Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
economics has often made analogies on the level of the i rm (routines, organizational
capabilities, Nelson and Winter, 1982; absorptive capacity, Cohen and Levinthal, 1990)
that have been derived from individual-level concepts (skills, memory).
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Take the exam-
ples of skills-organizational capabilities. When an individual starts with ef orts to exploit
an entrepreneurial opportunity, the nature of this opportunity and the probability of
successful exploitation is likely to depend on the prior knowledge (Shane, 2000), skills
(human capital; Ucbasaran et al., 2006), and networks (Stuart and Sorenson, 2007) of
the entrepreneur. Once a successful i rm has been created, the importance of the prior
knowledge and skills of the entrepreneur is likely to be superseded by the organizational
capabilities (including the absorptive capacity) of the i rm. These organizational capa-
bilities are more than the sum of the skills or its employees: they are emergent properties.
It has been assumed that spin-of s directly inherit routines from their parent (Dahl and
Reichstein, 2007; Klepper, 2006), however, this is unlikely as most spin-of s are started
by one or a few entrepreneurs, and are thus not started as multi-person organizations
that directly inherit or copy the routines from the parent organization. An important
empirical question from an entrepreneurship point of view is whether individuals
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that
are able to create a successful i rm in one place are also able to create a multi-locational
entity that becomes less dependent on their skills, prior knowledge, and to what extent
their vision is still driving the development of the i rm, for example in overcoming the
information distortions that arise in multi-person, multi-locational organizations (see
Witt, 1998). Once external shareholders own (parts) of the i rm, the question is what kind
of consequences this has on the spatial organization of the i rm (see Stam, 2006, 2007).
The decreased ownership share of the founder (or even exit), makes the i rm - and its
spatial organization - more sensitive to the capital market as a selection environment.
A relatively unexplored element of entrepreneurship is the exit of (young) i rms (see
Wennberg, 2009). Firm exit is often regarded as a clear consequence of selection in a
product market. However, once we take the aspiration levels and job market opportuni-
ties of the entrepreneur into account, the story becomes more complex. Entrepreneurs
with relatively low aspiration levels may stay on with their i rm for a long time, even
though its performance may be regarded as sub-optimal (Gimeno et al., 1997). On the
other hand, individuals with relatively high aspiration levels might decide to close down
their business even when it is a viable economic entity, because they can achieve a much
higher income as a wage earner. These aspiration levels and alternative job markets are
likely to be determined by the regional culture and labour market. Until now, we know
very little about these mechanisms.
One of the traditional roles of entrepreneurs has been the one of broker between
formerly unconnected communities. Bridging two formerly unconnected networks (a so-
called structural hole) might provide information benei ts to the broker, who might take
an entrepreneurial role when he or she exploits the opportunities that are provided with
this information (Burt, 2000). Migrant entrepreneurship emphasizes the spatial aspect of
this broker role, especially in the recent literature on Argonauts (Saxenian, 2006). More
insights into the role of these entrepreneurial migrants in creating and exploiting knowl-
edge l ows between particular (place-bound) communities in advanced capitalist econo-
mies and developing economies are needed, both on the micro-level processes involved,
as well as the ef ects on the innovativeness and development of the connected (and
disconnected) communities. This can be a fertile meeting ground for entrepreneurship
