This study differentiates female entrepreneurs from male entrepreneurs using the Big-Five Personality Model. The five factors include adjustment, sociability, conscientiousness, agreeableness, and intellectual openness. Adjustment determines confidence versus instability. Sociability measures extraversion versus introversion. Conscientiousness determines impulsiveness versus cautiousness. Agree...

This study examines perceived entrepreneurial ability, perceived obstacles to important business relationships, and performance of firms in the Midwest using social learning and social identity theories. From a survey of 68 entrepreneurs, entrepreneurial self-efficacy reduced obstacles to key business relationships and enhanced business performance. Firm age and entrepreneur age did not affect ...

The paper investigates the strategic choices made by young science-based firms’ regarding the selection of knowledge sources. Drawing on two streams of research – on alliances and on social networks – two different dimensions of this strategy are considered: the activation of the entrepreneurs’ social capital (versus the intentional inclusion of new knowledge sources) and the persistence of tie...

Many observers, and many investors, believe that young people are especially likely to produce the most successful new firms. We use administrative data at the U.S. Census Bureau to study the ages of founders of growth-oriented start-ups in the past decade. Our primary finding is that successful entrepreneurs are middle-aged, not young. The mean founder age for the 1 in 1,000 fastest growing ne...

Financial theory creates a puzzle. Some authors argue that high-risk entrepreneurs choose debt contracts instead of equity contracts since risky but high returns are of relatively more value for a loan-financed firm. On the contrary, authors who focus explicitly on start-up finance predict that entrepreneurs are the more likely to seek equity-like venture capital contracts, the more risky their...

This research is an attempt to make progress in the understanding of the process of board formation and its impact on the functions performed by the board in young entrepreneurial ventures. We study the link between board members’ characteristics and the effective accomplishment of monitoring and resource provision functions. Expanding earlier research we argue that the identity of external fin...

Résumé : We study the specific rationale governing entrepreneur-investor relations in young ventures which raise equity capital from different investor types in pursuit of a strong growth strategy. Special emphasis is put on the governance process through which investors and entrepreneurs interact in a complex setting, where an entrepreneur faces at least two distinct investor types (business a...

Most studies on entrepreneurs’ networks incorporate social capital and networks as independent variables that affect entrepreneurs’ actions and its outcomes. By contrast, this article examines social capital of the Chinese and Russian entrepreneurs and venture capitalists as dependent variables, and it examines entrepreneurs’ social capital from the perspectives of institutional theory and cult...

Entrepreneurs face different sort of difficulties especially with customers, organizations and employees. Emotional intelligence which is the ability to understand and control the emotions is an important factor to help entrepreneurs end up challenges to the result they prefer. So it is assumed that entrepreneurs especially those who have passed the first challenging years of starting a new bus...