Knowledge is recognized as a crucial element of economic growth in addition to physical capital and labor. Knowledge …, identify, and exploit knowledge depends on the existing knowledge stock and the absorptive capacity of actors such as employees … at firms and researchers at universities and research institutions. The existing knowledge stock might not be …

job creation, expansion and innovation activities for up to 40 months after business formation. Using self … innovation and expansion activities. In a next step, we examine three underlying motivational categories that we term opportunity …, career ambition, and necessity. We show that individuals driven by opportunity motives perform better in terms of innovation …

well as growthoriented outcomes such as job creation and innovation. We find statistically significant and economically … stronger when focusing on the growth-oriented outcome of innovation. Furthermore, we observe that generalized self-efficacy is …