Showing papers by "Dimo Dimov published in 2010"

Nascent Entrepreneurs and Venture Emergence: Opportunity Confidence, Human Capital, and Early Planning

Abstract: Nascent entrepreneurs continuously evaluate the merits of the opportunities they pursue and so can abandon those that lack promise and persist with those that remain attractive. This paper articulates this evolving judgment about the opportunity as the nascent entrepreneur's opportunity confidence. It situates this construct in the context of the nascent entrepreneur's human capital and early planning actions in respect to the pursued opportunity, and in respect to the emergence of the nascent venture. Analyses of PSED data show that opportunity confidence positively affects venture emergence and that, through it, entrepreneurial experience and early planning have only indirect effects on venture emergence. In contrast, industry experience has a direct, positive effect on venture emergence. These results provide some novel insights into the nascent entrepreneurial process as well as into the role of human capital and early planning in that process.

Firm Experience and Market Entry by Venture Capital Firms (1962–2004)

Abstract: In this paper, we examine a firm's decision to enter new markets as related to the depth and breadth of its experience and the relative distance of those markets. We situate our discussion and analysis in the context of the venture capital (VC) industry, and examine whether and when US VC firms enter five high-technology investment markets through first- or later-round investments. This setting allows us to observe both the firms that chose to enter a new market and those that did not, and analyse the antecedents of these decisions. We find that VC firms overall are less likely to enter distant markets; those with broader experience are more likely to make first-round entries. In addition, VC firms with deeper investment experience are more likely to make first-round entries in proximate markets and less likely to enter distant markets and make later-round entries. These results offer interesting implications for the literature on organizational learning and entrepreneurship.

Cross-Functional Collaboration, Knowledge Transfer and Product Innovativeness: Contingency Effects of Social Context

Abstract: A contingency perspective is used to examine how social capital influences the relationship between cross-functional collaboration and product innovativeness. Three dimensions of organizations’ internal social context (social interaction, trust, and goal congruence) conducive to high-quality knowledge transfer are argued to increase firms’ ability to convert cross-functional collaboration into product innovativeness. Several research hypotheses are tested based on a sample of 232 firms. It is found that the relationship between cross-functional collaboration and product innovativeness is amplified at higher levels of the three social capital dimensions. The study’s implications for the role of knowledge transfer and social capital in exchange relationships are discussed.