Journal of Business Venturing最新文献

{"title":"From algorithmic hallucinations to alien minds: Addressing the ideator's dilemma through entrepreneurial work","authors":"Judy Rady , David Townsend , Rick Hunt","doi":"10.1016/j.jbusvent.2025.106550","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jbusvent.2025.106550","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>In recent years, the rapid adoption of Generative AI tools by entrepreneurs is transforming entrepreneurial ideation processes. Powered by increasingly sophisticated algorithms and massive computing facilities, Gen AI systems are capable of generating extraordinarily creative ideas that often surpass the abilities of human entrepreneurs. Yet, despite these benefits, Gen AI systems also create a series of important epistemic risks for entrepreneurs, most notably: algorithmic hallucinations and ‘alien minds.’ In the near term, the tendency of Gen AI systems to ‘hallucinate’ new ideas that appear plausible but lack a logical or factual basis amplifies the risks that entrepreneurs will invest valuable time, effort, and resources in pursuit of flawed ideas. As the capabilities and intelligence of these systems continue to grow, however, entrepreneurs also face an emerging risk of falsely rejecting breakthrough ideas recommended by ‘alien minds’ they do not understand. For entrepreneurs, the opaque processes through which Gen AI systems generate new ideas create an <em>ideator's dilemma</em> where entrepreneurs do not know if a Gen AI idea is a true, breakthrough innovation or simply a hallucinated mirage. In this study, we extend emerging theory on entrepreneurial work to examine the complementary roles of two distinct types of judgments – <em>possibility and plausibility judgments</em> – in enabling entrepreneurs to evaluate Gen AI ideas. Towards this end, we integrate these judgments into a comprehensive Popperian approach to entrepreneurial work, enabling entrepreneurs to more effectively address the inherent epistemic risks associated with using Gen AI in entrepreneurial ideation. In doing so, our study contributes important new insights regarding the fundamental role of entrepreneurial work in addressing the ideator's dilemma in entrepreneurial ideation processes.</div></div><div><h3>Executive summary</h3><div>Generative AI is fundamentally transforming how entrepreneurs identify and develop new venture opportunities. With 89 % of founders now using at least one AI model and 50 % employing four or more in daily ideation work, these tools have become integral to entrepreneurial innovation. However, this rapid adoption creates unprecedented challenges that demand new frameworks for evaluating AI-generated business concepts.</div><div>The democratization of AI tools creates fundamental challenge for entrepreneurs: if every entrepreneur can generate breakthrough ideas at scale, where lies competitive advantage? Our research reveals that judgment – not idea generation – becomes the scarce resource. As ventures pursue increasingly speculative concepts to maintain competitive edge (evidenced by Y Combinator's shift towards deep tech ventures), the ability to efficiently evaluate and actualize AI concepts becomes paramount.</div><div>At the same time, these fundamental challenges are amplified by the growing sophistication of the reasoning capa","PeriodicalId":51348,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Business Venturing","volume":"41 1","pages":"Article 106550"},"PeriodicalIF":8.9,"publicationDate":"2025-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145221999","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The “devil” you don't know: A test of the detriments and benefits of co-founding with strangers","authors":"Jason Greenberg ,&nbsp;Ethan Mollick","doi":"10.1016/j.jbusvent.2025.106537","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jbusvent.2025.106537","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>One key to new venture creation and success is getting the “people part” right. Professional investors have a strong preference for funding founding <em>teams</em> of people rather than individuals. This preference is based on the belief that starting a new venture requires a portfolio of experiences, skills, and networks that few individuals possess. Implicit in this thesis is the belief that the benefits of a team outweigh its costs that can accrue with co-founders arising from information asymmetries. Such information asymmetries are greater when founding with strangers given an absence of prior relational experience. Yet, strangers are more likely capable of providing the theorized (unique) value-add of co-founders such as non-redundant networks. Unfortunately, due to data limitations, the literature has not assessed assumptions concerning the pros/cons of co-founding with strangers thereby limiting our ability to get the people part of new ventures “right.” We use unique survey data on more than three thousand new ventures that successfully launched a crowdfunding campaign to assess these assumptions. These survey data include enough teams with strangers and granular measures of team functioning, product/service delivery, and operational status for comprehensive assessments. Results reveal that new ventures including strangers on the team are less likely to deliver the product/service they pitched and are more likely to be non-operational. Direct, descriptive evidence suggests that team-related issues underlie these outcomes.