TY - JOUR
T1 - Is the Jack Ma trajectory unique? Assessing the place-based hypothesis on entrepreneurial success
AU - Klingler-Vidra, Robyn
AU - Hai, Steven Jiawei
AU - Liu, Ye
AU - Chalmers, Adam William
N1 - Funding Information:
This research benefitted from a seed fund provided by the Department of International Development at King’s College London. Comments provided by participants of the UCLA International Symposium on Global Chinese Entrepreneurship, held 20-21 November, 2020, and the ‘Urbanization, rural development and changing social policy’ workshop, held at King’s College London on November 27, 2019, were helpful in shaping the paper. We are also grateful for anonymous reviewers’ comments and suggestions that helped to sharpen the paper.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
PY - 2022
Y1 - 2022
N2 - There is a widely-held belief that China’s high-performing entrepreneurs have been fueled by their transnational experience. Scholars have pointed to studying or working in the US, in particular, as a driver of their performance, while other researchers emphasize the ascent of place-based factors, such as the triple helix–the interaction of industry, government and academia–of leading cities as a bedrock for China’s entrepreneurship. In this paper, we examine the migration patterns of high-performing entrepreneurs, like Jack Ma, the founder of Alibaba, in order to test these competing hypotheses. To do so, we analyze the spatial mobility patterns of the founders of the Chinese high-growth companies that had raised at least US$1 billion in private equity funding as of March 2020. In contrast to the prevailing assumption that these high-performing entrepreneurs are returnees (e.g. Chinese entrepreneurs that lived abroad and returned to China), we find that, like Ma, this elite cohort are predominantly graduates with bachelor’s degrees from universities in urban coastal regions in China. Rather than transnational or location-based explanations, our findings point to sub-national migration patterns within China—to and within coastal urban areas—as more likely to drive entrepreneurial performance.
AB - There is a widely-held belief that China’s high-performing entrepreneurs have been fueled by their transnational experience. Scholars have pointed to studying or working in the US, in particular, as a driver of their performance, while other researchers emphasize the ascent of place-based factors, such as the triple helix–the interaction of industry, government and academia–of leading cities as a bedrock for China’s entrepreneurship. In this paper, we examine the migration patterns of high-performing entrepreneurs, like Jack Ma, the founder of Alibaba, in order to test these competing hypotheses. To do so, we analyze the spatial mobility patterns of the founders of the Chinese high-growth companies that had raised at least US$1 billion in private equity funding as of March 2020. In contrast to the prevailing assumption that these high-performing entrepreneurs are returnees (e.g. Chinese entrepreneurs that lived abroad and returned to China), we find that, like Ma, this elite cohort are predominantly graduates with bachelor’s degrees from universities in urban coastal regions in China. Rather than transnational or location-based explanations, our findings point to sub-national migration patterns within China—to and within coastal urban areas—as more likely to drive entrepreneurial performance.
KW - China
KW - education
KW - entrepreneurship
KW - institutions
KW - migration
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85115250331&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - https://www.tandfonline.com/journals/rsbe20
U2 - 10.1080/08276331.2021.1974236
DO - 10.1080/08276331.2021.1974236
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85115250331
SN - 0827-6331
VL - 34
SP - 419
EP - 442
JO - Journal of Small Business and Entrepreneurship
JF - Journal of Small Business and Entrepreneurship
IS - 4
ER -