Browsing by Author "Ratinho, Tiago"
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Item Are Business Incubators Helping? The Role of BIs in Facilitating Tenants’ Development(2010) Ratinho, Tiago; Harms, Rainer; Groen, Aard J.Business incubators (BI) are among a variety of initiatives to stimulate economic growth by promoting the creation and development of new companies. The rapid growth of BIs in recent years confirms their importance in the economic fabric. In this study, we conceptualize BIs using insights from knowledge based theory of the firm, resource-based view thinking and capabilities literature. BIs will be seen as service providers geared towards helping their tenants in solving developmental problems. The more problems the BI helps to solve the bigger the incubation value for tenants; further, as tenant firms solve problems they develop important capabilities which will yield increase their chances of survival once they graduate. Results show that tenants unequivocally seek support after experiencing problems. Solving those problems is a function of BI support and other external sources part of each tenant firm’s network of contacts. Age and human capital of tenant firms have a negative impact in the total number of the problems solved, suggesting BIs’ deficiencies in helping more experienced and older tenants. Our main contribution is to shed light on the processes of delivering support to young firms within BIs. Importantly, we assess the value of the BIs’ intervention by measuring the amount of developmental problems they help tenants to overcome. Finally, we discuss the implication of our finding to BI managers, prospective tenants and policy makers.Item Business Incubators: (How) Do They Help Their Tenants?(2009) Ratinho, Tiago; Harms, Rainer; Groen, Aard J.Business incubators (BI) have been established worldwide as tools for company creation and small businesses support. BIs claim to help their tenants by providing them with the optimal conditions for increasing early stage survival and long term performance. Practitioners and researchers agree that business support is a crucial feature of incubating businesses. Yet this is seldom researched. In this study we theoretically relate business support to help in solving problems and further investigate to what extent business incubators support their tenants overcome their developmental problems. Results show that tenants do not experience many problems and when they do business support is not necessarily sought. Furthermore, our data suggests that business support is not preferentially sought within incubator environment. When this happens, support provided by the BI does not contribute to problem solving. Finally, we discuss the impact of the type of BI in helping their tenants.Item Business Incubators: Creation of a Fit in Armenia(2010) Grigorian, Armen; Ratinho, Tiago; Harms, RainerIn this paper, we evaluate the extent to which business incubation services meet tenant’s needs. Additionally, we pose the question of whether the current business incubators actually cover the needs of a particular industry. Our empirical setting is a developing country in the Caucasian Region (Armenia) and we chose to research solely the IT industry. We employed a two stage procedure: first, we conducted interviews with pivotal people familiar with business incubation in Armenia; second, an electronic questionnaire survey was sent to the entire Armenian IT population. The results suggest a moderate need of IT companies for the typical business incubation services. Further, we show that incubated companies are generally satisfied with the services they enjoy albeit this satisfaction level decreases as the needs increase. Non-incubated companies, on the other hand, perceive incubation services to be valuable for their development and this value increases when their needs increase. Our study implies that a more extensive service provision is necessary to fully cover the needs of the Armenian IT industry for business incubation services.Item Business Support Within Business Incubators(University of Twente, 2009) Ratinho, Tiago; Harms, Rainer; Groen, Aard J.Business incubators (BI) have been established worldwide as tools for company creation and small businesses support. BIs claim to help their tenants by providing them with the optimal conditions for increasing early stage survival. Practitioners and researchers agree that business support is a crucial dimension of BI. Yet this feature is seldom researched. In this study we investigate to what extent business incubators support their tenants overcome their developmental problems. Results show that tenants do not experience many problems and when they do business support is not necessarily sought. Furthermore, our data suggests that business support is not preferentially sought within incubator environment. When this happens, support provided by the BI does not contribute to problem solving. Finally, we discuss the impact of the type of BI in helping their tenants.Item An Ear to the Ground: The Role of the Voice of The Consumer in Firm Survival for Startups(2011) Englis, Paula Danskin; Englis, Basil; Ratinho, Tiago; Groen, Aard J.Many high tech knowledge intensive entrepreneurial firms tend to focus on their technological capabilities and to develop products that are typically taken to the market using a “push” strategy. In doing so, the firm and its downstream value-chain members push their technology into the marketplace with scarcely a thought of the consumer until after the product is in the hands of the user. The need to bring the consumer’s voice into the startup firm and the business planning process has seldom been discussed. There is however, much debate about the role of business planning and new venture creation and success. Here, we extend this debate and