Abstract
New Technology-Based Firms (NTBFs) learn their business in the early-stages of their life-cycle. As a central element of the entrepreneurial learning process, the business model describes the value-creation functions that are conceptualized in different stages of the NTBF’s life-cycle. Transaction relations connect the model with the business reality and ideally mature in strength over time to a functioning value-network. This chapter describes the development of a research design that determines, extracts, and evaluates semantics constructs of this entrepreneurial learning out of a convenient sample and three cohorts of business plans submitted to a business plan award between 2008 and 2010. The analysis shows empirical evidence for the survival and growth of those NTBFs that exhibit a balanced status of entrepreneurial learning in the maturity of the value-network that can be characterized as early startup-stage. The empirical findings of the network theory based business plan analysis will allow for a better explanation of the performance in the entrepreneurial process that is discussed for NTBFs based on theory of organizational learning.
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The presentation and the implementation of this work are supported by the EXI Hightech Voucher Program and have been funded by the Federal State of Baden-Württemberg and the European Social Fund. This paper expresses the research of the authors.
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König, M., Ungerer, C., Baltes, G. (2018). The Semantics of Entrepreneurial Learning in New Technology-Based Firms. In: Presse, A., Terzidis, O. (eds) Technology Entrepreneurship. FGF Studies in Small Business and Entrepreneurship. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-73509-2_1
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