Browsing by Person "Abbassi, Puja"
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Publication Business model development, founders' social capital and the success of early stage internet start-ups : a mixed-method studyDocument Type Article Information technology (IT) and entrepreneurship are more closely related than ever. The internet, in particular, inspires the current ‘generation start-up’. While some early stage internet start-ups have quickly become major successes, others fail to secure required follow-up funding and collapse. In this paper, we build on and extend the emerging business model research stream with the aim of better understanding the differences between successful and unsuccessful early stage internet start-ups. In the qualitative first part of our mixed-method study, 17 expert informant interviews reveal that internet start-up business models are in permanent flux, continually changed and adapted by founders, who identify their professional social network (i.e. their social capital) as a critically important factor for developing the business model and ultimately making their start-ups successful. In the quantitative second part of the study, we test this claim based on a social network analysis of 70 internet start-ups and their 145 founders. We find strong support for the critical importance of the founders' social capital for early stage internet start-up success. The findings of this study advance our understanding of the relationship between founders' social capital, the development of business models and the success of early stage internet start-ups.Publication Business Model Development, Founders' Social Capital, and the Success of Early-Stage Internet Startups: A Mixed-Method StudyDocument Type Article Information technology (IT) and entrepreneurship are more closely related than ever. The internet, in particular, inspires the current ‘generation start-up’. While some early stage internet start-ups have quickly become major successes, others fail to secure required follow-up funding and collapse. In this paper, we build on and extend the emerging business model research stream with the aim of better understanding the differences between successful and unsuccessful early stage internet start-ups. In the qualitative first part of our mixed-method study, 17 expert informant interviews reveal that internet start-up business models are in permanent flux, continually changed and adapted by founders, who identify their professional social network (i.e. their social capital) as a critically important factor for developing the business model and ultimately making their start-ups successful. In the quantitative second part of the study, we test this claim based on a social network analysis of 70 internet start-ups and their 145 founders. We find strong support for the critical importance of the founders' social capital for early stage internet start-up success. The findings of this study advance our understanding of the relationship between founders' social capital, the development of business models and the success of early stage internet start-ups.Publication Getting Boundary Conditions Right : Towards a Classification of the Information Economy SectorsDocument Type Conferenceobject Just as most people are not WEIRD (Henrich et al. 2010), the assumption of industry uniformity may not be true in all cases. Several reviews showed that IS research does not take industry seriously enough. Neglecting industry context can have a severe effect on research results by underspecifying theory or by leading to general explanations that do not hold in other contexts. This paper examines the so called “Information Economy”, an industrial context comprising of the ICT, Content and Media, and Internet sectors. We analyze a unique, very large data set that contains employee mobility data of 27,387 organizations. We derive some interesting descriptive statistics that help to differentiate the Information Economy sectors. In addition, with the application of a clustering algorithm, we derive industrial clusters on our data. Our analysis reveals that the OECD’s conceptualization of the Information Economy reaches its limits when it comes to more granular sub-sectors within the industry, at which point it no longer seems appropriate from a social/cultural industry perspective. Our study contributes to ongoing discussions around generalizability and boundaries of research results, as well as to the still small body of industry research in the IS field. These findings have important implications for future research and practice.Publication Going it all alone in web entrepreneurship?: a comparison of single founders vs. co-foundersDocument Type Conferenceobject There is a considerable amount of entrepreneurial activity in the information technology (IT) industry, especially in the Web. Many claim that the founders are the single most critical factor in startup success. The entrepreneurial self-efficacy theory and the jack-of-all-trades theory suggest that founders with diverse skills and broad experience will be able to successfully create a business alone. Alternatively, social capital theory suggests that founders who have high social capital and who engage in social networking will be able to go alone. Others, however, claim that team building is crucial for startup success as to bringing complementary skills together. In this study, we investigate if having a diverse skill set, higher experience, or more social connections is indeed a determinant of single founders, while co-founders have more specialized (yet complementary) skills. Our results are derived from analysis of 91 Web startups and their 183 (co-) founders. Contradicting existing theory, we could not find determinants for starting a new business alone. However, we find that co-founders do indeed complement each other's skills. Our results suggest that existing entrepreneurial theory needs to be expanded and revised to accommodate for the contradictions found and that future research is required in this area.Publication Social Capital in the ICT Sector - A Network Perspective on Executive Turnover and Startup PerformanceDocument Type Conferenceobject