The paper explores the process of early growth of entrepreneurial science-based firms. Drawing on case studies of British and Dutch biopharmaceutical R&D firms, we conceptualize the speed of early growth of science-based firms as the time it takes for the assembly (or combined development) of three types of critical resources - a functionally-diverse management team, early fundraising and development of technology. The development of these resources is an unfolding and interrelated process, the causal direction of which is highly ambiguous. We show the variety of paths used by science-based firms to access and develop these critical resources. The picture that emerges is that the various combinations of what we call "assisted" and "unassisted" paths combine to influence the speed of firm growth. We show how a wide range of manifestations of technology development act as signaling devices to attract funding and management, affecting the speed of firm development. We also show how the variety of paths and the speed of development are influenced by the national institutional setting.
Deliberate practice, an iterative process that leads to expertise, is found to be positively associated with superior performance in domains such as sports, education, and entrepreneurship. At the same time, deliberate practice is also seen as being less than enjoyable and difficult to pursue consistently. As such, passion is considered to be a vital motivator of engagement in and maintenance of deliberate practice. Despite the evident importance of passion, the relationship between passion and deliberate practice in entrepreneurship has not been subject to sufficient empirical evaluation. Therefore, in this study, we consider the way in which passion moderates the relationship between deliberate practice and venture performance. We hypothesize that deliberate practice is positively related to venture performance and that passion positively moderates this relationship. We find support for our first hypothesis, in line with previous studies. However, contrary to our second hypothesis, we find that entrepreneurial passion negatively moderates the deliberate practice-venture performance relationship. In response to this finding, we provide possible explanations as to why this negative moderation effect was observed by drawing on Kolb’s experiential learning cycle.
As entrepreneurship is seen as very important for economic growth the education of entrepreneurship is getting more interest, not only from business oriented schools, but also from non-business schools. It is widely recognized that entrepreneurship education needs other approaches of teaching. To teachers it means that they have to change their education. In 2013 we started an training program for teachers to teach more entrepreneurial. This program is designed around constructivistic teaching and action learning. One of the things we found out during the teachers program, is that non-business teachers and students have other experiences and use other words to describe entrepreneurship. To find the right language and therefore the right teaching program, it is valuable to find out the vocabulary that people use when they describe entrepreneurship. We developed a scale of different elements of entrepreneurship according to which people can score their view on entrepreneurship. Scoring the different elements of entrepreneurship will clear for example the differences of entrepreneurial view between business and non-business students. The entrepreneurial view can be used to design the teaching program for entrepreneurial students. That view can also be used to get a better understanding among different (business and non-business) students to help them to learn more from each other. Besides that, the entrepreneurial view can also be used to discuss about that view and develop a more complete and nuanced view of entrepreneurship. With the right vocabulary the model for entrepreneurship education can be tailor-made.
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