Entrepreneurial copycats: A resource orchestration perspective on the link between extra-industry business model imitation and new venture growth

Karolin Frankenberger*, Wouter Stam

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to JournalArticleAcademicpeer-review

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Abstract

This study draws on resource orchestration theory to develop and test a framework that explains when the imitation of business models from other industries increases new venture growth. We propose that extra-industry business model imitation enhances growth when extra-industry business models are bundled together with novel technologies, and when founders possess the necessary industry experience to orchestrate these resource combinations effectively. Using a unique multi-source, time-lagged dataset of 122 Swiss technology ventures from four industries, we find support for our theoretical model and discuss its implications for research at the intersection of business models, competitive imitation, and resource orchestration.

Original languageEnglish
Article number101872
Pages (from-to)1-16
Number of pages16
JournalLong Range Planning
Volume53
Issue number4
Early online date23 Feb 2019
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Aug 2020

Funding

We gratefully acknowledge the constructive comments of Charles Baden-Fuller, Ramon Casadesus-Masanell, Linus Dahlander, Oliver Gassmann, Marc Gruber, Stefan Haefliger, Thomas Maximilian Klueter, Costas Markides, Joan Ricart, and Christoph Zott on earlier versions of this manuscript. This paper has also been presented at the 2015 SMS conference, at a research workshop at the IESE Business School in Barcelona in 2016, and at the 2017 EURAM conference. We thank the participants of all three meetings for their constructive feedback. We also thank the owners of the Venture database for providing us access to the database.

Keywords

  • Business model innovation
  • Competitive imitation
  • New venture growth
  • Resource orchestration theory

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