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":51348,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Business Venturing","volume":"41 1","pages":"Article 106537"},"PeriodicalIF":8.9,"publicationDate":"2025-09-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145222000","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Seeing human resources of entrepreneurial firms in new ways","authors":"Melissa S. Cardon ,&nbsp;Mirjam Knockaert ,&nbsp;Frederik Anseel ,&nbsp;M. Diane Burton","doi":"10.1016/j.jbusvent.2025.106553","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jbusvent.2025.106553","url":null,"abstract":"&lt;div&gt;&lt;div&gt;Despite ongoing interest in human resource management (HRM) in entrepreneurial organizations, we believe the moment is ripe to rethink notions of human resource management in ways that take advantage of the distinctive nature of entrepreneurial settings. A critical first step is recognizing that the people creating and building an entrepreneurial organization extend beyond the founders and include people who may or may not be employees. As such, rather than following traditional human resources (HR) research's focus on employees, HR research in entrepreneurial organizations must take a broader perspective. We propose a focus on “joiners”, people who, according to &lt;span&gt;&lt;span&gt;Roach and Sauermann (2015)&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;, are a “distinct type of nonfounding entrepreneurial actors who are attracted to the startup work setting but have little desire to be founders themselves.” Joiners represent the human resources critical to venture progress. We argue that a research agenda focused on joiners that is pursued through explicitly understanding and engaging with the fundamental assumptions, debates, and conversations from an entrepreneurship perspective will yield novel questions and generate new insights. Through this editorial we hope to catalyze this important work by unpacking who joiners are and how they fit in the entrepreneurial context, highlighting the need for new research at the intersection of HRM and entrepreneurship, and suggesting novel questions, research opportunities, and methodologies related to HRM in entrepreneurial settings.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;h3&gt;Executive summary&lt;/h3&gt;&lt;div&gt;Scholars have advanced our Understanding of human resource management (HRM) in entrepreneurial organizations from multiple perspectives. We believe the moment is ripe to rethink notions of human resource management in ways that take advantage of the distinctive nature of entrepreneurial settings, which will allow us to understand human resources of entrepreneurial firms in new ways. A critical first step is recognizing that the people creating and building an entrepreneurial organization extend beyond the founders and include people who may or may not be employees. We propose a definition of joiners that captures the original spirit of the term and emphasizes the people who are actively choosing an entrepreneurial work setting, remains agnostic to formal employment status, and focuses on the work that is being done: “&lt;em&gt;Joiners are non-founders who contribute physical and/or mental labor to a new venture and are subordinate to the founders&lt;/em&gt;”. Our definition is well-suited to the dynamic nature of entrepreneurial firms that are navigating uncertain environments, in which more flexible and less formal labor contributions are needed than merely those provided by employees. By consequence, our definition of joiners includes employees, contractors, interns, freelancers and volunteers and excludes other stakeholders such as tech transfer and other entrepreneur","PeriodicalId":51348,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Business Venturing","volume":"41 1","pages":"Article 106553"},"PeriodicalIF":8.9,"publicationDate":"2025-09-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145221998","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Investor heterogeneity and venture performance","authors":"Marwin Mönkemeyer ,&nbsp;Kathrin Rennertseder ,&nbsp;Henning Schröder","doi":"10.1016/j.jbusvent.2025.106524","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jbusvent.2025.106524","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This study explores the relationship between investor heterogeneity and firms’ post-seed funding performance. We find a statistically and economically significant negative association of investor heterogeneity on both a firm’ s likelihood of obtaining new funding and the amount raised in subsequent funding rounds. These findings suggest that greater heterogeneity among investors may impair board efficacy and weaken the quality of venture governance. Moreover, the marginal effect of investor heterogeneity is non-linear and diminishes over the course of a venture’ s funding lifecycle. Our results remain robust after accounting for endogeneity concerns and alternative measures of investor culture.