Browsing by Subject "Start-up"

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Data-driven innovators – An empirical analysis of data-driven SMEs and start-ups
(2024) Darold, Denilton Luiz; Ebersberger, Bernd
In today's fast-paced technological landscape, the adoption of Big Data Analytics (BDA) goes beyond incremental improvements in productivity and efficiency, enabling the creation of new products, services, and even business models, known as Data-Driven Innovations (DDI). As technology evolves rapidly, reshaping industries and our daily lives, businesses must adapt to survive and innovate to thrive. Entrepreneurs, in particular, have a vast horizon of possibilities to explore through data, opening avenues for new ventures. However, the literature in the field has pointed to a lack of empirical evidence on the actual realization of these possibilities, the so-called ‘deployment gap’. Also, regarding established firms, there is a recurrent call for longitudinal analysis to understand the dynamics of BDA adoption and firm performance. Motivated by these challenges, this study employs a data-driven methodology that integrates data science techniques, like web scraping, natural language processing (NLP), and neural topic modeling (BERTopic), to provide large-scale empirical evidence on the realization of the DDI, focusing on understanding the firms behind them. The objectives range from identifying data-driven firms using website text to analyzing the determinants of adoption, firm performance dynamics, and emerging business models in startups. The study starts by focusing on German knowledge-intensive SMEs and identifying factors influencing BDA adoption, following the Technology-Organization-Environment (TOE) Framework. The findings show that larger, younger firms with international ownership are more likely to adopt BDA technologies, and this adoption is positively associated with innovation indicators such as patents and trademarks. The second study, grounded on Resource-Based-View (RBV), extends the analysis by exploring the timing of DDI deployment and its impact on firm performance over time using panel data. The results show that early adoption confers performance gains, particularly in technology-intensive sectors, but these gains tend to decrease as the technology becomes more widespread. The third study shifts the focus to the global start-up ecosystem, analyzing emerging data-driven business models (DDBMs) by examining the value propositions of start-ups across various sectors. Using neural topic modeling, the research identifies key trends and patterns in DDBMs, confirming the increasing emphasis on AI and data science as central themes. The study also tracks the evolution of these trends over time, identifying a shift towards more specialized technological areas within start-ups' value propositions. The empirical findings contribute to the broader discussion on BDA technologies, innovation, and their influence on firm performance. They offer insights not only to researchers conducting qualitative and theoretical studies but also to practitioners and policymakers involved in technology adoption and entrepreneurship. Methodologically, this work contributes to innovation studies by applying advanced data science techniques to analyze large-scale, unstructured data. These methods introduce a novel approach to uncovering patterns and insights that traditional methods may overlook, thereby advancing the study of digital innovations.
On capital and habitus: social class and its role in entrepreneurship
(2024) Rönnert, Anna-Lena; Kuckertz, Andreas
Entrepreneurship is often heralded as a pathway to upward mobility, epitomizing the ideal of the "rags to riches" narrative. However, recent research on marginalized entrepreneurs suggests that social class may play a significant role in shaping entrepreneurial outcomes, challenging the notion that entrepreneurship offers equal opportunities to all. Although research explicitly linking entrepreneurship with social class theories remains limited, social class appears to influence access to various forms of capital and shape the habitus that guides entrepreneurial behavior. Consequently, understanding these dynamics is essential to addressing inequalities in entrepreneurship. This dissertation explores how social class affects an individual’s entrepreneurial journey, with three studies included in this dissertation approaching the topic from different conceptual perspectives. Study 1 provides an integrative review of the literature on social class origin and entrepreneurship by seeking to understand: What is an entrepreneur’s social class origin? How does social class origin influence entrepreneurial outcomes and social class destinations? How should future entrepreneurship research address social class origin? In response, the study proposes a theoretical framework that outlines how entrepreneurs’ social class origin impacts entrepreneurial outcomes through entrepreneurial resources at hand, entrepreneurial habitus formation, and access to external resources and opportunities, and how these themes facilitate upward mobility, downward mobility, or class maintenance. In addition, this review establishes the foundations for future empirical research by developing a comprehensive future research agenda on social class in entrepreneurship. While Study 1 sets the broader theoretical context, Study 2 turns to the lived experiences of upwardly mobile entrepreneurs. Drawing on Lahire’s reconceptualization of habitus, this study seeks to explore how the internalized dispositions formed through social class origin and upward social mobility interact with the socio-cultural context of entrepreneurship and shape entrepreneurial behavior. Through life history interviews with 36 entrepreneurs, the study identifies seven entrepreneurial archetypes that reflect varying degrees of (mis)alignment tied to classed socio-cultural contexts and internal-ized dispositions and display distinct entrepreneurial behaviors in response. These findings highlight the socio-cultural barriers faced by upwardly mobile entrepreneurs, which persist despite the accumulation of capital through social mobility, and raise questions about the inclusivity of entrepreneurship as a viable pathway across different social hierarchies. In contrast to the focus on individual experiences of upward social mobility in Study 2, Study 3 examines the effects of educational attainment as a social class signal and the intersection with gender and migration backgrounds on the likelihood of obtaining different types of external financial capital. Analyzing 63,023 venture-year observations from Germany, this study shows that entrepreneurs without academic qualifications are less likely to secure equity capital but more likely to obtain debt financing. Additionally, the study underscores how intersectional factors, such as gender and migration background, interact with social class to influence financial capital acquisition. These results reveal the complex ways in which social class signals shape entrepreneurial access to resources, offering a broader perspective on structural inequalities in entrepreneurship. Overall, this dissertation provides a comprehensive examination of the role of social class in entrepreneurship, highlighting the intricate connections between class-based capital and habitus. By combining the broad theoretical perspectives of Study 1 with the personal life histories in Study 2 and the large-scale quantitative analysis in Study 3, this work offers a multidimensional understanding of how social class affects an individual’s entrepreneurial journey. The findings contribute to the emerging field of research on social class and entrepreneurship by shedding light on the structural barriers faced by entrepreneurs from different social backgrounds, as well as the unique strengths they bring to the entrepreneurial process. While this thesis makes significant strides in advancing our understanding of the interplay between social class and entrepreneurship, there remains much to uncover. Consequently, it lays the groundwork for future research by outlining a comprehensive agenda that addresses the complex dynamics of social class along the Bourdieusian concepts of capital and habitus, ultimately aiming to promote a more inclusive understanding of entrepreneurship.
