Fulfilling the process promise in new venture creation research: The ethnography/accelerator approach

Abstract

Research SummaryCollecting fine‐grained, longitudinal data to study new venture creation (NVC) is critical but empirically challenging given the partly invisible, collective, and highly discursive nature of NVC. This article offers the ethnography/accelerator approach as one powerful solution to this problem. This approach theorizes the implications raised by the invisible, collective, and highly discursive nature of NVC as challenges of accessibility, multivocality, and reflexivity. It provides a framework articulating these challenges with key ethnographic insights to advance data collection and theory building, before discussing five implications of this approach for NVC research and providing recommendations and points of caution.Managerial SummaryExplaining how to create, organize, and operate a new venture is critical but raises important methodological challenges. Early‐stage ventures have no operating history, the stakeholders collaborating with entrepreneurs are geographically dispersed, and entrepreneurs' stories are often examined uncritically. The ethnography/accelerator approach suggests overcoming these challenges by using business accelerators as a research setting to apply ethnographic methods and collect reliable data. It provides guidance for enabling the full‐time immersion of the researcher into this setting, allowing the collection of finely‐grained data capturing the day‐to‐day practices and interactions at the heart of new venture creation and the views of the entrepreneurs, mentors, investors, policymakers, and the like playing a pivotal role in this process.