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Knowledge combinations and the survival of financial services ventures

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Abstract

The paper investigates the role of knowledge in the evolution of new financial services ventures in Sweden between 1990 and 2002. Drawing upon economic theories of human capital and spin-out entrepreneurship, we investigate whether knowledge from prior employment in the financial and technological industries facilitates the survival of new entrepreneurial firms. Based on a database tracking the evolution of 1,077 financial services ventures, we find that firms with more extensive knowledge from the financial services and high-tech sectors have higher chances of survival than firms with more narrow knowledge bases. Our findings offer contributions to the emerging literature on spin-out entrepreneurship and to research on entrepreneurship in services.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Center for Entrepreneurship and Business Creation, Stockholm School of Economics, P.O. Box 6501, SE-113 83, Stockholm, Sweden

    Karl Wennberg

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  1. Karl Wennberg
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Correspondence to Karl Wennberg.

Additional information

This research was supported by Handelsbanken Research Foundations and the Sweden–America foundation. I am grateful for comments from Paul Windrum, Peter Swann, Erik Stam, Per Skålén, Stefan Jonsson, Leif Lindmark, Jenny Levallius, seminar participants at SCANCOR and the Stanford GSB Macro luncheons. An earlier version was presented May 19th at the 2007 EMAEE conference on Applied Evolutionary Economics in Manchester, UK. All errors remain my own.

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Wennberg, K. Knowledge combinations and the survival of financial services ventures. J Evol Econ 19, 259–276 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00191-008-0124-6

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