Following in Partners’ Footsteps: An Uncertainty‐Reduction Perspective on Firms’ Choice of New Markets
研究企业如何通过合作伙伴关系选择新市场，发现企业倾向于进入有合作联系的市场，且多重联系、经验丰富度和相关性会削弱这种网络影响，基于美国风投行业23年面板数据验证。
ABSTRACT In this paper, we develop a new perspective on what determines firms’ choice of new markets for entry. First, drawing on the open‐system theoretical tradition and literature on inter‐organizational networks, we advance and empirically test the proposition that firms tend to enter new markets to which they are connected by partnership ties. We then show that this network influence is filtered through the structure of firms’ network connections to new markets and firms’ experience. Specifically, we find that multiplicity of connections to new markets, as well as the extensiveness of firms’ experience and its relevance to new markets weaken the effect of network ties on firms’ choice of new markets. The results of this study indicate that firms’ choice of new markets for entry is a nuanced process that is affected by the interplay of firms’ collaborative ties, the structure of their network, and firms’ internal capabilities. We test our hypotheses in the empirical context of the U.S. venture capital (VC) industry using panel data over a 23‐year period and find broad support for them.