Technology ventures' engagement of external actors in the search for viable market applications: On the relevance of Technology Broadcasting and Systematic Validation

Petra Andries, Bart Clarysse, Sergio Costa

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

19 Citations (SciVal)
32 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

In order to succeed, technology ventures need to find a profitable market application for their technology. Although external market actors may provide important information for the identification and validation of potential technology-market combinations, it remains largely unclear how technology ventures can involve them in this process. Building on insights from organizational search literature, this study follows five university spin-offs trying to commercialize early-stage technologies. We find that ventures are cognitively constrained in proactively identifying and approaching external market actors. Interestingly, the better performing ventures in our sample engage in a previously undocumented market search process we label Technology Broadcasting. They communicate their technological competencies to a broad range of market actors and react to these actors' assessment and spontaneous expressions of interest, thereby overcoming their own cognitive constraints. Resource constraints require filtering these expressions of interest through Systematic Validation with additional market players. These results complement the existing insights on market search by entrepreneurial ventures and advance the literature on organizational search.

Original languageEnglish
Article number106145
JournalJournal of Business Venturing
Volume36
Issue number6
Early online date10 Aug 2021
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 1 Nov 2021

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
The authors want to thank field editor Dave Williams, two anonymous reviewers, the participants of the Annual Meeting of the Academy of Management 2016, the Strategic Management Society Conference 2016, and the Academy of Management's Start-up to Scale-up Conference 2018 for their thoughtful suggestions. Special thanks goes to Erwin Danneels for commenting on earlier versions of this paper.

Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 Elsevier Inc.

Funding

The authors want to thank field editor Dave Williams, two anonymous reviewers, the participants of the Annual Meeting of the Academy of Management 2016, the Strategic Management Society Conference 2016, and the Academy of Management's Start-up to Scale-up Conference 2018 for their thoughtful suggestions. Special thanks goes to Erwin Danneels for commenting on earlier versions of this paper.

Keywords

  • Broadcasting
  • External market actors
  • Market search
  • Technology ventures

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Business and International Management
  • Management of Technology and Innovation

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