Look Before You Leap: Market Opportunity Identification in Emerging Technology Firms
发现，有经验的连续创业者在首次进入市场前会识别多个市场机会并从中选择，这能提升新企业绩效，但机会数量与绩效呈非线性关系，边际收益递减。
Entrepreneurs play a fundamental role in bringing new technologies to market. Because technologies are often configurable to serve a variety of different markets, it is possible for entrepreneurs to identify multiple market opportunities prior to the first market entry of their emerging firms, and if they elect to do so, to therefore have a choice of which market to enter first. The empirical results presented in this paper offer three new insights regarding this important early-stage choice in new firm creation. First, they reveal that serial entrepreneurs have learned through prior start-up experience to generate a “choice set” of alternative market opportunities before deciding which one to pursue in their new firm creation. Second, the analysis indicates that entrepreneurs who identify a “choice set” of market opportunities prior to first entry derive performance benefits by doing so. Third, the positive relationship between the number of market opportunities identified prior to first entry and new firm performance is nonlinear and subject to decreasing marginal return. The research literature has yet to acknowledge the notion of multiple opportunity identification prior to entry, and the related idea of selecting the most favorable market opportunity for the creation of a new technology firm.