Knowledge that Transforms

Entrepreneurial imagination (EI) lies at the core of entrepreneurship research. Both early and contemporary scholars have emphasized its central role in visualizing and actualizing entrepreneurial opportunities, shaping decision-making, and enabling venture creation. Perhaps because of its salience and significance, EI has been approached from a wide range of definitional, philosophical, theoretical, and methodological perspectives, fostering a conceptually rich yet sprawling and fragmented body of work. Drawing on a scoping literature review of articles published in leading management and entrepreneurship journals, we synthesize the diverse constructs, processes, and conceptualizations associated with EI. We adopt a pluralistic approach, identifying eight distinct theoretical perspectives that have shaped scholars' understanding of EI over time. Rather than seeking to unify these perspectives into a single framework, we provide a multidimensional account of EI that captures its complexity and explore possibilities for cross-pollination as an agenda for future research. By putting complementary and sometimes contrasting perspectives into conversation, especially where they address similar concerns or compensate for each other's limitations, we aim to inspire novel combinations and spark new questions that can meaningfully advance scholarship on EI. • Establish entrepreneurial imagination (EI) as foundational yet conceptually fragmented in entrepreneurship research. • Conduct a scoping review of the literature to explore EI's diverse constructs, processes, and conceptualizations. • Embrace pluralism in order to recognize the ontological, epistemological, and methodological diversity in EI research. • Identify, develop and review eight distinct theoretical perspectives on EI (e.g., cognitive, linguistic, moral, aesthetic). • Explore opportunities for cross-pollination between perspectives to offer a new, thought-provoking agenda for EI research.

Although hype is widely discussed in the popular discourse around entrepreneurship, it has received limited attention in the entrepreneurship literature. In this introduction to the special issue on hype and entrepreneurship, we propose that hype in entrepreneurial settings can be usefully explored by considering the stages of the hype cycle that can unfold in these settings. The first stage is hyping , where entrepreneurs frame ideas, products, business models, and ventures using language designed to set exciting future expectations despite (and even because of) the absence of technical validation or evidence of the economic feasibility of the venture. These efforts can trigger a state of hype, which refers to a rapidly intensifying collective vision of the future across audiences leading to an upswing . During the upswing, unrealistic expectations emerge, which, if left unmet, can lead to a downswing when there is a reversal of momentum and even the stigmatization of the hyped assets. Yet, there is always the possibility of a revival of entrepreneurial efforts around what had been hyped but became stigmatized. Noting that not all entrepreneurial phenomena necessarily traverse all stages of the cycle, we discuss some of the triggers and contingencies that can lead to shifts across the different stages of the hype cycle. We also discuss the challenges and opportunities that these stages offer entrepreneurs to the extent they unfold within and across fields. We then introduce the papers that comprise the special issue and conclude with suggestions for future research. • Hype offers a powerful lens for entrepreneurship research. • Hype consists of hyping, upswing, downswing, and revival. • Entrepreneurs often must navigate multiple hype cycles.

This study explores the relationship between investor heterogeneity and firms’ post-seed funding performance. We find a statistically and economically significant negative association of investor heterogeneity on both a firm’ s likelihood of obtaining new funding and the amount raised in subsequent funding rounds. These findings suggest that greater heterogeneity among investors may impair board efficacy and weaken the quality of venture governance. Moreover, the marginal effect of investor heterogeneity is non-linear and diminishes over the course of a venture’ s funding lifecycle. Our results remain robust after accounting for endogeneity concerns and alternative measures of investor culture. • Investor heterogeneity affects firms’ post-seed funding outcomes • Heterogeneity reduces likelihood and volume of subsequent funding • Effects are non-linear and diminish across the funding lifecycle • Heterogeneity can impair board efficacy and venture governance