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":51348,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Business Venturing","volume":"41 1","pages":"Article 106524"},"PeriodicalIF":8.9,"publicationDate":"2025-09-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145222001","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Schooling and entrepreneurship: Evidence from a regression discontinuity design","authors":"Simon C. Parker","doi":"10.1016/j.jbusvent.2025.106540","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jbusvent.2025.106540","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Does an additional year of formal education affect the decision to become an entrepreneur? Using human capital theory as a conceptual lens, we explore three channels through which it might: productivity, certification, and health impacts. To test the mechanisms and uncover whether there are causal relationships between these variables, we exploit two exogenous changes to British compulsory schooling laws that generated sharp across-cohort differences in years of education. Using a fuzzy regression discontinuity design, we estimate that the reforms significantly reduced self-employment. We go on to explore which channels best explain this finding, and discuss implications for scholars and policymakers.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":51348,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Business Venturing","volume":"41 1","pages":"Article 106540"},"PeriodicalIF":8.9,"publicationDate":"2025-09-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145159577","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Entrepreneurship, age, and the lifespan: Taking stock and avenues for future research","authors":"Moren Lévesque ,&nbsp;Ute Stephan ,&nbsp;Teemu Kautonen ,&nbsp;René Bakker","doi":"10.1016/j.jbusvent.2025.106548","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jbusvent.2025.106548","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Entrepreneurship is deeply shaped by age, influencing who enters, how ventures perform, and whether entrepreneurs persist. Youth offers resilience and innovation yet is constrained by limited resources; midlife combines strong skills and experience with tensions around financial security and competing demands; later life brings accumulated expertise and networks but also ageist barriers. This editorial synthesizes a decade of research and the five articles in this special issue, identifying ten themes that illuminate the age-entrepreneurship relationship. We distill key insights and outline future research avenues, underscoring the wealth of exciting topics and the need for nuanced understanding of entrepreneurship across the lifespan.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":51348,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Business Venturing","volume":"41 1","pages":"Article 106548"},"PeriodicalIF":8.9,"publicationDate":"2025-09-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145103900","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Tell me “how” and “why”: Mentor feedback framing, construal level, and entrepreneurial pivoting","authors":"Miranda J. Welbourne Eleazar ,&nbsp;Toyah L. Miller","doi":"10.1016/j.jbusvent.2025.106549","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jbusvent.2025.106549","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Entrepreneurial pivots can mean the difference between venture failure and survival. Mentor feedback often illuminates the essential need to pivot, but the manner in which feedback is delivered may determine whether entrepreneurs act on it and pivot. Drawing on the feedback literature and construal level theory, we hypothesize that mentor feedback provided in a concrete manner will increase the likelihood that entrepreneurs will pivot. Further, we examine how temporal distance, mentor expertise distance, and entrepreneurial experience, affect entrepreneurs' responses to feedback. We test our hypotheses using a conjoint analysis with a validation study; gain additional insights from a qualitative study of mentors; and test a way to improve entrepreneurial receptiveness to abstract feedback from mentors through a second conjoint analysis design. In doing so, we contribute to the entrepreneurship literature on pivoting and mentoring.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":51348,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Business Venturing","volume":"41 1","pages":"Article 106549"},"PeriodicalIF":8.9,"publicationDate":"2025-09-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145103921","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Black entrepreneurship: A multilevel process model of constrained agency across the business venturing lifecycle","authors":"Trey Lewis ,&nbsp;Richard A. Hunt ,&nbsp;Maurice J. Murphy ,&nbsp;David M. Townsend","doi":"10.1016/j.jbusvent.2025.106547","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jbusvent.2025.106547","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Black entrepreneurship (BE) plays an increasingly important, and increasingly paradoxical, role in contemporary American society. On one hand, BE is a vehicle for economic advancement, exemplified through inspiring instances of resolute agency, heroic achievement, and storied successes that