Exploitative Learning and Entrepreneurial Orientation Alignment in Emerging Young Firms: Implications for Market and Response Performance

By Mathew Hughes, Paul Hughes, Robert E. Morgan. 2007

233 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We examine exploitative learning and entrepreneurial orientation (EO) in emerging young high technology firms located within business incubators. In the last five years, the UK government has invested approximately £125m in incubation activities. The rationale for supporting business incubation is to maximize knowledge sharing across firms with an expectation that it will leverage performance. This represents exploitative learning – the acquisition of established knowledge that carries clear known value and outcomes. Paradoxically, research into EO has repeatedly emphasized the value of knowledge created through exploratory learning mechanisms (‘play, discovery and experimentation’) in securing advantage. Theoretical and empirical questions are raised herein with regard to the value of exploitative learning within a network context which might negatively influence the impact of EO on the firm. Using configuration theory, we demonstrate that firms cannot sustain dual-dominant orientations of exploitative learning and EO. A strongly configured EO generates high performance returns. However, multi-group analysis reveals that these effects are particularly strong for those firms whose exploitative learning is weak. Implications and directions for future research are discussed.

Subfields: Communication, Management of Technology and Innovation, Strategy and Management

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/0e9da36142dc193a0f635aaf034a7fa6c06667f3

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Citations in the corpus

Complementary effect of entrepreneurial and market orientations on export new product success under differing levels of competitive intensity and financial capital (2012, background): “Secondly, entrepreneurial- and market-orientation levels that are too high might be dysfunctional to export success (Cadogan et al., 2009; Hughes et al., 2007).”
Entrepreneurial orientation and the business performance of SMEs: a quantitative study from the Netherlands (2012, background): “The logic for this belief stems from the argument that EO drives exploration within the firm and allows the reconfiguration of resources and knowledge into better product-market solutions to meet anticipated change (Atuahene-Gima and Ko 2001; Hughes et al. 2007; Hughes and Morgan 2007).”
Explaining the entrepreneurial orientation–performance relationship in emerging economies: The intermediate roles of absorptive capacity and improvisation (2017, unknown): “Moreover, Hughes et al. (2007) found that high levels of organizational learning (by collating information from external parties) compromise the performance contribution of EO among young and new venture firms.”
Entrepreneurial orientation and firm performance: the mediating role of functional performances (2018, background): “, 2005), small firms (Wiklund and Shepherd, 2005; Hughes et al., 2007) and new or established firms (Su et al.”
How network-based incubation helps start-up performance: a systematic review against the background of management theories (2017, background): “…a positive influence of network-based incubation on How network-based incubation helps start-up performance: a… 697 performance (Hansen et al. 2000; Hughes et al. 2007; Patton 2014) identify different incubation practices and use different performance measures from the articles that are much more…”