Does an additional year of formal education affect the decision to become an entrepreneur? Using human capital theory as a conceptual lens, we explore three channels through which it might: productivity, certification, and health impacts. To test the mechanisms and uncover whether there are causal relationships between these variables, we exploit two exogenous changes to British compulsory schooling laws that generated sharp across-cohort differences in years of education. Using a fuzzy regression discontinuity design, we estimate that the reforms significantly reduced self-employment. We go on to explore which channels best explain this finding, and discuss implications for scholars and policymakers. • A Regression Discontinuity Design is used to obtain causal estimates of the relationship between high school education and adult entrepreneurship. • The study exploits as a natural experiment legal reforms to the national minimum school leaving age in Britain. • Estimates indicate a negative relationship between an additional year of schooling and engagement in self-employment. • The findings cast doubt on the notion that the additional schooling affected self-employment through productivity or credentialing channels. • Policy implications might be most applicable to developing countries where governments are exploring whether to raise school leaving ages.

Despite ongoing interest in human resource management (HRM) in entrepreneurial organizations, we believe the moment is ripe to rethink notions of human resource management in ways that take advantage of the distinctive nature of entrepreneurial settings. A critical first step is recognizing that the people creating and building an entrepreneurial organization extend beyond the founders and include people who may or may not be employees. As such, rather than following traditional human resources (HR) research's focus on employees, HR research in entrepreneurial organizations must take a broader perspective. We propose a focus on “joiners”, people who, according to Roach and Sauermann (2015) , are a “distinct type of nonfounding entrepreneurial actors who are attracted to the startup work setting but have little desire to be founders themselves.” Joiners represent the human resources critical to venture progress. We argue that a research agenda focused on joiners that is pursued through explicitly understanding and engaging with the fundamental assumptions, debates, and conversations from an entrepreneurship perspective will yield novel questions and generate new insights. Through this editorial we hope to catalyze this important work by unpacking who joiners are and how they fit in the entrepreneurial context, highlighting the need for new research at the intersection of HRM and entrepreneurship, and suggesting novel questions, research opportunities, and methodologies related to HRM in entrepreneurial settings. Scholars have advanced our Understanding of human resource management (HRM) in entrepreneurial organizations from multiple perspectives. We believe the moment is ripe to rethink notions of human resource management in ways that take advantage of the distinctive nature of entrepreneurial settings, which will allow us to understand human resources of entrepreneurial firms in new ways. A critical first step is recognizing that the people creating and building an entrepreneurial organization extend beyond the founders and include people who may or may not be employees. We propose a definition of joiners that captures the original spirit of the term and emphasizes the people who are actively choosing an entrepreneurial work setting, remains agnostic to formal employment status, and focuses on the work that is being done: “ Joiners are non-founders who contribute physical and/or mental labor to a new venture and are subordinate to the founders ”. Our definition is well-suited to the dynamic nature of entrepreneurial firms that are navigating uncertain environments, in which more flexible and less formal labor contributions are needed than merely those provided by employees. By consequence, our definition of joiners includes employees, contractors, interns, freelancers and volunteers and excludes other stakeholders such as tech transfer and other entrepreneurial support organization staff, board members, investors, policy makers, customers, and suppliers. We also suggest it may be helpful to distinguish between “primary joiners” and “secondary joiners.” The first refers to the initial group of people who are in direct contact with founders and who are creating their role rather than inhabiting an established role. These individuals bring the human and social capital that determines an early venture's success. Other individuals who later join an entrepreneurial venture, particularly those who are not directly overseen by founders, can be referred to as “secondary joiners”, or if they are actually employed by the startup, simply as employees. We argue that the study of joiners merits fresh thinking that more explicitly takes into consideration the core aspects of entrepreneurship: that it involves uncertainty and dynamism, resource constraints and context dependence, informality, and social or interpersonal creation of opportunities, ventures, and systems. A traditional HR perspective is focused on employees within firms who are in a formal employment relationship, occupying defined roles, within a hierarchical reporting structure where there is a supervisor, a set of performance expectations, and a package of rewards. In contrast, an entrepreneurship perspective considers contributions from people who may be employees or contractors or non-contracted helpers, straddling the fuzzy boundaries of a new venture in roles and reporting relationships that are ambiguous and evolving, doing work that is uncertain and ever-changing, with risky and unknown outcomes, rewards, and career prospects. We highlight specific research questions focused on joiners from an HR versus an entrepreneurship perspective that warrant additional investigation and discuss the most appropriate methodologies for such study. Overall, while we acknowledge and commend the efforts of many scholars who have already explored issues related to joiners, we believe that more explicitly recognizing and engaging with the distinct focus, assumptions, debates, and conversations inherent to an entrepreneurship perspective, as well as taking a broader perspective on who is a joiner, will inspire new questions and uncover novel insights into human resources of entrepreneurial firms. We encourage work that advances a uniquely entrepreneurship-informed understanding of joiners and of HRM. • We re-define the term “joiners”, differentiate them from other stakeholders, and clarify their unique position in startups. • We encourage taking into consideration unique features of entrepreneurship in research on HRM in entrepreneurial firms. • We propose a set of novel questions related to HRM in entrepreneurial settings from an entrepreneurship-focused approach. • We discuss promising methodologies for investigating such questions.

