IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/entthe/v47y2023i6p2293-2322.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Evaluating Affordance-Based Opportunities: A Conjoint Experiment of Corporate Venture Capital Managers’ Decision-Making

Author

Listed:
  • Petrit Ademi
  • Monika C. Schuhmacher
  • Andrew L. Zacharakis

Abstract

We integrate opportunity evaluation reasoning with affordance theory to develop a nuanced theoretical model of action orientation in entrepreneurial decision-making. We test our model with a conjoint experiment of 864 decisions made by 54 corporate venture capital (CVC) managers evaluating digital ventures for investment. Our findings provide evidence that CVC managers value two sources of digital affordances: the recombinability and the reprogrammability of digital technologies. The results show that CVC managers individuate affordance-based investment opportunities based on their personal and organizational background. We contribute to a fine-grained understanding of action potentials in the evaluation of opportunities and advance affordance theory through a cognitive judgment perspective.

Suggested Citation

  • Petrit Ademi & Monika C. Schuhmacher & Andrew L. Zacharakis, 2023. "Evaluating Affordance-Based Opportunities: A Conjoint Experiment of Corporate Venture Capital Managers’ Decision-Making," Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, , vol. 47(6), pages 2293-2322, November.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:entthe:v:47:y:2023:i:6:p:2293-2322
    DOI: 10.1177/10422587221134788
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/10422587221134788
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/10422587221134788?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Eller, Robert & Alford, Philip & Kallmünzer, Andreas & Peters, Mike, 2020. "Antecedents, consequences, and challenges of small and medium-sized enterprise digitalization," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 112(C), pages 119-127.
    2. Mitchell, J. Robert & Shepherd, Dean A., 2010. "To thine own self be true: Images of self, images of opportunity, and entrepreneurial action," Journal of Business Venturing, Elsevier, vol. 25(1), pages 138-154, January.
    3. J. Michael Haynie & Dean A. Shepherd & Jeffery S. McMullen, 2009. "An Opportunity for Me? The Role of Resources in Opportunity Evaluation Decisions," Journal of Management Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 46(3), pages 337-361, May.
    4. Markku V. J. Maula & Thomas Keil & Shaker A. Zahra, 2013. "Top Management’s Attention to Discontinuous Technological Change: Corporate Venture Capital as an Alert Mechanism," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 24(3), pages 926-947, June.
    5. Matthew R. Marvel & Justin L. Davis & Curtis R. Sproul, 2016. "Human Capital and Entrepreneurship Research: A Critical Review and Future Directions," Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, , vol. 40(3), pages 599-626, May.
    6. David Reibstein & John E. G. Bateson & William Boulding, 1988. "Conjoint Analysis Reliability: Empirical Findings," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 7(3), pages 271-286.
    7. Henri A. Schildt & Markku V.J. Maula & Thomas Keil, 2005. "Explorative and Exploitative Learning from External Corporate Ventures," Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, , vol. 29(4), pages 493-515, July.
    8. Thomas Keil & Markku V.J. Maula & Cameron Wilson, 2010. "Unique Resources of Corporate Venture Capitalists as a Key to Entry into Rigid Venture Capital Syndication Networks," Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, , vol. 34(1), pages 83-103, January.
    9. Matthew S. Wood & David W. Williams, 2014. "Opportunity Evaluation as Rule-Based Decision Making," Journal of Management Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 51(4), pages 573-602, June.
    10. Franke, Nikolaus & Gruber, Marc & Harhoff, Dietmar & Henkel, Joachim, 2006. "What you are is what you like--similarity biases in venture capitalists' evaluations of start-up teams," Journal of Business Venturing, Elsevier, vol. 21(6), pages 802-826, November.
    11. Ikenna Uzuegbunam & Brandon Ofem & Satish Nambisan, 2019. "Do Corporate Investors Affect Entrepreneurs’ IP Portfolio? Entrepreneurial Finance and Intellectual Property in New Firms," Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, , vol. 43(4), pages 673-696, July.
    12. Satish Nambisan, 2017. "Digital Entrepreneurship: Toward a Digital Technology Perspective of Entrepreneurship," Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, , vol. 41(6), pages 1029-1055, November.
