We analyze longitudinal data on innovative start-up projects and apply Lazear’s jack-of-all-trades theory to investigate the effect of nascent entrepreneurs’ balanced skills on their progress in the venture creation process. Our results suggest that those nascent entrepreneurs who exhibit a...

This paper examines the effects and origins of balanced skills among nascent entrepreneurs. In a first step we apply Lazear’s jack-of-all-trades theory to investigate performance effects of a balanced skill set. Second, we investigate potential sources of balanced skills, thereby testing the...

The process of the entrepreneurial decision is decomposed in seven engagement levels ranging from “never thought about starting a business†to “gave upâ€, “thinking about itâ€, “taking steps for starting upâ€, “having a young businessâ€,...

We investigate whether women and men differ with respect to the steps they take in the entrepreneurial process, distinguishing between five successive steps described by the following positions: (1) "never thought about it"; (2) "thinking about starting up a business"; (3) "taking steps to start...

There is no gender difference between success in establishing a business once both males and females have the same preference to self-employment and attempts towards establishing a new business. However, the gender gap tends to be huge when it comes to individual preferences and attempts to...

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...

We investigate which countries have the highest potential to achieve entrepreneurial progress. This progress is defined using an entrepreneurial ladder with five successive steps: “never thought about starting a business”, “thinking about starting a business”, “taking steps to start a...

We test a new model where the entrepreneurial decision is described as a process of successive engagement levels, i.e., as an entrepreneurial ladder. Five levels are distinguished using nearly 12,000 observations from the 2004 “Flash Eurobarometer survey on Entrepreneurship” covering the 25...

We analyze longitudinal data on innovative start-up projects and apply Lazear’s jack-of-all-trades theory to investigate the effect of nascent entrepreneurs’ balanced skills on their progress in the venture creation process. Our results suggest that those nascent entrepreneurs who exhibit a...

It is widely recognized that networks provide access to the resources necessary for founding a business. Up until now, however, the relationship between networking investments and the availability of resources has not been analyzed in depth. Using a sample of 416 nascent entrepreneurs, we...