Black entrepreneurship (BE) plays an increasingly important, and increasingly paradoxical, role in contemporary American society. On one hand, BE is a vehicle for economic advancement, exemplified through inspiring instances of resolute agency, heroic achievement, and storied successes that collectively reinforce the notion that entrepreneurship can be a potent, emancipatory force of social and economic mobility. On the other hand, BE is also a vivid illustration of race-related challenges, chronicled through an abundance of empirical evidence that reveals the extent to which Black entrepreneurs navigate a racialized entrepreneurial context; one in which formidable constraints arise throughout the entrepreneurial journey. Though critically important, the mechanisms of racialization – and the manner in which they are manifested and surmounted – remain under-theorized, leading to an incomplete understanding of how and why success is more elusive for historically marginalized entrepreneurs than it is for others, and why the threat of failure looms so large. To address these research challenges, we build upon existing work to develop a process model, depicting the unique constraints that Black entrepreneurs face at each stage of the business venturing lifecycle. Applying this processual perspective, we articulate a theory of constrained agency, wherein Black entrepreneurs can and do exercise entrepreneurial agency despite varying, multilevel manifestations of racialization. Our work lays the groundwork for a more detailed, purposeful, and relevant approach to the future research of Black entrepreneurs as well as other historically marginalized groups.

One key to new venture creation and success is getting the “people part” right. Professional investors have a strong preference for funding founding teams of people rather than individuals. This preference is based on the belief that starting a new venture requires a portfolio of experiences, skills, and networks that few individuals possess. Implicit in this thesis is the belief that the benefits of a team outweigh its costs that can accrue with co-founders arising from information asymmetries. Such information asymmetries are greater when founding with strangers given an absence of prior relational experience. Yet, strangers are more likely capable of providing the theorized (unique) value-add of co-founders such as non-redundant networks. Unfortunately, due to data limitations, the literature has not assessed assumptions concerning the pros/cons of co-founding with strangers thereby limiting our ability to get the people part of new ventures “right.” We use unique survey data on more than three thousand new ventures that successfully launched a crowdfunding campaign to assess these assumptions. These survey data include enough teams with strangers and granular measures of team functioning, product/service delivery, and operational status for comprehensive assessments. Results reveal that new ventures including strangers on the team are less likely to deliver the product/service they pitched and are more likely to be non-operational. Direct, descriptive evidence suggests that team-related issues underlie these outcomes.

Entrepreneurs enjoy autonomy and work on projects they are passionate about, which may improve their mental well-being and reduce stress. At the same time, they face several potential stressors, including long working hours. Empirical evidence on whether those who engage in self-employment experience greater stress than those who do not is mixed, which could reflect the failure to consider self-selection into entrepreneurial careers. In this paper, we re-examine the relationship between self-employment and stress, over and above the self-selection bias of individuals' predispositions, using two separate studies of monozygotic twins. In the first study (monozygotic twins from Finland), stress is reported as a perceptual measure. In the second study (monozygotic twins from the United States), we measure cortisol as a physiological indicator of stress. In both studies, we show a positive association between self-employment and stress (both perceived and physiological) above and beyond the impact of genetic and rearing factors. We also show that long working hours mediate the relationship between self-employment and stress.

