Doctoral Degrees (Business Management)
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Browsing Doctoral Degrees (Business Management) by Author "Neneh, Brownhilder"
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Item Open Access Understanding factors affecting technology entrepreneurship of university-incubated firms(University of the Free State, 2022) Rambe, Patient; Neneh, Brownhilder𝑬𝒏𝒈𝒍𝒊𝒔𝒉 Despite the consensus in entrepreneurship literature on the significant contribution of technology business incubation to the realisation of technology entrepreneurship, the range of factors that merge with technology business incubation to shape technology entrepreneurship remains highly contentious. For instance, some studies have placed exclusive emphasis on individual psychological and cognitive factors (e.g., poor business knowledge, limited experience and perceived entrepreneurship capabilities) as explanations for low technology business incubation and poor technology entrepreneurship outcomes. Yet, other studies have concentrated on institutional levels factors such as inadequate incubation support (e.g., the lack of physical capital, social capital and intellectual capital) as critical explanations for suboptimal technology business incubation and technology entrepreneurship outcomes. To further compound the puzzle on key drivers of these business outcomes, other scholars have foregrounded systemic level factors (e.g., national entrepreneurship policy, regional innovation culture, regional SMME funding, the legitimacy of incubators’ mediation of business networks, and system-wide partnerships and collaborations) as contributing to technology business incubation and technology entrepreneurship. The emphasis on the aforesaid different layers of analysis (i.e., individual, institutional and environmental factors) precludes entrepreneurship scholars from developing an integrated picture of these factors to provide a more nuanced and holistic account of factors affecting technology business incubation and technology entrepreneurship. The scientific gap this study explores, therefore, is the varying, hierarchical but partial explanations for low technology business incubation and suboptimal technology entrepreneurship outcomes (i.e., few commercialised applications, low business growth and financial sustainability), which complicate the creation of synergy from individual, institutional and environmental factors affecting technology business incubation to generate technology entrepreneurship, when these factors are considered individually and selectively. The study draws on a humanist perspective and interpretive phenomenology involving two cases of university-based incubation ecosystem actors drawn from a population of 65 participants to provide a comprehensive account of the diverse factors that coalesce around technology business incubation to influence technology entrepreneurship. The phenomenological study which covered 30 in-depth semi-structured interviews, 2 focus group discussions and an extensive review of documents revealed that, scripts, intuition, physical capital, social capital, intellectual capital, national entrepreneurship policy and regional innovation culture were the main individual, institutional and environmental factors that merge with technology business incubation to influence technology entrepreneurship. Moreover, the study established that, at technology business incubation level, gut feelings were critical in incubation decisions such as investment deals, procurement decisions, concluding sales deals, determining product prices, investigating reasons for cancelling of product purchases and managing partnerships. Regarding the realisation of technology entrepreneurship, gut feelings were instrumental in optimising opportunity exploitation in the innovation ecosystem, especially locating new customers, new investment and funding opportunities, which culminated in increased revenue base, return on investment and profit margins of technology startups. Scripts were instrumental in navigating the entrepreneurial stages, especially ascertaining the value proposition, prototype development, securing client feedback during product tests, launching new technology innovation products and ascertaining perceived risks for products in the market. Concerning the advancement of technology entrepreneurship, when the lean canvas business model was applied as a script, the script enabled incubatees to develop an innovative lens to the entire technology business development process – optimising the pricing of products, revenue generation and sustainable technology innovation for startups. From a technology entrepreneurship perspective, the provision of physical capital to incubatees provided a central nodal point for incubatees to access new customers, augmenting opportunities for concluding more sales of technology products and services and increasing the revenue base for these tenants. Incubation sponsors’ availing of social capital through the creation of an innovation platform for promoting incubation sponsor-incubatee networking enabled incubatees to hone their innovative ideas, perfect their technology products and solutions leading to more effective commercialisation of their innovations. The provision of human capital training in legal matters, technical and advisory services, grant proposal development, and accessing venture capital catalysed incubatees to develop a more sophisticated view of the venture development process, enabling them to better identify and exploit new scientific and technology innovations, which created avenues for firm expansion and financial growth. From a technology business incubation perspective, national policy shaped the regional innovation development programmes that strengthened the formation of the regional innovation ecosystem, which influenced the localisation of technology innovations at the grassroots. Regional innovation culture enabled knowledge spillovers that unfolded among universities, industry and firms in the incubation ecosystem, allowing business startups to leverage the intellectual property created by or through universities, even though a dearth of technology innovations persisted outside university contexts. Regarding its contribution to technology entrepreneurship, national entrepreneurship policy directed universities to identify academics and students that possess innovative ideas with potential for commercialisation to form technology startups and emphasised the creation a cohort of entrepreneurs who could generate patents, startups and spinouts that create jobs, fuelling economic growth and national wealth creation. The study contributes to theory, model development, methodology, policy and practice. The study contributes to theoretical knowledge on university technology business incubation by illustrating the combination of individual, institutional and environmental factors that merge to shape technology business incubation in ways that contribute to the realisation of technology entrepreneurship. The study draws on complementarities of institutional theory and resource-based view to demonstrate how incubation rules and norms shape incubatees’ venture development behaviours and how the superiority of resources served as a differentiating factor in incubatees’ decisions to join private technology business incubators or remain in their incumbent university-based incubators. The study employed contextual embeddedness and resource differentiation as concepts that integrate the resource-based view and institutional theory in showing how different incubatees at various stages of their entrepreneurial journeys need distinct types of resources and forms of support to realise technology incubation and technology entreprepreneurship. The study also employed policy diversity and strategic alignment of institutional stakeholders and incubation processes to the resource endowments and situated contexts of these actors to establish entrepreneurial and incubation ecosystems germane to the level of entrepreneurial maturity, resource affordances and capabilities of these stakeholders in that ecosystem. The study developed a conceptual model based on the combination of individual, institutional and environmental factors whose synergy with technology business incubation contributed to the realisation of technology entrepreneurship. Methodologically, the study develops an integrated approach that merged the supply-side approach (technology business incubator perspectives) with demand-side approach (technology business incubatees perspectives) thereby providing a more inclusive, comprehensive perspective on the dynamics of business incubation and technology entrepreneurship. The study makes some policy recommendations concerning the development of resource mobilisation strategy for incubatees well aligned to their preferred funding mechanisms, development of comprehensive policies explaining different funding models, mechanisms, and instruments and their trade-offs. It also recommends the development of a context-embedded approach to modelling and implementing regional innovation ecosystems to improve the effectiveness of innovation ecosystems and developing an ecological policy framework for incubation ecosystems framed around the prioritisation and ranking of incubation factors in terms of their importance, relevance and socio-economic impact. ___________________________________________________________________