Direct ties, prior knowledge, and entrepreneurial resource acquisitions in China and Singapore
研究创业者与资源提供者的关系强度及资源提供者的先验知识如何影响创业资源获取，基于中国北京和新加坡378家高科技企业的数据，发现强关系比弱关系更重要，且当资源提供者先验知识较少时强关系作用更大。
The entrepreneurship literature suggests that network ties are useful in mitigating the problem of information asymmetry faced by entrepreneurs when acquiring resources at the early stage of venture creation. We introduce prior knowledge of resource owners as an inverse measure of information asymmetry and investigate the contingent effect of prior knowledge and tie strength between entrepreneurs and resource owners on the likelihood of entrepreneurial resource acquisition. Using data from 378 high-tech ventures located in Beijing, China and Singapore, the analysis shows that strong ties are more important than weak ties, in entrepreneurs’ resource acquisition and this importance grows when resource owners have less prior knowledge to offset problems of information asymmetry. Similar network effects are found in both China and Singapore. The insignificant country difference suggests that the social network culture of the start-up community is universal.