Going Alone or Together? A Configurational Analysis of Solo Founding vs. Cofounding
通过分析70家新创企业，发现成功独立创业者并非不如联合创业者，而是巧妙利用合作者网络来克服劣势、保持控制并调动资源，提出创业组织的组态理论。
Research and practice suggest that cofounded ventures outperform solo-founded ventures. Yet, little work has explored the conditions under which solo founding might be preferable to cofounding. Combining an inductive case-oriented analysis with a Qualitative Comparative Analysis of 70 new entrepreneurial ventures, we examine why and how solo founders can be as successful as their peers in cofounded ventures. We find that successful solo founders strategically use a set of cocreators rather than cofounders to overcome liabilities, retain control, and mobilize resources in unique and unexpected ways. A primary contribution of this paper is an emergent configurational theory of entrepreneurial organizing. Overall, we reveal the broader significance and theoretical importance of adopting a configurational lens for both practitioners and scholars of entrepreneurship. Funding: Financial support from the Strategy Research Foundation [Grant SRF-2018-DP-9156] is gratefully acknowledged. Supplemental Material: The online appendix is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/orsc.2021.1548 .