Abstract
The previous discussion on the desirability of political skills hints at concerns about power, but does not go far enough. This chapter directly takes up this issue by exploring how marginalized and minority entrepreneurs can strategically accumulate and leverage power. They need power because it enables people to get what they want by influencing how others feel, think and act; while overcoming the constraining influence of others. However, power often eludes them because they are excessively dependent on others for critical resources. Based on this situation, this chapter particularly encourages them to pursue more favorable terms in their dealings with powerful parties by creating multiple outside options that are reasonably attractive. In addition, it shows that impression management tactics have an important role to play.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
Ernst Fehr, Holger Herz and Tom Wilkening, “The Lure of Authority: Motivation and Incentive Effects of Power,” American Economic Review, vol. 103, no. 4 (2013), pp. 1325–1359; Rachel E. Sturm and John Antonakis, “Interpersonal Power: A Review, Critique, and Research Agenda,” Journal of Management, vol. 41, no. 1 (2015), pp. 136–163.
- 2.
This point is primarily inspired by the view of power described in this work: Joris Lammers, Janka I. Stoker and Diederik A. Stapel, “Differentiating Social and Personal Power: Opposite Effects on Stereotyping, but Parallel Effects on Behavioral Approach Tendencies,” Psychological Science, vol. 20, no. 12 (2009), pp. 1543–1548.
- 3.
Richard M. Emerson, “Power-Dependence Relations,” American Sociological Review, vol. 27, no. 1 (1962), pp. 31–40.
- 4.
The following sources speak to the potential for powerful people to have pervasive influences that go beyond their intentional control of resources: John J. R. French, Jr., and Bertram Raven, “The Bases of Social Power,” in Dorwin Cartwright, ed., Studies in Social Power (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 1959), pp. 150–167; Sturm and Antonakis (2015).
- 5.
Ibid.
- 6.
Alan Murray, “Fortune 500 CEOs See A.I. as a Big Challenge,” Fortune (June 8, 2017).
- 7.
Gary Dushnitsky, “Corporate Venture Capital in the 21st Century: An Integral Part of Firms’ Innovation Toolkit,” in Douglas Cumming, ed., Oxford Handbook of Venture Capital (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), pp. 156–210; Gary Dushnitsky and Michael J. Lenox, “When Does Corporate Venture Capital Investment Create Firm Value?” Journal of Business Venturing, vol. 21, no. 6 (2006), pp. 753–772; Iain Klugman and Kevin Lynch, “Toronto-Waterloo corridor could be Canada’s own Silicon Valley,” The Globe and Mail (October 13, 2015); Christos Kolympiris and Peter G. Klein, “The Effects of Academic Incubators on University Innovation,” Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal, vol. 11, no. 2 (2017), pp. 145–170; Gideon D. Markman, Phillip H. Phan, David B. Balkin and Peter T. Gianiodis, “Entrepreneurship and University-Based Technology Transfer,” Journal of Business Venturing, vol. 20, no. 2 (2005), pp. 241–263; Josh Lerner, “The Future of Public Efforts to Boost Entrepreneurship and Venture Capital,” Small Business Economics, vol. 35, no. 3 (2010), pp. 255–264; OECD, High-Growth Enterprises: What Governments Can Do to Make a Difference? (Paris: OECD, 2010); Sean Silcoff, “Funding Set to Flow to Five Superclusters as Part of Ottawa’s $950-Million Initiative,” The Globe and Mail (November 12, 2018); Ben Spigel, “The Relational Organization of Entrepreneurial Ecosystems,” Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, vol. 41, no. 1 (2017), pp. 49–72.
- 8.
