This paper examines the use of social capital in the venture creation process. We compare solo entrepreneurs (n=182) and new venture teams (n=274) from a random sample of start-ups in innovative industries and test social capital use and its effects on firm performance. Our results reveal that...

Earlier studies have shown that entrepreneurs play a key role in shaping regional development. Innovator networks where these entrepreneurs are members of have been identified as one among many critical factors for their firms' success. This paper intents to go one step further and analyses in...

This paper is concerned with the relationship between innovative success of entrepreneurs and their prior knowledge at the stage of firm formation. We distinguish between different kinds of experience an entrepreneur can possess and find evidence that the innovative success subsequent to firm...

We investigate regional differences in the contribution of newly founded businesses to regional employment. This is labeled the direct employment effect of new businesses. The analysis is at the spatial level of West German planning regions for the period 1984-2002. We find rather pronounced...

We analyze different types of effects that new businesses may have on regional employment. We introduce different measures for employment change by separating employment change in incumbent businesses and employment change in new businesses. There are pronounced differences between regions with...