We explored the effect of having a creative personality on the identification of business opportunities and the tendency to start businesses. Examining a sample of 3242 twins from the United Kingdom, which we surveyed in 2011, we confirmed that people with creative personalities are more likely...

This article offers an argument for how genetic factors may influence the tendency of people to engage in entrepreneurial activity, and describes four mechanisms through which genetic factors could operate. It also explores ways that researchers can use quantitative and molecular genetics to...

Despite the widely acknowledged role of start-ups in economic development, little is known about their innovative activities compared with those of established firms. Drawing on a sample of 12,209 UK firms, we differentiate between services and manufacturing firms and, using a matching estimator...

This paper aims to ascertain the influence of social networks in the university spinout phenomenon. With respect to the instrumental role of social networks, it adopts a content contingency perspective pertaining to the role of closure and structural holes, and examines the interaction between...

We applied quantitative genetics techniques to a sample of 851 pairs of monozygotic and 855 pairs of dizygotic female twins to examine the influence of genetic factors on the variation across people in opportunity recognition. We also examined the extent to which the same genetic factors...

This study examines how venture capital (VC) feedback affects start-ups through a three-year qualitative study of university spin-offs. We present a taxonomy of VC feedback into (i) inconsistent, (ii) consistent and workable, and (iii) consistent and unworkable feedback. We find that when...

We used quantitative genetics techniques to compare the entrepreneurial activity of 870 pairs of monozygotic (MZ) and 857 pairs of same-sex dizygotic (DZ) twins from the United Kingdom. We ran model-fitting analyses to estimate the genetic, shared environmental and nonshared environmental...