Julien Chaisse and Xinjie Luan, “Revisiting the Intellectual Property Dilemma: How Did We Get to a Strong WTO IPR Regime?,” Santa Clara High Technology Law Journal, vol. 34, no. 2 (2018), pp. 153–178; Clemente Forero-Pineda, “The Impact of Stronger Intellectual Property Rights on Science and Technology in Developing Countries,” Research Policy, vol. 35, no. 6 (2006), pp. 808–824; Richard Florida and Ian Hathaway, “Solving Canada’s Startup Dilemma,” The Globe and Mail (November 2, 2018); Nancy T. Gallini, “The Economics of Patents: Lessons from Recent U.S. Patent Reform,” Journal of Economic Perspectives, vol. 16, no. 2 (2002), pp. 131–154; Tracey Lindeman, “Canada Launches Visa Program for Hiring Specialized Foreign Talent,” The Globe and Mail (June 13, 2017); Randall Palmer, “Canada Designs New Visa for Immigrant Entrepreneurs,” The Globe and Mail (September 11, 2012).
- 9.
R. Duane Ireland, Jeffrey G. Covin and Donald F. Kuratko, “Conceptualizing Corporate Entrepreneurship Strategy,” Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, vol. 33, no. 1 (2009), pp. 19–46; Martin Kornberger, “The Visible Hand and the Crowd: Analyzing Organization Design in Distributed Innovation Systems,” Strategic Organization, vol. 15, no. 2 (2017), pp. 174–193; Arun Kumaraswamy, Raghu Garud and Shahzad (Shaz) Ansari, “Perspectives on Disruptive Innovations,” Journal of Management Studies, vol. 55, no. 7 (2018), pp. 1025–1042; Satish Nambisan, “Digital Entrepreneurship: Toward a Digital Technology Perspective of Entrepreneurship,” Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, vol. 41, no. 6 (2017), pp. 1029–1055.
- 10.
Knut Blind, Jakob Edler, Rainer Frietsch and Ulrich Schmoch, “Motives to Patent: Empirical Evidence from Germany,” Research Policy, vol. 35, no. 5 (2006), pp. 655–672; Seth Fiegerman, “In Tech, Patents Are Trophies—And These Companies Are Dominating,” CNN (June 19, 2018); Michael Webb, Nick Short, Nicholas Bloom and Josh Lerner, “Some Facts of High-Tech Patenting,” NBER Working Paper No. 24793, July 2018.
- 11.
The following sources more comprehensively cover the various commercialization and partnership (i.e., backing from venture capital investors) options that are available for exploiting or monetizing intellectual property rights such as patents: Iain M. Cockburn and Megan J. MacGarvie, “Patents, Thickets and the Financing of Early-Stage Firms: Evidence from the Software Industry,” Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, vol. 18, no. 3 (2009), pp. 729–773; Dirk Engel and Max Keilbach, “Firm-level Implications of Early Stage Venture Capital Investment—An Empirical Investigation,” Journal of Empirical Finance, vol. 14, no. 2 (2007), pp. 150–167; Gaétan de Rassenfosse, “How SMEs Exploit Their Intellectual Property Assets: Evidence from Survey Data,” Small Business Economics, vol. 39, no. 2 (2012), pp. 437–452; Sharon D. James, Michael J. Leiblein and Shaohua Lu, “How Firms Capture Value from Their Innovations,” Journal of Management, vol. 39, no. 5 (2013), pp. 1123–1155; Joshua S. Gans and Scott Stern, “The Product Market and the Market for ‘Ideas’: Commercialization Strategies for Technology Entrepreneurs,” Research Policy, vol. 32, no. 2, pp. 333–350; Noni Symeonidoua, Johan Bruneel and Erkko Autio, “Commercialization Strategy and Internationalization Outcomes in Technology-Based New Ventures,” Journal of Business Venturing, vol. 32, no. 3 (2017), pp. 302–317.
- 12.
Abhinay Muthoo, Bargaining Theory with Applications (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999); Abhinay Muthoo, “A Non-Technical Introduction to Bargaining Theory,” World Economics, vol. 1, no. 2 (2000), pp. 145–166.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2020 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Morgan, H.M. (2020). Strategically Accumulate Power and Appropriately Use It. In: Underdog Entrepreneurs. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-20408-2_13
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-20408-2_13
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-20407-5
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-20408-2
eBook Packages: Business and ManagementBusiness and Management (R0)