimacy. • The challenges of hype amidst institutional pluralism. • A variety of influences of hype in venturing including those that lead to accelerated legitimacy loss. • Implications for entrepreneurs with ventures amidst hype and institutional pluralism.

This study explores emancipatory entrepreneurship in postcolonial economies where Western bureaucratic and Indigenous traditional systems simultaneously influence entrepreneurial activities . In Kumasi Ghana, the reconstruction of the Kejetia Marketplace was funded by foreign investment and required formal business registration, effectively excluding informal entrepreneurs. Using process tracing, we analyze how informal entrepreneurs leveraged various forms of Indigenous capital and engaged interstitial actors to convert it into actionable capital within the Western system. This process enabled them to overcome their initial exclusion as they built a series of emancipatory structures, culminating in the elimination of the constraint of formalization in the New Kejetia and opening new opportunities for inclusion. Our findings reveal the significance of Indigenous systems in navigating bureaucratic constraints, contributing to the emancipatory entrepreneurship literature by showing how postcolonial contexts both motivate and shape the emancipatory efforts of marginalized entrepreneurs. Executive summary This study explores emancipatory entrepreneurship in postcolonial economies, contexts where both a Western bureaucratic institutional system and Indigenous traditional institutional system influence entrepreneurial activities. Emancipatory entrepreneurship involves overcoming constraints, often faced by marginalized groups seeking to improve their structural positions. In Kumasi Ghana, our central case study , the reconstruction of the Kejetia Marketplace was funded by foreign investment and required formal business registration. This policy excluded petty traders who lacked formal property rights. Using process tracing, we analyze how these entrepreneurs leveraged various forms of Indigenous capital, and by engaging interstitial actors, transformed it into effective action in the Western system. This process enabled them to overcome their initial exclusion as they built a series of emancipatory structures, culminating in the elimination of the constraint of formalization in the New Kejetia and making new opportunities accessible to petty traders. Our findings reveal the significance of Indigenous systems in navigating bureaucratic constraints, contributing to the emancipatory entrepreneurship literature by showing how postcolonial contexts both motivate and shape the emancipatory efforts of marginalized entrepreneurs. We contribute to emancipatory entrepreneurship literature by highlighting the role of Indigenous perspectives in understanding entrepreneurial agency in postcolonial settings. We offer insights into how Indigenous actors respond to bureaucratic constraints through emancipatory actions, emphasizing community well-being alongside profit and efficiency. Additionally, we position colonial legacies as central to analyzing entrepreneurial activity, providing generalizable insights into the dynamic interactions between bureaucratic and Indigenous institutional systems.

We draw from theories of generations and imprinting to introduce an alternative conceptualization of the effects of age on entrepreneurship—namely, entrepreneurs' generational imprints. We theorize how imprinted characteristics of entrepreneurs from a conservative generation (vs. a progressive generation) are positively (negatively) associated with higher levels of financial returns and negatively (positively) associated with higher engagement in corporate social responsibility. In two studies in the Mexican context, we find that entrepreneurs from a conservative generation create more financial value than social value, while entrepreneurs from a progressive generation create more social value than financial value. We also explore the intervening mechanisms and find that entrepreneurs who are more embedded in the church and their families and have more family obligations are more likely to experience generational imprinting. We further show that women tend to experience generational imprinting differently than men, leading to important heterogeneity in our results. Finally, we find that older entrepreneurs experience generational imprints more acutely than their counterparts. Overall, this study provides new insights into entrepreneurs' generational imprints and demonstrates how and why generational imprinting matters in entrepreneurial research.

Entrepreneurship is often hailed as a path to upward intergenerational mobility, but few studies have explicitly tested this belief. Drawing on insights from the literature on entrepreneurial heterogeneity and returns, we compare the extent and direction of mobility across generations among Swedish entrepreneurs and employees. We study intergenerational income rank mobility using high-quality lifetime income measures for 215,000 father-son pairs. Entrepreneurs are drawn disproportionately from both poorer and richer families, but the patterns we uncover hold across the entire paternal income distribution. Sons who own incorporated businesses are more upwardly mobile across generations than employees; sons who own unincorporated businesses are more downwardly mobile. Selection on (un)observable traits fully explains incorporated sons’ moves up, but only a small share of unincorporated sons’ moves down. Income underreporting and, crucially, lower returns to human capital explain the remaining downward mobility. Unincorporated ventures appear to use entrepreneurs’ human capital inefficiently. • Entrepreneurship is often thought to lead to upward mobility across generations, but evidence is limited • We compare intergenerational income rank mobility of entrepreneurs and employees, with 215,000 Swedish father-son pairs • Incorporated entrepreneurs are more upwardly mobile than employees due to positive self-selection • Unincorporated entrepreneurs are more downwardly mobile due to negative self-selection, income underreporting, and lower returns to skills • Unincorporated ventures appear to use entrepreneurs’ human capital inefficiently