Lost in translation: Linking technology to market opportunities in technology-based ventures

Savage, Jeffrey P.

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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/99164 Copy

Description

Title

Lost in translation: Linking technology to market opportunities in technology-based ventures

Author(s)

Savage, Jeffrey P.

Issue Date

2017-07-18

Director of Research (if dissertation) or Advisor (if thesis)

Bercovitz, Janet

Doctoral Committee Chair(s)

Bercovitz, Janet

Committee Member(s)

• Somaya, Deepak
• Shah, Sonali
• Ziedonis, Arvids

Department of Study

Business Administration

Discipline

Business Administration

Degree Granting Institution

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Degree Name

Ph.D.

Degree Level

Dissertation

Keyword(s)

• Opportunity evaluation
• Expertise
• Experiential search
• Institutional logics
• Top management teams
• Academic entrepreneurship
• Entrepreneurial experience
• Innovation

Abstract

This dissertation seeks to better understand and predict the behaviors of technology-based entrepreneurial ventures operating under conditions of high uncertainty. To do this, I take a deep dive into the innovative process of de novo ventures built around university inventions through a series of three related essays. The first essay links insights from the innovation literature with the entrepreneurial opportunity literature to examine the effects of founders’ prior experience and level of expertise on the technology-driven search process. I find that founder effects are quite different for experiential search for market opportunities, when compared to opportunity identification. The second essay builds on these findings through use of a mixed-methods approach to examine how the strength of founders’ experience, level of expertise and logics (their attention-focusing worldviews) affect the time in which it takes the technology-based venture to (successfully) commercialize. The third essay employs an experimental approach to unpack the relationship between individual functional expertise and uncertainty in the opportunity evaluation process. The findings suggest that individual’s experience can limit the attention and focus they give to loci of uncertainty falling outside of their functional expertise. Overall, the dissertation highlights the role of founder’s experience, expertise and logics in shaping the direction of the venture’s early start-up stages, the unexpected role of founders with little expertise in these processes, and the link between uncertainty and functional experience in entrepreneurial efforts.

Graduation Semester

2017-12

Type of Resource

text

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http://hdl.handle.net/2142/99164

Copyright and License Information

Copyright 2017 Jeffrey Savage

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