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Methodology: Mixed Methods Approach

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Financing High-Tech Startups

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Abstract

This chapter is a discussion on methodological consideration. I acknowledged that most financial decision making research is based on mathematical models. This study, however, departs from this objectivistic approach and instead regards its subject as a multi-layered system that requires a pragmatist approach. This approach allows for the flexible combination of methods that best suits an examination of high-tech startup financing patterns, complexity and uncertainty factors, and matching signals. That is also why an explanatory sequential mixed methods design was chosen. It features a quantitative survey-based Study I with 903 German startups, and a qualitative Study II that is composed of 34 interviews with German and US investors and entrepreneurs as well as an international validation panel of experts.

Discontinuity, far from being an anomaly best ignored, is an essential ingredient of markets that helps set finance apart from the natural sciences.

Mandelbrot and Hudson (2008, p. 86)

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Theoretical perspectives that I do not consider include, among others, those primarily associated with critical theorists and feminists, which advocate symbolic interactionism and a transformative worldview (Creswell 2014; Mertens 2010). The domain of entrepreneurial finance in Germany has not been a marginalized social matter, and issues such as oppression and alienation—often the starting point for transformative approaches—are not under investigation either. However, this is not supposed to connote that this perspective has no raison d’être in the domain of entrepreneurial finance. On the contrary, I strongly believe that, e.g., on the level of the fund-raising entrepreneur herself, feminist perspectives, critical theory, and participatory practices (Reason and Bradbury 2008) may be a worthwhile approach (Harrison and Mason 2007; Downing 2005; Sara and Peter 1998).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Alexander von Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society, Berlin, Germany

    Robin P. G. Tech

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Tech, R.P.G. (2018). Methodology: Mixed Methods Approach. In: Financing High-Tech Startups. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-66155-1_3

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