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.
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.