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

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.

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph.D.

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Business Administration

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2018

Author dc:creator

• Savage, Jeffrey P.

Contributors dc:contributor

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

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

Statement dc:rights

• Copyright 2017 Jeffrey Savage

Language dc:language

en

Handle dc:identifier

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

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/99164