Who helps entrepreneurs raise the resources they need and how much equity does an entrepreneur distribute in return? We use a sample of 611 entrepreneurs in the U.S. to examine why some entrepreneurs are more likely than others to distribute ownership selectively to helpers. We find that entrepreneurs with specific industry experience and start-up experience are able to provide ownership more selectively and raise more resources from their helpers. We refine the categorization of social ties further to make a distinction between professional and familial ties to show that the ownership distribution and types of resource contributions vary by the mix of ties in the entrepreneur's helper network. Our findings have implications for theories of resource assembly, social structure and entrepreneurship, and organization design.Resource mobilization is a critical step in entrepreneurship, particularly the micro-social processes that influence the quality and quantity of resources that an individual can mobilize towards the exploitation of an entrepreneurial opportunity. Scholars have focused on social ties between the entrepreneurs and other professionally-organized resource providers such as angel or venture capital investors. Much less studied is the process prior to raising formal capital, that is, how the entrepreneur mobilizes resources from family, friends, and colleagues. We examine what drives some entrepreneurs to distribute ownership selectively in a new venture.We adopt the perspective of a nascent entrepreneur as being embedded in a web of social relations that help create a new organization. We suggest that entrepreneur's with specific industry experience follow different paths in the distribution of ownership to the helpers and mobilize different resources than entrepreneurs without such experience. Our approach complements prior work by showing that individuals with experience design the organization differently than those without it. We examine how the heterogeneity in the proportion of family and professional ties across entrepreneurs' helper networks influence the distribution of equity to the helpers and the entrepreneur's ability to raise more and higher quality resources. We test these predictions in a sample of 611 entrepreneurs in the US.Our results reveal that there is a positive relationship between specific human capital of the entrepreneur and selective equity distribution and concurrent higher resource mobilization. When an entrepreneur's experience increases by one standard deviation (9.7 years) from no experience, the equity retained goes up from 70% to 73%. When specific industry experience increases from eight years (mean) to 18 years (mean plus one std. dev.), then the equity retained increases by from 73% to 74%, an increase of only 1%. Entrepreneurs with prior start-up experience retain 4.3% more equity than those without such experience. We find if the number of family ties in the helper group increases by one standard deviation, then the entrepreneur's equity retained decreases

We provide evidence that young firms systematically differ from older firms in their innovative output when they enter 'new to the firm' technological niches. We analyze data from 128 biotechnology firms since their inception and track these firms over time. Our analyses reveal that the organizational age at which the firm branches into new technological niches significantly influences its innovative activity. We refine the focus of the extant literature by separately examining the effects of branching on the quantity of innovative output, and the impact that this output has on the technology domain. Subsequent to branching into new niches, we find that older firms have a higher quantity of output than their younger counterparts; whereas young firms tend to outpace their older rivals with higher impact. The implications of these findings for the literature on dynamic capabilities and entrepreneurship are discussed. Entry into New Niches 3How does the timing of capability development matter? We examine whether the benefits that accrue to expanding technological capabilities are contingent upon firm age. We draw on the organizational aging and dynamic capability literatures to study how the expansion of a firm's capabilities by entering 'new to the firm' technological niches, termed as branching, at different points in the firm's age would vary in its influence on subsequent innovative activity.Though commonly assumed that startups create breakthrough inventions, some contrarian evidence suggests that mature incumbents also generate such discoveries (Dushnitsky and Lenox, 2005;Phene et al., 2006). In a study of large chemical firms, Ahuja and Lampert (2001) proffer evidence to suggest that mature incumbents overcome pathologies of aging by branching into new domains and by recombining new with old knowledge. Other researchers have investigated the temporal and structural effects of recombining new with old knowledge on innovative output (Nerkar, 2003;Rosenkopf and Nerkar, 2001;Rothaermel and Boeker, 2008;Yayavaram and Ahuja, 2008). We contribute to this conversation by examining the role of entry into novel technology areas, i.e. branching, and how the effects of branching on innovative activity vary with firm age.To examine whether the pattern of optimal technological expansion is conditional on firm age, we study innovative output of biotechnology firms from their inception over a twenty year period. This sample allows us to investigate the underlying conditions when firms optimize their output and impact by managing entry into new technological niches. The study engages the literature on capability development, especially in young firms. The entry into new niches corresponds with the expansion of a firm's technological capabilities to drive innovation within and across these technological domains. We also refine the focus of the extant literature by Entry into New Niches 4 separately examining the effects of branching on the quantity of innovative output and the impact that the output has on the technol...

We examine why commercialization of interdisciplinary research, especially from distant scientific domains, is different from commercialization of inventions from specialized or proximate domains. We argue that anticipated coordination costs arising from the need to transfer technology to licensee firms and from the need for an inventor team's members to work together to further develop a technology significantly impact commercialization outcomes. We use a sample of 3,776 university invention disclosures to test whether variation in the types of experience of the scientists on a team influences the likelihood that an invention will be licensed. We proffer evidence to support our hypotheses that anticipated coordination costs influence whether an invention is licensed and that specific forms of team experience attenuate such coordination costs. The implications of these findings for theories of coordination, innovation, and entrepreneurship are discussed. Organizations exist to achieve joint action, defined as individuals working together to achieve a desired outcome. Coordination is the problem of aligning actions so they are synchronized to achieve this objective. The ability of interdependent actors to coordinate actions stems from adequate mutual knowledge that enables individuals to act as if they can predict others' actions (Camerer, 2003; March & Simon, 1958; Puranam, Raveendran, & Knudsen, 2012). The traditional view is that coordination problems are strictly a consequence of misaligned incentives and that, when appropriate incentives are provided, such problems should disappear (Holmstrom & Milgrom, 1994). This incentive-based approach conflicts with findings that coordination problems persist even when incentives are aligned (

We focus on the firm's decision to enter insular technology domains and its effect on the impact that its subsequent innovation has on the field. Insular domains are technical domains that rely heavily on prior innovations within the same domain for subsequent innovations. We show that the returns to entering insular domains vary with the firm's depth and breadth of knowledge. By analysing data from 128 biotechnology firms over a 20-year period, we find that the relationship between depth of technological capabilities and technology impact is nuanced: depth is necessary but not sufficient for high impact innovation. Firms whose knowledge is spread over disparate domains have negative returns from entering insular domains. The implications of these findings for theories of innovation and the discovery of entrepreneurial opportunities are discussed. Copyright (c) Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2008.

The authors thank Rich Bettis and two anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments and guidance. We are grateful to UK's EPSRC and DFID for their grant (EP/G06394X/1) for replication of rural decentralized off-grid electricity generation through technology and business innovation. The first author also acknowledges the support of ESRC Professorial Fellowship on resource constrained innovation and inclusive growth (RES-051-27-0321). SOCIAL STRUCTURE, REASONABLE GAIN, AND ENTREPRENEURSHIP IN AFRICA ABSTRACTIn the context of desperate poverty, characterized by households at subsistence level that experience economic loss and social fracture, explanations for why individuals undertake entry into entrepreneurship are limited. We find that individuals rely on their social relationships to enable entrepreneurial activities that have the potential to create a reasonable income gain. In a sample of 1,049 households in rural Kenya, we test whether the disintegration of social structure attenuates entrepreneurial behavior. When coupled with factors such as income loss, gender of the household head, and access to communal resources, social structure plays a pivotal role in entrepreneurial action. We propose that the search for reasonable income gain is a key driver of entrepreneurial action at subsistence levels, thereby adding to behavioral explanations of entrepreneurship.