Abstract
Earlier studies have shown that entrepreneurs play a key role in shaping regional development. Innovator networks where these entrepreneurs are members of, have been identified as one among many critical factors for their firms’ success. This paper intents to go one step further and analyses in how far differing characteristics of these networks lead to different firm performances along the early stages of the organizational life cycle (nascent stage, emergent stage, early growth stage). A sample of 149 innovative firms in Thuringia is analysed, using data from the commercial register and the German patent office. The results show that there is an inverted u-shaped relationship between the chances of a firm to survive and the connectivity of the network the firms are connected to but only in the later stage of the early organizational life cycle; while the structure of the ego-network never plays a role. A quite central position in the network shows-up to be unfavourable.
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Notes
- 1.
Note that this data base was just the starting point for the Thuringian Founder Study Questionnaire. It is therefore not identical to the questionnaire data collected by the Thuringian Founder Study.
- 2.
Figure 1 in the appendix shows a card of Thuringia and its ttwas. Sonneberg, Saale-Orla-Kreis, Altenburger Land and Eichsfeld are connected to regions outside Thuringia by means of commuter streams. For the creation of the regional innovator networks, we also included patents and inventors from these regions.
- 3.
For details see Lobo and Strumsky (2008, p. 876).
- 4.
We measured centrality by means of Eigenvector centrality (Bonacich 1972). There exist different measures for centrality like betweeness centrality (Anthonisse 1971; Freeman 1977), closeness centrality (Beauchamp 1965) or hub centrality (Kleinberg 1999). We decided for the Eigenvector centrality since it is a feedback centrality which is showing whether the actor is connected to the top connected other actors in the net which might be especially useful for young and small companies who are in need of good contacts.
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Appendix
Appendix
Thuringia and its travel-to-work areas. Thuringian travel to work areas according to the estimations of Granato and Farhauer (2007)
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Cantner, U., Wolf, T. (2018). The Selective Nature of Innovator Networks: From the Nascent to the Early Growth Phase of the Organizational Life Cycle. In: Cubico, S., Favretto, G., Leitão, J., Cantner, U. (eds) Entrepreneurship and the Industry Life Cycle. Studies on Entrepreneurship, Structural Change and Industrial Dynamics. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-89336-5_8
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