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.33.Mike Sutton and Chris West, The Beermat Entrepreneur (London: Pearson PrenticeHall Business, 2002).34.Lynne G.Zucker, Michael R.Darby, and Jeff S.Armstrong, CommercializingKnowledge: University Science, Knowledge Capture, and Firm Performance in Biotechnology,Management Science 48 (2002): 138 153; Lynne Zucker, Michael Darby, and Marilynn B.Brewer, Intellectual Human Capital and the Birth of U.S.Biotechnology Enterprises,American Economic Review 88 (1998): 290 306.35.Robert H.Brockhaus, The Psychology of the Entrepreneur, in The Encyclopedia ofEntrepreneurship, eds.Calvin A.Kent, Donald L.Sexton, and Karl H.Vesper (Englewood Cliffs,NJ: Prentice Hall, 1982): 39 57.36.Charles Handy, Gods of Management: The Changing Work of Organizations (New York:Random House, 1991).37.Ibid.; Henry Mintzberg, Bruce Ahlstrand, and Joe Lampel, Strategy Safari (London:Prentice Hall, 1998).38.Casson, The Entrepreneur: An Economic Theory.TwoEntrepreneurs and Their WorldIn the previous chapter we said that an entrepreneur s primary resource ishim/herself.We also defined entrepreneurship as the process by which indi-viduals, either on their own or inside organizations, pursue opportunitieswithout regard to the resources they currently control. In this chapter weconsider entrepreneurs and their world of resources, but not in the way thatresources used to be considered in the economic and business literature; thatis, as raw materials, capital, labor, and so on.Let us call it human capital, butnot people as in labor but people as in networks and as assets.The central mes-sage of this chapter is that few entrepreneurs succeed working alone.Successis very much dependent on who the entrepreneur knows, what kind of rela-tionships he or she has or are able to create, and why is it so important tomaintain those relationships.Why is networking so crucial for the entrepre-neur, when self is the best serf ? It is critical to success.This chapter is aboutnetworks as much as it will be about building legitimacy and trust.Drawing parallels to James Moore s work,1 creating a new venture is likea new species entering an existing eco system or a new species creating anew eco system (which is often but not always the case in radical innova-tions and/or technology entrepreneurship).It can also be an existing speciesentering an existing eco system (replication).Most businesses belong to thislatter category although they are not the ones that make media headlines.Surprisingly rare is an existing species slowly creating a new eco system,although it could be quite promising.A business eco system is a broader con-cept than the traditional industry as it can include a variety of interrelatedindustries.Conceptually, a business eco system incorporates the intense con-vergence of technologies and industries we have witnessed over the past twodecades in both wireless and the Internet.Firms simultaneously cooperateand compete to develop innovative ideas, support new products, and satisfycustomer needs en route to the next level of innovations.These often take22 Entrepreneurshipplace in various networks of activities at various levels within firms, betweenfirms, within regions, across regions, within nations, across nations, and so on.Business eco systems capture the boundary-crossing nature of today s dynamicbusiness climate.In the process of pursuing opportunities, one key task for the entrepreneuris to know how to draw on resources from the surrounding environment inorder to purposefully coordinate resources thereby enabling purposeful action.In large organizations, there are routine mechanisms for scanning the environ-ment and interacting with it, such as market intelligence, public relations,communications, sales, and so on.In a small firm, or when starting a smallfirm, there are no departments or routines for taking care of these matters.There is just the entrepreneur and, perhaps, a part-time office clerk (fre-quently a spouse)
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