advance our understanding of business planning. Specifically, we investigate the impact of incorporating the “voice-of-the-consumer” (VOC) into business planning as it affects firm survival using longitudinal data from a sample of incubated spin off firms.Item Entrepreneurial Strategic Groups: How Clustering Helps Nascent Firms(Babson College, 2012) Amezcua, A. S.; Ratinho, TiagoOur study examines how strategic groups consisting of nascent ventures outperform other firms. An entrepreneurial strategic group is defined as firms that pursue a similar founding strategy, belong to the same industry, and compete in the same geography. We show that firms belonging to an entrepreneurial strategic group have higher levels of performance in terms of lower exit rates and higher annual growth. In addition, there are diminishing returns to membership in an entrepreneurial strategic group. As group size increases, performance levels decrease.Item Extensiveness of Business Planning and Firm Performance: An Examination into the Drivers of Success and Survival for Startup Firms(University of Twente, 2010) Englis, Paula Danskin; Ratinho, Tiago; Englis, BasilThere is much debate about the role of business planning and new venture creation and success (i.e., Gruber, 2007; Karlsson & Honig, 2007). In this paper, we extend this debate and advance our understanding of the potential role of the extensiveness of business planning. Specifically, we investigate the extensiveness of business planning as it affects firm performance and survival using data from a sample of incubator spin off firms. Extensiveness of business planning is concerned with if the firm has a plan and if it is written down (what Liao & Gartner [2006] refer to as presence and formality), but also the number of sections and the extensiveness each section.Item PLANNING EFFECTUAL GROWTH: A STUDY OF EFFECTUATION AND CAUSATION IN BUSINESS PLANS (SUMMARY)(Babson, 2011) Kraaijenbrink, Jeroen; Ratinho, Tiago; Groen, Aard J.Empirical research on the effectiveness of planned/causal and emergent/effectual approaches to entrepreneurship has provided mixed and contradictory results. One possible reason is that although business plans are generally associated with a planned/causal approach, they also contain indicators of effectual approaches. Along that line, this paper contributes to the ongoing debate by comparing the written business plans of micro-firms and small firms on indicators of effectuation and causation.Item Planning Effectual Growth: A Study of Effectuations and Causation in Nascent Firms(Babson College, 2011) Kraaijenbrink, Jeroen; Ratinho, Tiago; Groen, Aard J.Two main contrasting approaches are typically used in entrepreneurship literature to explain how new ventures strategize: causal/planned strategies and effectual/emergent strategies. In this study, we explore the use of causal and effectual strategies within micro and small firms. Our results show that bigger companies typically used more planned strategies while simultaneously relying on effectual mechanisms. We observe that companies operating in known markets, anchoring their business ideas on experience and having a strong growth intention grow bigger. This suggests that causal and effectual mechanism can co-exist and lead to growth. Theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussedItem Planning the Unknown: The Simultaneity of Predictive and Non-predictive Entrepreneurial Strategies(Babson College, 2012) Kraaijenbrink, Jeroen; Ratinho, Tiago; Groen, Aard J.Two distinct approaches have emerged to categorize entrepreneurial strategies. While some argue that planning is beneficial for entrepreneurs, a growing body of literature argues that non- predictive strategies can also lead to successful outcomes. The effectuation framework gained attention and it is perhaps the most sophisticated theoretical framework to understand non- predictive strategies. In this paper, we investigate two of the effectuation principles and their relationship to firm performance. Based on an analysis of the business plans of 102 small firms, we find that both principles are comprised of two independent, orthogonal dimensions and that these dimensions affect firm performance differently. The implications are that future theorizing and research on entrepreneurship needs to go beyond the causation-effectuation dichotomy and that it is more fruitful to scrutinize the space of possible entrepreneurial strategies comprised by the various independent dimensions that make up the effectuation construct.Item Reframing the role of knowledge parks and science cities in knowledge-based urban development(Sage, 2014) Benneworth, Paul; Ratinho, TiagoKnowledge-based urban developments (KBUDs) are an increasingly common element of urban planning and strategy making: policy makers and developers set out to stimulate economic prosperity by promoting the integration and concentration of research, technology, and human capital. But KBUD is, by its advocates' own admission, a fuzzy concept, assuming that local physical development will drive urban upgrading within wider innovative production networks. We seek to address one element of this confusion by exploring how physical developments actively create innovative connections between local actors, drawing on the microscale science park and incubator literature. Using the case of one knowledge precinct, Kennispark in the east of the Netherlands, we investigate how active and passive elements of KBUDs drive integration of knowledge infrastructure in the urban fabric, as a prerequisite to building cross-city connections. On the basis of both qualitative and quantitative data, we conclude that there is a dynamic interrelation of proximity and connectivity within the precinct that contributes to building within-city knowledge communities that may in turn lead