    13. Varkey K. Titus Jr. & Brian S. Anderson, 2018. "Firm Structure and Environment as Contingencies to the Corporate Venture Capital-Parent Firm Value Relationship," Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, , vol. 42(3), pages 498-522, May.
    14. Dushnitsky, Gary & Lenox, Michael J., 2005. "When do incumbents learn from entrepreneurial ventures?: Corporate venture capital and investing firm innovation rates," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 34(5), pages 615-639, June.
    15. Dushnitsky, Gary & Yu, Lei, 2022. "Why do incumbents fund startups? A study of the antecedents of corporate venture capital in China," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 51(3).
    16. Emily Oster, 2019. "Unobservable Selection and Coefficient Stability: Theory and Evidence," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 37(2), pages 187-204, April.
    17. Corey C. Phelps & Sandip Basu & Suresh Kotha, 2011. "Towards understanding who makes corporate venture capital investments and why," Post-Print hal-00575634, HAL.
    18. Markku Maula & Erkko Autio & Gordon Murray, 2005. "Corporate Venture Capitalists and Independent Venture Capitalists: What do They Know, Who do They Know, and Should Entrepreneurs Care?," International Studies in Entrepreneurship, in: Tom Elfring (ed.), Corporate Entrepreneurship and Venturing, chapter 5, pages 101-126, Springer.
    19. Will Drover & Matthew S. Wood & Andrew Zacharakis, 2017. "Attributes of Angel and Crowdfunded Investments as Determinants of VC Screening Decisions," Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, , vol. 41(3), pages 323-347, May.
    20. Zacharakis, Andrew L. & Meyer, G. Dale, 1998. "A lack of insight: do venture capitalists really understand their own decision process?," Journal of Business Venturing, Elsevier, vol. 13(1), pages 57-76, January.
    21. Hoenig, Daniel & Henkel, Joachim, 2015. "Quality signals? The role of patents, alliances, and team experience in venture capital financing," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 44(5), pages 1049-1064.
    22. Deborah Dougherty, 1992. "Interpretive Barriers to Successful Product Innovation in Large Firms," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 3(2), pages 179-202, May.
    23. Maula, Markku V.J. & Autio, Erkko & Murray, Gordon C., 2009. "Corporate venture capital and the balance of risks and rewards for portfolio companies," Journal of Business Venturing, Elsevier, vol. 24(3), pages 274-286, May.
    24. Schade, Philipp & Schuhmacher, Monika C., 2022. "Digital infrastructure and entrepreneurial action-formation: A multilevel study," Journal of Business Venturing, Elsevier, vol. 37(5).
    25. Wood, Matthew S. & McKelvie, Alexander & Haynie, J. Michael, 2014. "Making it personal: Opportunity individuation and the shaping of opportunity beliefs," Journal of Business Venturing, Elsevier, vol. 29(2), pages 252-272.
    26. Sabrina Artinger & Thomas C. Powell, 2016. "Entrepreneurial failure: Statistical and psychological explanations," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 37(6), pages 1047-1064, June.
    27. Warnick, Benjamin J. & Murnieks, Charles Y. & McMullen, Jeffery S. & Brooks, Wade T., 2018. "Passion for entrepreneurship or passion for the product? A conjoint analysis of angel and VC decision-making," Journal of Business Venturing, Elsevier, vol. 33(3), pages 315-332.
    28. Andrew L Zacharakis & Jeffery S McMullen & Dean A Shepherd, 2007. "Venture capitalists' decision policies across three countries: an institutional theory perspective," Journal of International Business Studies, Palgrave Macmillan;Academy of International Business, vol. 38(5), pages 691-708, September.
    29. Vareska Van de Vrande & Wim Vanhaverbeke, 2013. "How Prior Corporate Venture Capital Investments Shape Technological Alliances: A Real Options Approach," Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, , vol. 37(5), pages 1019-1043, September.
    30. Constance E. Helfat & Kathleen M. Eisenhardt, 2004. "Inter‐temporal economies of scope, organizational modularity, and the dynamics of diversification," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 25(13), pages 1217-1232, December.
    31. Jennifer M. Walske & Andrew Zacharakis, 2009. "Genetically Engineered: Why Some Venture Capital Firms are more Successful than Others," Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, , vol. 33(1), pages 297-318, January.
