Review articles or literature reviews are a critical part of scientific research. While numerous guides on literature reviews exist, these are often limited to the philosophy of review procedures, protocols, and nomenclatures, triggering non-parsimonious reporting and confusion due to overlapping similarities. To address the aforementioned limitations, we adopt a pragmatic approach to demystify and shape the academic practice of conducting literature reviews. We concentrate on the types, focuses, considerations, methods, and contributions of literature reviews as independent, standalone studies. As such, our article serves as an overview that scholars can rely upon to navigate the fundamental elements of literature reviews as standalone and independent studies, without getting entangled in the complexities of review procedures, protocols, and nomenclatures.

An increasing number of established companies have recently started to launch corporate accelerator programs to engage with entrepreneurial startups, making this a worldwide, cross-industrial phenomenon. Nevertheless, there is a lack of understanding of the various objectives and approaches adopted by companies. This article examines 13 in-depth case studies of corporate accelerator programs and is the first to empirically derive and discuss a typology for corporate accelerators, assessing objectives and design configurations. Thereby, the article contributes to the emerging discussion about corporate accelerators in corporate entrepreneurship literature. Moreover, the findings provide corporate managers with an understanding of corporate accelerators and guidance for how to make design choices for startup engagement programs.

Purpose In a move characterized by ambiguity, Facebook changed its name to Meta in October 2021, announcing a new era of social interaction, enabled by the metaverse technology that appears poised to become the future center of gravity for online social interactions. At first glance, the communicated change signals a radically new business model (BM) based on an unprecedented configuration of the three following components: value creation, value proposition and value capture. The purpose of this paper is to analyze Facebook’s announced changes in its BM to clarify whether the change is as radical as communicated or rather represents an incremental transformation of the current BM.Design/methodology/approach This investigation adopted an in-depth case study research method. The process included using a structured approach to collect 153 data points, including academic studies and publicly available information, followed by qualitative content analysis.Findings The results of our analysis of Facebook’s entrepreneurial journey indicate that the communicated strategic refocusing does not correspond to a radical BM innovation pattern. Even though Facebook’s BM might evolve into the innovation phase, as the current changes appear very futuristic, the authors estimate that the core elements of the BM will change incrementally. The investigation indicates that the underlying logic of the straightforward communicative efforts primarily serves two purposes: to improve the external perception of the company and to disseminate an internal change signal within the organization.Originality/value This paper is the first study that takes an entrepreneurship and BM perspective in analyzing Facebook’s approach in rebranding to Meta and refocusing its strategy on building the metaverse. The academic and practical relevance, as well as the potential future impact on business and society, makes the investigation of this case an intriguing prospect. Additionally, the study illuminates the difference between the communicated vision and the real impact on the business, suggesting critical questions about future large-scale rebranding efforts and their effects.

No abstract

The personality traits that define entrepreneurs have been of significant interest to academic research for several decades. However, previous studies have used vastly different definitions of the term “entrepreneur”, meaning their subjects have ranged from rural farmers to tech-industry start-up founders. Consequently, most research has investigated disparate sub-types of entrepreneurs, which may not allow for inferences to be made regarding the general entrepreneurial population. Despite this, studies have frequently extrapolated results from narrow sub-types to entrepreneurs in general. This variation in entrepreneur samples reduces the comparability of empirical studies and calls into question the reviews that pool results without systematic differentiation between sub-types. The present study offers a novel account by differentiating between the definitions of “entrepreneur” used in studies on entrepreneurs’ personality traits. We conduct a systematic literature review across 95 studies from 1985 to 2020. We uncover three main themes across the previous studies. First, previous research applied a wide range of definitions of the term “entrepreneur”. Second, we identify several inconsistent findings across studies, which may at least partially be due to the use of heterogeneous entrepreneur samples. Third, the few studies that distinguished between various types of entrepreneurs revealed differences between them. Our systematic differentiation between entrepreneur sub-types and our research integration offer a novel perspective that has, to date, been widely neglected in academic research. Future research should use clearly defined entrepreneurial samples and conduct more systematic investigations into the differences between entrepreneur sub-types.

Purpose This paper aims to categorize and organize dynamic capabilities that have been inductively identified in empirical research into a comprehensive taxonomy. Thus, it addresses calls in the literature for a better understanding of dynamic capabilities and integration of scattered empirical findings into theory. Design/methodology/approach A systematic literature review approach was adopted, with a total of 34 articles published between August 2007 and April 2020, from which 240 idiosyncratic dynamic capabilities were identified. The taxonomy was constructed using the Gioia-method. Findings The main finding is a three-level taxonomy of dynamic capabilities (DC). Level DC-1 is based on the existing triad of sensing, seizing and transforming. Level DC-2 is newly introduced to the literature by this study, consisting of 19 dynamic sub-capabilities that categorize and organize all 240 idiosyncratic dynamic capabilities in the sample (level DC-3). The taxonomy supports the existing claim that dynamic capabilities are common in key features and idiosyncratic in details. Moreover, theoretical connections to business model innovation and ambidexterity are indicated. Practical implications This study integrates scattered empirical findings of specific dynamic capabilities and translates them to a practitioner audience. The taxonomy allows the strategic manager to understand what they specifically are and, thus, assess the dynamic capability endowment of the firm which allows deploying, developing and fostering them. Originality/value The taxonomy provides a comprehensive and tangible picture of what dynamic capabilities look like in practice. It improves existing knowledge and understanding by bridging the rigor-relevance gap between rather rigorous conceptual literature and rather relevant empirical research as it integrates them. As such, it can serve as a “map” of dynamic capabilities for scholars and practitioners.

In times of changing business environments, firms must constantly renew their competitive advantage by establishing dynamic capabilities. While often attempting to employ this in corporate venturing activities, they face the challenge of simultaneously exploring new and exploiting existing business opportunities. Examining possible approaches to mastering this feat of ‘organizational ambidexterity’ reveals an extensive but scattered picture. To better integrate this effort by assessing how corporate venturing is linked with organizational ambidexterity in the literature and identifying possible organizational setups, this systematic literature review builds on a sample of 172 studies. Based on different dimensions of dynamic capabilities, the analysis indicates that corporate venturing may take a solely explorative or an exploitative role, or balance both, to directly enable organizational ambidexterity, following a ‘trade-off’, respectively ‘paradox’, school of thought. As a result, this paper identifies four different setups of corporate venturing in an integrated framework, based on the ability and approach to enabling organizational ambidexterity. Here, the synthesis in the proposed framework of the studies examined allows differentiating between not directly ambidextrous separated or integrated corporate venturing and directly ambidextrous contextual or interlinked corporate venturing. As a novel contribution to the fields of strategic management, organizational change and corporate entrepreneurship, this integrated perspective suggests an often overlooked, potentially more strategic role for corporate venturing in the strategic renewal of a firm’s competitive advantage, thus building the basis for further empirical research on strategic corporate venturing approaches for organizational ambidexterity and their application in practice.

No abstract