Learning in accelerated ventures: The role of Penrosean resources

Guide(s)

Bhagavatula, Suresh

Department

Entrepreneurship

Area

Entrepreneurship

University

Indian Institute of Management Bangalore

Place

Bangalore

Publication Date

3-31-2024

Year Awarded

March 2024

Year Completed

March 2024

Year Registered

June 2018

Abstract

Organizational sponsorship serves as a mediator in the relation between new ventures and their surroundings by establishing a context that is rich in resources in order to enhance the chances of survival for these new organizations. Extant research has identified three mechanisms employed by organization sponsors to achieve this goal: * Buffering: This mechanism involves providing services and resources to protect new ventures from external competition and threats * Bridging: Sponsors aim to connect new ventures with the external environment to increase their resource endowment, social capital, and legitimacy * Curating: As a specific type of bridging, curating involves the selective direction of entrepreneurs towards the most suitable resource providers. Overall, these mechanisms work together to create a supportive ecosystem where new ventures can thrive by receiving protection, resource connections, and curated support from organizational sponsors. However, owing to the focus on resources, particularly financial, the larger goal of organizational sponsorship has been to help new ventures raise funding in order to "graduate" outside of their sponsorship. This dissertation explores the different resource characteristics important for firm growth and the processes employed by a unique accelerator that focuses on helping founders communize and retain optionality by delaying fund-raising. In the first essay, I develop a conceptual "resource enrichment" model by integrating Penrosean and Barnean perspectives. Resource-based theorizing has largely been built upon two distinct resource-based logics: Penrose's "versatile" resources and Barney's "VRIN" resources. However, management scholars have studied these theories in silos or conflated them together. I attempt to theoretically integrate these two logics and present a micro-foundational resource "enrichment" model. Our model offers novel insights into how entrepreneurs/managers and their actions and interactions with other stakeholders play a key role in the process of resource "enrichment" from identifying a potential resource to acquiring the characteristics of value and versatility. In the second essay, I explore how micro-ecosystems facilitate interaction and lead to entrepreneurial co-creation of peer learning. The literature on entrepreneurial support organizations (ESOs) has largely taken a provisional focus, i.e., providing technical and material resources for new ventures. However, the other actions by ESOs and micro-mechanisms that facilitate interaction in the micro-ecosystem between diverse participants leading to the co-creation of entrepreneurial learnings require further elucidation.We study one such mechanism whereby our model offers novel insights into how multiple entrepreneurial ecosystem actors interact in the micro-ecosystem of an accelerator, generating important learning for all these participants. This peer learning is fungible in nature and propagates to the future participants of the accelerator in subsequent time periods. In the third essay, I explore how peer-generated non-financial resources act as capital substitutes for developing ventures. Venture development is a resource-intensive process. However, not all resources are equal. Prior research hints at the usefulness of "versatile" Penrosean resources that can help ventures develop while simultaneously reducing their dependence on external fund-raising. While organizational sponsorship literature discusses creating resource-munificence through buffering, bridging, and curating, we used a longitudinal approach to collect in-depth non-participant observations, interviews, and other data from a unique accelerator to develop an inductive model of organizational sponsor communizing. Findings show how peer interactions within an accelerator generate four types of non-financial Penrosean resources that reduce costs of knowledge acquisition, simulate serial entrepreneurship experiences, and induce proclivity towards partnerships both within and outside accelerators. These lead to founders relying less on external funds, retaining control over their ventures, and having a larger set of options to choose from for their endgames.

Pagination

x, 148p.

Copyright

Indian Institute of Management Bangalore

Document Type

Dissertation

DAC Chairperson

Bhagavatula, Suresh

DAC Members

Sarasvathy, Saras D; Levasseur, Ludvig

Type of Degree

Ph.D.

Relation

DIS-IIMB-FPM-P24-01

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