    32. Judith Behrens & Holger Patzelt, 2016. "Corporate Entrepreneurship Managers’ Project Terminations: Integrating Portfolio–Level, Individual–Level, and Firm–Level Effects," Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, , vol. 40(4), pages 815-842, July.
    33. Dean A. Shepherd & Andrew Zacharakis, 1999. "Conjoint analysis: A new methodological approach for researching the decision policies of venture capitalists," Venture Capital, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 1(3), pages 197-217, July.
    34. Palich, Leslie E. & Ray Bagby, D., 1995. "Using cognitive theory to explain entrepreneurial risk-taking: Challenging conventional wisdom," Journal of Business Venturing, Elsevier, vol. 10(6), pages 425-438, November.
    35. Zacharakis, Andrew L. & Shepherd, Dean A., 2001. "The nature of information and overconfidence on venture capitalists' decision making," Journal of Business Venturing, Elsevier, vol. 16(4), pages 311-332, July.
    36. Thomas Keil & Erkko Autio & Gerard George, 2008. "Corporate Venture Capital, Disembodied Experimentation and Capability Development," Journal of Management Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 45(8), pages 1475-1505, December.
    37. Andranik Tumasjan & Isabell Welpe & Matthias Spörrle, 2013. "Easy Now, Desirable Later: The Moderating Role of Temporal Distance in Opportunity Evaluation and Exploitation," Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, , vol. 37(4), pages 859-888, July.
    38. Anokhin, Sergey & Peck, Simon & Wincent, Joakim, 2016. "Corporate venture capital: The role of governance factors," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 69(11), pages 4744-4749.
    39. Markku Maula & Erkko Autio & Gordon Murray, 2005. "Corporate Venture Capitalists and Independent Venture Capitalists: What do they know, Who do They Know and Should Entrepreneurs Care?," Venture Capital, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 7(1), pages 3-21, January.
    40. Stefan Henningsson & William J. Kettinger & Chen Zhang & Nageswaran Vaidyanathan, 2021. "Transformative rare events: Leveraging digital affordance actualisation," European Journal of Information Systems, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 30(2), pages 137-156, March.
    41. Jeon, Euiju & Maula, Markku, 2022. "Progress toward understanding tensions in corporate venture capital: A systematic review," Journal of Business Venturing, Elsevier, vol. 37(4).
    42. Matthew R. Marvel & G.T. Lumpkin, 2007. "Technology Entrepreneurs’ Human Capital and Its Effects on Innovation Radicalness," Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, , vol. 31(6), pages 807-828, November.
    43. Nambisan, Satish & Wright, Mike & Feldman, Maryann, 2019. "The digital transformation of innovation and entrepreneurship: Progress, challenges and key themes," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 48(8), pages 1-1.
    44. Wadhwa, Anu & Phelps, Corey & Kotha, Suresh, 2016. "Corporate venture capital portfolios and firm innovation," Journal of Business Venturing, Elsevier, vol. 31(1), pages 95-112.
    45. Daniel V. Holland & Dean A. Shepherd, 2013. "Deciding to Persist: Adversity, Values, and Entrepreneurs’ Decision Policies," Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, , vol. 37(2), pages 331-358, March.
    46. Gary Dushnitsky & Zur Shapira, 2010. "Entrepreneurial finance meets organizational reality: comparing investment practices and performance of corporate and independent venture capitalists," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 31(9), pages 990-1017, September.
    47. Youngjin Yoo & Ola Henfridsson & Kalle Lyytinen, 2010. "Research Commentary ---The New Organizing Logic of Digital Innovation: An Agenda for Information Systems Research," Information Systems Research, INFORMS, vol. 21(4), pages 724-735, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Jeon, Euiju & Maula, Markku, 2022. "Progress toward understanding tensions in corporate venture capital: A systematic review," Journal of Business Venturing, Elsevier, vol. 37(4).
    2. David Bendig & Simon Hensellek & Julian Schulte, 2024. "Beneficial, Harmful, or Both? Effects of Corporate Venture Capital and Alliance Activity on Product Recalls," Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, , vol. 48(1), pages 35-70, January.
