Most of the organizational theories take the existence of organizations for granted. Thus, attempts to understand success and failure at the nascent firm stage have often been conducted without an underlying theory to explain why some nascent firms succeed in becoming new firms while others do...

New Venture Support Networks (NVSN) are a political instrument for the purpose of contributing to regional economic development by fostering more and qualitatively better start-ups. NVSN bundle together different available sources of information and consultation for potential entrepreneurs,...

Process-based thinking commonly focuses on enhancing the efficiency of processes, while it is often criticized for not paying enough attention to the customer. This paper argues that customer complaint information can be used as a basis for customer-focused process improvement. Thus, it is not...

This paper responds to the need for more data on the topical issue of older entrepreneurship by comparing Third Age (50+ years) and Prime Age (20-49 years) entrepreneurs in Finland. The data comprises responses from 839 small firms which were established 2000-2006. The fact that 16 % of these...

Principal Topic -- Since the late 1980s researchers have been theorizing about entrepreneurial teams (Kamm, et al., 1990), exploring their existence (Ensley, et al., 1999), discussing their formation and evolution (Virany & Tushman, 1986; Clarysse & Moray, 2004; Ucbasaran, et al., 2005; Forbes, et al., 2006;...

Principal Topic A small firm is unlikely to possess internally the full range of knowledge and skills that it requires or could benefit from for the development of its business. The ability to acquire suitable external expertise - defined as knowledge or competence that is rare in the firm and...

Human resource flexibility is important in entrepreneurial ventures that need to respond to the changing challenges of growing the new business. This research investigates the impact of previously well-known people (strong ties) as entrepreneurial team members on the human resource flexibility...

This research investigates how a strong personal relationship (strong tie) between a small business owner-manager and his professional or informal advisor affects the relationship between the advisor's recent performance and the owner-manager's perceptions of the advisor's trustworthiness in...