Practice makes perfect

PublicationArticle (with peer review)

Entreprenörskap, Erfarenhet, Företagandets villkor, Karl Wennberg, Performance, Phillip H. Kim, Praktik, Rasmus Toft-Kehler

Abstract

This study tackles the puzzle of why increasing entrepreneurial experience does not always lead to improved financial performance of new ventures. We propose an alternate framework demonstrating how experience translates into expertise by arguing that the positive experience–performance relationship only appears to expert entrepreneurs, while novice entrepreneurs may actually perform increasingly worse because of their inability to generalize their experiential knowledge accurately into new ventures. These negative performance implications can be alleviated if the level of contextual similarity between prior and current ventures is high. Using matched employee–employer data of an entire population of Swedish founder-managers between 1990 and 2007, we find a non-linear relationship between entrepreneurial experience and financial performance consistent with our framework. Moreover, the level of industry, geographic, and temporal similarities between prior and current ventures positively moderates this relationship. Our work provides both theoretical and practical implications for entrepreneurial experience—people can learn entrepreneurship and pursue it with greater success as long as they have multiple opportunities to gain experience, overcome barriers to learning, and build an entrepreneurial-experience curve.

Related content: Working Paper No. 210

Toft-Kehler, R., Wennberg, K. & Kim, P. H. (2014). Practice makes perfect: Entrepreneurial-experience curves and venture performance. Journal of Business Venturing, 29(4), 453-470. DOI: 10.1016/j.jbusvent.2013.07.001

Fooled by diversity? When diversity initiatives exacerbate rather than mitigate inequality

Article (with peer review)Publication

Hellerstedt, K., Uman, T., & Wennberg, K.

Publication year

2022

Published in

Hellerstedt, K., Uman, T., & Wennberg, K. (2022). Fooled by diversity? When diversity initiatives exacerbate rather than mitigate inequality. Academy of Management Perspectives.

Abstract

This article analyzes and critically discusses the business case logic of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives. We highlight the value-in diversity logic for organizations and compare this with both the recent logic of power activism driven by internal and external lobbying and the classical moral justice logic originating in the civil rights movement,showing how the concepts of diversity, equity, and inclusion are seen differently in research and advocacy as organizational inputs, sought-for outputs, or as a context for social change…

Crises, Covid-19, and Entrepreneurship

Article (with peer review)Publication

Batjargal, B., Jack, S., Mickiewicz, T., Stam, E., Stam, W., & Wennberg, K.

Publication year

2023

Published in

Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice.

Abstract

This virtual special issue includes research on the effects of crises, in particular the COVID-19 pandemic, on entrepreneurship, and entrepreneurial responses to deal with consequences of crises. This issue highlights how crises affect entrepreneurs’ well-being and reinforce the importance of agency of entrepreneurs and other citizens. The special issue also highlights the need for resilience; the ability of entrepreneurs, organizations, and economies to absorb and adapt to shocks; and how it can be strengthened. We discuss the importance of data in times of crisis and the greater need for engaged scholarship.

The article can be accessed here.

Evaluating Evaluations of Innovation Policy: Exploring Reliability, Methods, and Conflicts of Interest

Book chapterPublication

Collin, E., Sandström, C., & Wennberg, K.

Publication year

2022

Published in

Questioning the Entrepreneurial State, 157.

Abstract

Expansions of innovation policies have been paralleled with an increase in the evaluations of such policies. Yet, there are few systematic evaluations of how such evaluations are conducted, by whom, and their overall conclusions. We analyze 110 evaluations of innovation policy in Sweden from 2005 to 2019. Our findings show that the majority of these evaluations are positive, about one-third are neutral in their conclusions, and very few are negative. The majority of evaluations were conducted by consulting firms, close to one-third by expert government agencies, and around 10% by university researchers or as self-evaluations by the governmental agencies responsible for the policy themselves. Few evaluations employed causal methods to assess the potential effects of policies. We discuss conflicts of interest and question the reliability of evaluations of innovation policy.

Abstract

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