Sustainable entrepreneurship and the bioeconomy transition
(2023) Hinderer, Sebastian; Kuckertz, Andreas
Transgressing planetary boundaries endangers the safe operating space for humanity. Thus, a transition of socioeconomic systems toward sustainable development is needed. Prior research elevated the role of sustainable entrepreneurship (SE) in the transition process toward sustainable development in general and the bioeconomy in specific. Bioeconomy strategies worldwide acknowledge the importance of entrepreneurship for the transition process. There is consensus in research that entrepreneurs are needed to implement the vision of a bioeconomy as defined in these strategies. However, it remains unclear how opportunities for entrepreneurial activity in the bioeconomy come into existence and how entrepreneurs contribute to the bioeconomy transition by acting on the provided opportunities. Thus, this dissertation aims to shed light on the interface of SE and the bioeconomy, specifically by investigating the interplay between SE and the bioeconomy transition in light of planetary boundaries and the role of entrepreneurs within the transition. The four empirical studies included in this dissertation take different perspectives on the interface of SE and the bioeconomy and thus contribute different insights to the overall picture drawn in this dissertation. For instance, Study 1 examines a transition pathway to a sustainable bioeconomy by involving an international expert sample in a Delphi survey and subsequent cross-impact analysis. Study 1 presents a list of events necessary to achieve the transition ranked by the experts to reflect their urgency. The cross-impact analysis facilitates combining the most urgent events to create an integrated model of the transition to a sustainable bioeconomy. The findings suggest that rather than bioeconomy strategies, technological progress leveraged by innovative bioeconomy startups and investments currently constitute the main bottleneck hindering a transition to a bioeconomy. Study 2 zooms into the level of new bioeconomy ventures. Based on interviews with ten bioeconomy entrepreneurs from six European countries, it investigates how entrepreneurial opportunities emerge in the bioeconomy context and what competencies entrepreneurs need to act on them. Conceptualizing the bioeconomy transition as an external enabler for SE, Study 2 opens new avenues for research on sustainable development and innovation policy. Furthermore, Study 2 shows that new venture creation in the bioeconomy requires unique knowledge and specific competencies. Study 3 asks how to scale sustainable new ventures and puts it in the context of the ongoing de-growth debate. In recent years the de-growth paradigm has gained popularity in the sustainability discourse. Questioning the absolute decoupling of economic growth from environmental degradation, de-growth proponents suggest downscaling production and consumption to reduce resource extraction and energy consumption. Applying latent class analysis to reveal de-growth attitudes among 393 surveyed entrepreneurs and subsequent regression analysis, Study 3 answers how de-growth attitudes among (sustainable) entrepreneurs are associated with their decision-making on scaling strategies for their ventures. Furthermore, it shows that the development level of the economy an entrepreneur is active in is an essential factor in the decision-making on scaling strategies. Study 4 investigates how sustainable new ventures gain legitimacy to acquire the necessary resources to grow. Previous research suggested being distinctive yet understandable as key to legitimacy for new ventures. However, Study 4 describes complex entrepreneurial identities, i.e., unconventional combinations of entrepreneurial identity claims from the founder and venture levels, as an additional source of legitimacy that benefits only sustainable new ventures but not conventional ones. Since sustainable startups aim to tackle complex problems, external audiences expect them to be different from established conventions of the status quo. An analysis of 15,116 crowdfunding campaigns and their creators’ user profiles via topic modeling and subsequent regression analysis supports this argumentation. The findings show that sustainable ventures with complex – or even odd – entrepreneurial identities receive more support from crowdfunders, while conventional ventures do not. Overall, this dissertation conceptualizes a bi-directional and potentially reinforcing relationship between SE and the bioeconomy transition by building on extant literature and collecting and analyzing new data in four empirical studies. Moreover, it highlights the role of entrepreneurs who need unique knowledge and specific competencies and differ significantly from conventional entrepreneurs in their behavior and entrepreneurial identity. Finally, this dissertation discusses how policy and societal norms can foster productive entrepreneurship that is innovative and sustainable within planetary boundaries.