Entrepreneurs' funding pitches are inherently multimodal, conveying affective content through both verbal (words) and vocal (prosodic intonation) channels. Integrating theory of cross-channel consistency with the two-dimensional model of affect, we theorize that funding performance improves when entrepreneurs' verbal and vocal expressions are affectively consistent in terms of valence and arousal, as such consistency enhances perceptions of their preparedness and authenticity. Using a mixed-methods design, we first analyze over 500 crowdfunding pitch videos with computer-aided text and audio analysis to quantify cross-channel affective consistency (CCAC) and assess its impact on funding performance via perceived preparedness and authenticity. Results show that CCAC—particularly in arousal and the joint alignment of valence and arousal—predicts funding performance. While CCAC increased both perceived preparedness and authenticity, only preparedness further predicted funding performance. A complementary inductive study further revealed distinct manifestations of CCAC (i.e., warmth, enthusiasm, seriousness, and sadness) and inconsistency (i.e., monotone, low-arousal delivery, high-arousal delivery, and humor/dramatization). Notably, consistent sadness decreased funding performance, and one form of inconsistency—high-arousal vocal delivery paired with relatively ordinary, low-arousal language—increased funding performance. Overall, this work advances research on entrepreneurial rhetoric by providing a generalizable framework for multimodal affective expression, highlighting the persuasive value of CCAC, and illuminating the mechanisms through which CCAC shapes funding performance. • Introduce “cross-channel affective consistency” (CCAC) • We analyze CCAC between vocal and verbal expressions in terms of valence and arousal. • CCAC positively enhances funding performance via perceived preparedness. • Perceived authenticity increases with CCAC but doesn't predict funding. • We reveal four types of high and low vocal-verbal CCAC, respectively, in entrepreneurial pitches.

Despite increasing attention to entrepreneurs' wellbeing, we know little about the role of entrepreneurs' personal values representing intrinsic and extrinsic motivations for their wellbeing. In this paper, we introduce a contextualized values perspective on entrepreneurs' wellbeing that considers both their personal values and the ways these values interact with cultural values in the regions they operate in. In a multilevel study (3038 entrepreneurs across 143 European regions), we find intrinsic personal values (openness to change) foster positive wellbeing and decrease negative wellbeing, whereas extrinsic personal values (self-enhancement) undermine positive wellbeing and increase negative wellbeing. We also find initial evidence of person–culture congruence effects regarding intrinsic, but not extrinsic, values, with high congruence resulting in higher positive (less negative) wellbeing. Overall, our findings suggest entrepreneurs' wellbeing may be shaped both by “who they are” and “where they operate.” Executive summary Despite increasing attention to entrepreneurs' wellbeing, we know little about the role of entrepreneurs' personal values representing intrinsic and extrinsic motivations for their wellbeing. On the one hand, acting on any values (reflecting intrinsic or extrinsic motivation) can be a source of wellbeing. On the other hand, expressing values reflecting extrinsic motivation may undermine wellbeing because of the lack of self-determination associated with extrinsic motivation. Clarifying the wellbeing effects of values representing extrinsic motivation is particularly important in entrepreneurship, because these values are linked to growth, profitability, and innovation which underpin the economic contributions of entrepreneurship. Drawing on Schwartz's theories of personal and cultural values and person-culture value congruence, we introduce a contextualized values perspective on entrepreneurs' wellbeing that considers both their personal values and the ways these values interact with cultural values in the regions they operate in. In a multilevel study (3038 entrepreneurs across 143 European regions), we find the personal values central to entrepreneurial activity can be a double-edged sword for the wellbeing of practicing entrepreneurs, highlighting the role of intrinsic (vs. extrinsic) motivation for entrepreneurs' positive and negative wellbeing. We also find initial evidence of person–culture congruence effects regarding intrinsic, but not extrinsic, values, with high congruence resulting in higher positive (less negative) wellbeing. Overall, our findings suggest entrepreneurs' wellbeing may be shaped both by “who they are” and “where they operate.”