    3. Cabral, Joseph J. & Kumar, M.V. Shyam & Park, Haemin Dennis, 2024. "The value of a reputation for sustaining commitment in interfirm relationships: The inclusion of corporate venture capitalists in investment syndicates," Journal of Business Venturing, Elsevier, vol. 39(3).
    4. Shuwaikh, Fatima & Dubocage, Emmanuelle, 2022. "Access to the Corporate Investors' Complementary Resources: A Leverage for Innovation in Biotech Venture Capital-Backed Companies," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 175(C).
    5. Stefanie Weniger & Svenja Jarchow, 2023. "Between benefit and risk: how entrepreneurs evaluate corporate investors," Journal of Business Economics, Springer, vol. 93(5), pages 783-816, July.
    6. Fatima Shuwaikh & Mathew Hughes & Souad Brinette & Sabrina Khemiri, 2024. "Investment decisions under uncertainty: Corporate venture capital as a real option," International Journal of Finance & Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 29(2), pages 2452-2471, April.
    7. Alexandra Moritz & Walter Diegel & Joern Block & Christian Fisch, 2022. "VC investors’ venture screening: the role of the decision maker’s education and experience," Journal of Business Economics, Springer, vol. 92(1), pages 27-63, January.
    8. Lewis, Trey & Cardon, Melissa S., 2020. "The Magnetic Value of Entrepreneurial Passion for Potential Employees," Journal of Business Venturing Insights, Elsevier, vol. 14(C).
    9. Varkey K. Titus Jr. & Brian S. Anderson, 2018. "Firm Structure and Environment as Contingencies to the Corporate Venture Capital-Parent Firm Value Relationship," Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, , vol. 42(3), pages 498-522, May.
    10. Andreas Hack & Frauke Bieberstein & Nils D. Kraiczy, 2016. "Reference point formation and new venture creation," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 46(3), pages 447-465, March.
    11. Patrick Röhm, 2018. "Exploring the landscape of corporate venture capital: a systematic review of the entrepreneurial and finance literature," Management Review Quarterly, Springer, vol. 68(3), pages 279-319, August.
    12. Will Drover & Matthew S. Wood & G. Tyge Payne, 2014. "The Effects of Perceived Control on Venture Capitalist Investment Decisions: A Configurational Perspective," Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, , vol. 38(4), pages 833-861, July.
    13. David Urbano & Andreu Turro & Mike Wright & Shaker Zahra, 2022. "Corporate entrepreneurship: a systematic literature review and future research agenda," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 59(4), pages 1541-1565, December.
    14. Fu, Yingzhu & Tietz, Matthias A. & Delmar, Frédéric, 2022. "Obsessive passion and the venture team: When co-founders join, and when they don't," Journal of Business Venturing, Elsevier, vol. 37(4).
    15. Martin P. Allmendinger & Elisabeth S. C. Berger, 2019. "Selecting Corporate Firms For Collaborative Innovation: Entrepreneurial Decision Making In Asymmetric Partnerships," International Journal of Innovation Management (ijim), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 24(01), pages 1-34, January.
    16. Kang Hyunsung D, 2018. "A Start-Up’s R&D Stages and the Evolution of Financing Sources: Evidence from the Biotechnology Industry," Entrepreneurship Research Journal, De Gruyter, vol. 8(3), pages 1-19, July.
    17. Brown, Austin R. & Wood, Matthew S. & Scheaf, David J., 2022. "Discovery sells, but who’s buying? An empirical investigation of entrepreneurs’ technology license decisions," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 144(C), pages 403-415.
    18. Dushnitsky, Gary & Yu, Lei, 2022. "Why do incumbents fund startups? A study of the antecedents of corporate venture capital in China," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 51(3).
    19. Scheaf, David J. & Loignon, Andrew C. & Webb, Justin W. & Heggestad, Eric D. & Wood, Matthew S., 2020. "Measuring opportunity evaluation: Conceptual synthesis and scale development," Journal of Business Venturing, Elsevier, vol. 35(2).
    20. Eric Braune & Jean-Sebastien Lantz & Jean-Michel Sahut & Frédéric Teulon, 2019. "Corporate venture capital in the IT sector and relationships in VC syndication networks," Post-Print hal-02467749, HAL.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:entthe:v:47:y:2023:i:6:p:2293-2322. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.