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Uncovering the Scaling of Innovations Developed by Grassroots Entrepreneurs in Low-Income Settings
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Author: Marleen Wierenga, Aalto U. School of Business
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This study focuses on how individuals from low-income settings with limited resources engage in entrepreneurship and upscale their businesses. Low-income entrepreneurs operating in resource-scarce settings are typically thought of as informal, operating on a small scale and selling products developed and produced by others. This study establishes the notion of a unique category of low-income entrepreneurs who have developed, commercialised, and scaled innovations and are self-employed by choice. Further, the paper investigates the scaling process of these innovative grassroots entrepreneurs. The sample consists of four grassroots entrepreneurs from India who founded an enterprise to sell their self-developed innovations. The study follows the grounded theory approach, which is suitable for the exploration of complex questions in unusual settings. The theoretical lens used in this study is entrepreneurial bricolage, since the interest of the study lies in understanding action and the usage of existing resources. The contribution to the literature on low-income entrepreneurship is twofold. First, the study contributes by bolstering the theoretical archetype of grassroots entrepreneurs. Secondly, it contributes by developing a model for the scaling process and by introducing the notion of grassroots bricolage. It refers to behaviour of utilising and combining both locally available contacts and the broader network as resources in novel ways.
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Paper is No Longer Available Online: Please contact the author(s).
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Determinants and Indicators of Growth in Social Venturing
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Author: Nicole Siebold, Otto von Guericke U. Magdeburg
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Ventures with a social mission grow as organizations but for the main purpose of in-creasing social impact. In this paper, we investigate whether impact growth is driven by or, conversely, the driver of organizational growth. Within a business model framework that differentiates value creation, value delivery, and value capture, we compare four generic mis-sions of self-sustainable social venturing: empowerment, employment, service, and giving missions. Our analysis reveals that growth of empowerment and service missions is impact driven, whereas employment and giving missions grow organizationally. For each mission, we identify objective indicators to quantitatively measure and compare growth in social venturing.
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Paper is No Longer Available Online: Please contact the author(s).
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The Relationship Between Growth and Profitability Revisited - Exploring Different Modes of Growth
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Author: Martin Weiss, Vlerick Business School
Author: Theodore Andrew Khoury, Portland State U.
Author: Markus Kreutzer, EBS Business School
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Growth represents an essential element to the entrepreneurial journey as it reflects the recognition and pursuit of opportunities. However, despite prior research, the relationship between growth and profitability still remains illusive. With an attempt to inform a new understanding of this relationship, we examine its non-linear character through decomposing growth into organic and acquisitive modes and theorize the way in which these modes shape profitability. Further, we propose that these modes can affect profitability through their interaction with each other. We study these relationships with a panel of established German companies over 13 years to uncover an inverted U-shaped relation between growth and profitability, mainly driven by acquisitive growth, but organic growth has a declining positive effect. The interaction of both growth modes shows a negative impact of acquisitive growth on the positive performance effect of organic growth. Furthermore, we conduct post-hoc tests that reveal a contrast to how younger and smaller firms realize different trajectories of profitability depending on their mode of growth.
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Paper is No Longer Available Online: Please contact the author(s).
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Scaling Impact: An Emergent Model of Social Growth Orientation in Nascent Ventures
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Author: Andrea Caldwell Marquez, The U. of Texas at Austin
Author: Sekou Bermiss, The U. of Texas at Austin
Author: Emily S. Block, U. of Alberta
Author: Michael J. Mannor, U. of Notre Dame
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All nascent ventures face a growth imperative, yet theories of venture growth are narrowly focused on financial metrics. As a result, current theorizing is a poor fit for social ventures seeking to scale both commercial performance and social impact. We address this gap with an inductive study of thirty-three early stage social ventures, investigating how these ventures conceptualize social growth and how this related to venture outcomes. Based on our findings, we introduce and outline the construct of social growth orientation, which is defined as the extent to which a venture seeks to scale its societal impact. We find that while social ventures conceptualize social growth in terms of what metrics to grow, they also explicitly account for who will benefit from the venture’s growth. Additionally, we find strong conceptual links between social growth orientation and organizational identity. Lastly, we characterize the relationship between social growth orientation and subsequent venture outcomes.
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Paper is No Longer Available Online: Please contact the author(s).
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