Plural-Entrepreneurial Activity for a Single Start-Up: A Case Study

Abstract

Based on a longitudinal case study of a high tech start-up, this paper explores how different forms of entrepreneurship coexist and interplay to create a firm’s innovative dynamics. A particular focus is given to knowledge-based entrepreneurship linked to technological innovation and exploitation, service entrepreneurship, and organizational-marketing entrepreneurship. Findings suggest that firms can realize performance benefits when their members divide those entrepreneurial activities between themselves during the launching phase of the firm, and then adapt the configuration of the activities, and their behaviours into a managerial form during the expansion phase of the firm. Our work offers a dynamic view of the conditions a firm has to fulfil to survive in a knowledge-based environment and we analyse the process that produces a good integration of plural-entrepreneurship behaviours.