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Developing a scale to measure liabilities and assets of newness after start-up

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Abstract

New ventures can simultaneously face survival challenges and benefit from distinct advantages based on their newness. Despite the importance of these issues, extant entrepreneurship studies, with limited exception, have often employed only rudimentary measures (e.g., venture age) to investigate important issues related to organizational newness. Accordingly, we develop and refine a scale to measure critical dimensions of newness that stakeholders perceive after NV start-up. We first discuss the theoretical background and previous research related to various newness dimensions. We then introduce a new construct, organizational energy, that heretofore has received scant attention in NV research. Next, we present results from an inductive study conducted to generate various dimensions of newness as well as two empirical investigations that further refine these dimensions into a reliable scale for measuring different newness dimensions. We conclude by discussing our empirical findings, the study’s limitations, and potential future research directions.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Foster College of Business, Bradley University, 1501 W Bradley Ave, Peoria, IL, 61625, USA

    Brian G. Nagy & Eden S. Blair

  2. Brock School of Business, Samford University, 800 Lakeshore Drive, Birmingham, AL, 35229, USA

    Franz T. Lohrke

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  1. Brian G. Nagy
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  2. Eden S. Blair
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  3. Franz T. Lohrke
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Correspondence to Franz T. Lohrke.

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Nagy, B.G., Blair, E.S. & Lohrke, F.T. Developing a scale to measure liabilities and assets of newness after start-up. Int Entrep Manag J 10, 277–295 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11365-012-0219-2

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