Asia Pacific Journal of Management – 37(4), pg. 981 – 1011
State fragility as a multi-dimensional construct for international entrepreneurship research and practice
Joshua K. Ault, Andrew Spicer
While the international entrepreneurship literature has begun to expand its scope to include the world’s poorest and least-developed countries, it has not yet reached a consensus about how to conceptualize and measure the relevant cross-national differences that shape the wide range of entrepreneurial activities across the developing world. To address this gap, we explore the potential contribution of the multi-dimensional construct of “state fragility,” as developed in related fields, as an orienting framework for developing-country entrepreneurship research. Instead of viewing all developing country states as universally weak, the state fragility construct provides a conceptual framework to identify which types of capabilities are weak, to which degree, and in what configuration, thus advancing efforts to systematically compare and contrast the wide diversity of entrepreneurial processes and outcomes found across the developing world.
Asia Pacific Journal of Management – 37(4), pg. 1039–1060
Information diversity and innovation for born-globals
Clyde Eiríkur Hull, Zhi Tang, Jintong Tang, Jun Yang
Does being a born-global make a startup more or less likely to quit before launch, and how do innovativeness and information diversity affect the decision to start or stop a born-global venture? Born-globals, new ventures that are global from the start, simultaneously create new businesses and enter new markets, whereas firms that do not choose to start as born-globals face only the challenges of creating a new business. We examine how new ventures, both born-globals and non-born-globals, address these challenges in the earliest stages, when the idea of the company is still being formed. We predict that information diversity (i.e., using many sources of information) and pursuing an innovative venture make a born-global strategy more likely, and that being born-global reduces the likelihood of early failure in an emerging economy. Further, we propose that information diversity and innovativeness moderate the relationship between born-globals and new venture disengagement. Using data from 321 Chinese nascent startups, we find general support for these hypotheses.
Small Business Economics – 56(1), pg. 237–257
Examining economic complexity as a holistic innovation system effect
Kai Du, Allan O’Connor
The relationship between entrepreneurship and economic growth has remained somewhat contentious. While it is almost universally acknowledged that entrepreneurship and particularly knowledge-intensive entrepreneurship has apparent and important links to economic growth, studies to elaborate exactly how each of these factors influences economic growth return inconsistent findings. However, the measure of economic growth we suggest is too broad as an outcome metric to account for the sector of the economy that most directly contributes to the dynamics of economic growth. In this paper, we take a more nuanced approach to consider in what way and whether increasing economic complexity is related to the efficiency with which a country produces growth. We argue from a holistic innovation system (HIS) perspective that the combination of both knowledge-intensive and broader market–led business innovation will more rapidly improve the productivity levels of nations by utilising the diversity of knowledge and business resources available to that country. To test this hypothesis, we employ a dynamic version of the two-stage data envelopment analysis. We conclude that the increased economic diversity measured by the change in economic complexity can be treated as a much more refined outcome effect of a country’s HIS.