Abstract
The article examines the role that the role identity of founders plays in explaining the resilience strategies embraced by their high-tech entrepreneurial ventures during the pandemic. We focus here on a particular area of activity – product innovation – which plays a crucial role in high-tech entrepreneurial forms. We examined 17 firms, all located in the US, who are engaged in developing a range of software, hardware, digital platforms and service products. Our findings show that founder identity plays a significant role in shaping how their venture respond to crisis: while technical experts tend to follow adaptation and coping strategies to respond to the adversities brought by the crisis with respect to how they organise their product innovation activities, founders with an entrepreneurial identity tend to have a more nuanced approach. We distinguish between two groups of entrepreneurial founders. While some entrepreneurs do acknowledge the crisis has a negative effect on their product innovation activities, they tend to be more proactive than the technical experts and engage in adaptation strategies rather than relying on coping. The other group of entrepreneurs perceive the crisis as creating new opportunities for their firm ability to engage in product innovation and as such pursue innovation strategies to develop new processes and products to exploit these opportunities. We thus show that the founders’ role identity plays an important role in shaping their interpretations of the crisis, and explaining the resilience strategies they follow with respect to their ventures’ product innovation activities. We speculate that the difference between the two groups of entrepreneurs may be related to other contextual factors, (e.g. the nature of the industry) which may mean that their ventures experience the impact of the crisis differently.
Original language | English |
---|---|
Publication status | Accepted/In press - 2023 |
Event | 30th Innovation and Product Development Management Conference - Politecnico di Milano, Lecco campus, Lecco, Italy Duration: 7 Jun 2023 → 10 Jun 2023 Conference number: 30th https://www.eiasm.org/frontoffice/event_announcement.asp?event_id=1640 |
Conference
Conference | 30th Innovation and Product Development Management Conference |
---|---|
Abbreviated title | IPDMC |
Country/Territory | Italy |
City | Lecco |
Period | 7/06/23 → 10/06/23 |
Internet address |
Keywords / Materials (for Non-textual outputs)
- new product development
- innovation
- Reslience
- founder identity
- entrepreneur