Disputas: Mattias Johansson

Prøveforelesning

Bedømmelseskomité

Prof. Håkan Håkansson, Handelshøyskolen BI, Oslo
Dr. Suma Athreye, Brunel University, West London
Associate Prof. Terje Grønning, Universitetet i Oslo

Leder av disputas:  Professor Nils Christophersen

Veileder:  Professor Tomas Hellstrøm, professor Merle Jacob

Sammendrag

Of the firms listed on Fortune 500 in 2000, almost half did not even exist 15 years earlier. New firms thus continuously emerge, grow, and overtake or replace the businesses of incumbent firms, and are as such an important source for industrial growth and renewal. Still, from the point of becoming an entrepreneur to the point of becoming a large firm runs a process in which many new firms fail to grow and indeed fail to survive. The present study, conducted at the Centre of Entrepreneurship at University of Oslo, has probed deeper into these problems of entrepreneurial success and failure by interviewing entrepreneurs and analyzing quantitative data.

The study shows that the growth and failure of high-tech entrepreneurial firms is intimately related to their resources, and conversely the lack thereof, and that it is the founders’ personal relations that can make the difference in the initial phases. This shows not least in matters such as the hiring of competent personnel, connecting with financiers, accessing equipment, information, knowledge and advice. Some of these personal relations and associated benefits also tend to have long lasting effects, which, however, can also create dependencies over times. As many policy mechanisms aimed at stimulating entrepreneurship are centralized and tend to neglect that knowledge transfer occurs on individual rather than on organizational levels, there is a risk that such dependencies goes unnoticed. Effectiveness of the mechanisms could thus be increased if they were to be restructured according to a regime that is based on coordination and facilitation of relations among actors. As for potential high-tech entrepreneurs the most important lesson becomes that technology does not sell itself but requires the right connections and hard work.

Kontaktperson

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