Please use this form to submit your study for inclusion into our database. It will be checked by a member of the Innovation Growth Lab team, who may be in contact to ask for more information. Your email address * Your name * Title * The name of the study Short summary A brief description of the project's goals and its current state Abstract <p>Entrepreneurial activity is an important source of innovation in information technology products and services. Prior literature suggests that IT innovators should be agile, adaptive, willing to change direction frequently, and acquiring the necessary resources to facilitate the change. Social networks have been suggested as essential for acquiring information and resources and therefore in facilitating the venture development process. Yet, we know little about whether these adaptive processes could ultimately affect outcomes of IT ventures at the early stages and whether externally introduced changes in social networks can modulate the effect. With the ability to control presented content in a massively open online course (MOOC), we conduct a randomized field experiment that encourages students to either pursue an adaptive or a planning-based approach in building their startups and to seek mentors with different types of social networks. Measuring their performance at the end of the class and in a longer-term follow-up (two years later), we find that instructing entrepreneurs to have a strong, persistent vision for their startups often results in better performance at early stages. However, the disadvantages of adaptive strategies at early stages are mitigated by engaging a mentor with diverse social ties, and this strategy generates the best long-run outcomes (measured two years later). The results suggest that mentor selection -- and especially the social networks of the mentors -- are critical for achieving the benefits of agile product development.</p> The full abstract of the study, if available Links http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2571777 Links to any published papers and related discussions Authors * Affiliations Academic and other institutes that the authors of the study are members of Delivery partner Organisations involved in delivering the trial, if appropriate Year Year Year199419951996199719981999200020012002200320042005200620072008200920102011201220132014201520162017201820192020202120222023202420252026 Month MonthJanFebMarAprMayJunJulAugSepOctNovDec Day Day12345678910111213141516171819202122232425262728293031 Journal Journal publishing the study, if available Publication stage * Working Paper Published Ongoing Research Forthcoming Discussion Paper Research theme * Entrepreneurship Innovation Business Growth Country Country or countries where this study took place. Topics What sort of topics does the study cover? Sample attributes Hypotheses / research question Should entrepreneurs either pursue an adaptive or a planning-based approach in building their startups? Sample Trial population and sample selection Number of treatment groups Size of treatment groups Size of control group Unit of analysis Clustered? Yes No Cluster details Trial attributes Treatment description Intervention: strategic approach emphasised and mentor selection guidance; Four interventions combining strategic approach to building venture and mentor selection: 1. adaptive-only strategic approach, 2. Adaptive with diverse mentor, 3. planning only, 4. planning with diverse mentor Rounds of data collection Baseline data collection and method Data collection method and data collected Evaluation Outcome variables <p>Class learning outcomes, longer-term outcomes related to ventures created/ worked on in the course</p> Results <p>Planning-based approaches are more effective than adaptive approaches in generating short term success, but this gap decreases in our long-term measures. However, combining the adaptive approach with a mentor with a diverse network of contacts generates the highest short-term and long-term outcome.</p> Intervention costs Cost benefit ratio Reference Eesley, C., Wu, L. (2017). 'Adaptation and Social Networks in High-Tech Ventures: Evidence from a Randomized Experiment on a MOOC Platform'. Working paper. Citation for use in academic references