to improved cross-city connectivity and hence urban upgrading.Item Science Parks and Business incubators: The Portuguese Case(University of Twente, 2007) Ratinho, Tiago; Henriques, Elsa; Maltez, LuísScience Parks (SP) and Business Incubators (BI) have been established all over the industrialised and developing world as a pledge for economic development. Although in economic theory, location of R&D is not a critical variable for its diffusion and technology adoption, it is widely accepted that the daily eye-to-eye contact is crucial for the establishment of networks and partnerships. The present paper is based on a survey of all Portuguese SPs and BIs. Despite being rather similar in their basic characteristics, it is still possible to distil some lessons and critical variables for the success of each infrastructure: quality of management and effectiveness of university links are seemingly the most important features to distinguish SPs and BIs and compare their performance. Finally, we transform the distilled lessons in assessment criteria and propose a tentative typology to better describe and sort the SPs and BIs in Portugal.Item Structuring the Technology Entrepreneurship Publication Landscape: Making Sense out of Chaos(Elsevier, 2015) Ratinho, Tiago; Harms, Rainer; Walsh, StevenTechnology Entrepreneurship (TE) is a popular and interdisciplinary research field, which is currently published in many different journals. TE articles, once the proviso of management of technology and general entrepreneurship journals, can now be found in journals ranging from those focused on organizational behavior to those specializing in finance. Today's TE researchers embrace the field with vastly disparate disciplines and theoretical backgrounds. This adds to the complexity of the TE publication landscape and makes it difficult for readers and authors to navigate in and to contribute to TE.Item Technology Business Incubators as Engines of Growth: Towards a Distinction Between Technology Incubators and Non-Technology Incubators(Swinburne University of Technology, 2009) Ratinho, Tiago; Harms, Rainer; Groen, Aard J.Business incubators are an increasingly popular tool for promoting job and wealth creation. Yet given the heterogeneity of incubation models, it is not always clear how incubators operate, what their main characteristics are and how can they best contribute to job and wealth creation. If technology is central in promoting economic growth and new firm creation the crucial mechanism in transferring new knowledge to markets, then technology incubators have the biggest potential to contribute to economic growth. We define technology incubators by their strategic choices in terms of mission, linkages to universities and geographical location. We investigate their nature by comparing the levels of business services provision, selection criteria, exit policy and tenants’ characteristics. Our sample includes 12 incubators located in six Northwestern European countries and a total of 101 incubated companies. Data were collected in both incubators and among their tenants. Results show that technology incubators provide more tenants with their services, select younger companies and practice stricter exit policies. Additionally, they tend to attract more experienced teams of entrepreneurs. Our main contribution is a better understanding of the technology incubators impact against the remainder population of business incubators. We speculate that incubators not focussed in incubating technology might not be contributing to company creation at all. Further, the low levels of service provision are both a product and a consequence of slack selection criteria and weak exit policies. Finally, we discuss the implications of our findings to business incubator managers, policy makers and prospective tenants.Item Towards a Distinction Between Technology Incubators and Non-Technology Incubators: Can They Contribute to Economic Growth?(European Council of Small Business and Entrepreneurship, 2010-01) Ratinho, Tiago; Harms, Rainer; Groen, Aard J.; Fink, Matthias; Hatak, IsabellaBusiness incubators are an increasingly popular tool for promoting job and wealth creation. Yet given the heterogeneity of incubation models, it is not always clear how incubators operate, what their main characteristics are and how can they best contribute to job and wealth creation. If technology is central in promoting economic growth and new firm creation the crucial mechanism in transferring new knowledge to markets, then technology incubators have the biggest potential to contribute to economic growth. We define technology incubators by their strategic choices in terms 1/26 of mission, linkages to universities and geographical location. We investigate their nature by comparing the levels of business services provision, selection criteria, exit policy and tenants’ characteristics. Our sample includes 12 incubators located in six Northwestern European countries and a total of 101 incubated companies. Data were collected in both incubators and among their tenants. Results show that technology incubators provide more tenants with their services, select younger companies and practice stricter exit policies. Additionally, they tend to attract more experienced teams of entrepreneurs. Our main contribution is a better understanding of the technology incubators impact against the remainder population of business incubators. We speculate that incubators not focused in incubating technology might not be fostering company creation and therefore not actively contributing to growth. Further, the low levels of service provision are both a product and a consequence of slack selection criteria and weak exit policies. Finally, we discuss the implications of our findings to business incubator managers, policy makers and prospective tenants.