Entrants are often viewed as suffering from a “liability of newness” – at founding they rarely possess the knowledge and capabilities necessary to compete and survive. They can overcome such liabilities by learning vicariously from the knowledge of incumbent firms. But how do entrants...

This paper develops a realistic real option theory of resource allocation decisions in strategic factor markets. Competitive advantage in factor markets is underpinned by market failures that allow firms to acquire assets at less than their value in use. We recognize that market failure may...

We develop a behavioral theory of real options that relaxes the informational and behavioral assumptions underlying applications of financial options theory to real assets. To do so, we augment real option theory's focus on uncertain future asset values (prospective uncertainty) with feedback...

Empirical evidence suggests that entrepreneurs make mistakes: too many enter markets and, once there, persist too long. While scholars have largely settled on behavioral bias as the cause, we suggest that this consensus is premature. These mistakes may also arise from a process in which...