collectively reinforce the notion that entrepreneurship can be a potent, emancipatory force of social and economic mobility. On the other hand, BE is also a vivid illustration of race-related challenges, chronicled through an abundance of empirical evidence that reveals the extent to which Black entrepreneurs navigate a racialized entrepreneurial context; one in which formidable constraints arise throughout the entrepreneurial journey. Though critically important, the mechanisms of racialization – and the manner in which they are manifested and surmounted – remain under-theorized, leading to an incomplete understanding of how and why success is more elusive for historically marginalized entrepreneurs than it is for others, and why the threat of failure looms so large. To address these research challenges, we build upon existing work to develop a process model, depicting the unique constraints that Black entrepreneurs face at each stage of the business venturing lifecycle. Applying this processual perspective, we articulate a theory of constrained agency, wherein Black entrepreneurs can and do exercise entrepreneurial agency despite varying, multilevel manifestations of racialization. Our work lays the groundwork for a more detailed, purposeful, and relevant approach to the future research of Black entrepreneurs as well as other historically marginalized groups.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":51348,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Business Venturing","volume":"41 1","pages":"Article 106547"},"PeriodicalIF":8.9,"publicationDate":"2025-09-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145049955","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Measuring entrepreneurs' use of effectuation as heuristics: Development and validation of a situational judgment test (SJT) for effectuation","authors":"Sonia Koller ,&nbsp;Gorkan Ahmetoglu ,&nbsp;Ute Stephan","doi":"10.1016/j.jbusvent.2025.106538","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jbusvent.2025.106538","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Effectuation is a key theory of entrepreneurial decision-making. However, measuring effectuation remains challenging. Existing measures use self-report scales that rely on recall and aggregate across diverse past situations. Such measures cannot capture effectuation as a decision-making logic based on heuristics. Leveraging insights from extant work on situational judgment tests (SJT) in applied psychology, we develop and validate an effectuation SJT that captures the implicit nature of entrepreneurs' use of effectuation in specific situations. Across seven studies including a 14-month prospective panel study, we establish the construct, predictive and incremental validity of the new SJT for venture outcomes. Methodologically, this novel SJT of effectuation facilitates new types of research, such as unpacking the cognitive underpinnings of effectuation. Theoretically, our study offers new conceptual clarity about effectual principles and their impacts on venture outcomes by leveraging extant work on heuristics in the cognitive sciences. We also introduce SJTs as a new method of value to specific streams of entrepreneurship research.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":51348,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Business Venturing","volume":"40 6","pages":"Article 106538"},"PeriodicalIF":8.9,"publicationDate":"2025-08-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144858329","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Cognitive origins of entrepreneurial action: How venture-specific knowledge drives financial investments","authors":"Sung Min Kim,&nbsp;Uğur Uygur","doi":"10.1016/j.jbusvent.2025.106527","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jbusvent.2025.106527","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Entrepreneurial action under uncertainty requires resource commitment, yet the cognitive mechanisms enabling such decisions remain underexplored. This study investigates the role of venture-specific knowledge (VSK) in entrepreneurial action, focusing on two distinct cognitive pathways: refinement, which enhances understanding to address ignorance, and conviction, which strengthens confidence to overcome doubt. Using a causal map representation of VSK, we demonstrate that refinement and conviction independently drive personal financial investment, while also acting as substitutes when one pathway reaches its limits. Our findings extend entrepreneurial action theory by highlighting the distinct cognitive processes underlying VSK. Furthermore, we examine how these pathways interact with individual traits such as entrepreneurial self-efficacy (ESE) and uncertainty avoidance, revealing nuanced moderating effects. These insights advance understanding of entrepreneurial decision making under irreducible uncertainty and provide implications for both theory and practice.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":51348,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Business Venturing","volume":"40 6","pages":"Article 106527"},"PeriodicalIF":8.9,"publicationDate":"2025-08-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144852617","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}