HYBRID VIGOR: SECURING VENTURE CAPITAL BY SPANNING CATEGORIES IN NANOTECHNOLOGY

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Wry, Tyler; Lounsbury, Michael; Jennings, P. Devereaux
• 署名单位: University of Pennsylvania; University of Alberta; University of Alberta
• 刊物名称: ACADEMY OF MANAGEMENT JOURNAL
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0001-4273
• DOI: 10.5465/amj.2011.0588
• 发表日期: 2014
• 页码: 1309-1333
• 关键词: INTERORGANIZATIONAL COLLABORATION; CULTURAL ENTREPRENEURSHIP; TECHNICAL ADVANCE; IDENTITY; industry; DYNAMICS; ORGANIZATIONS; performance; legitimacy; strategy

摘要

This study develops and tests a set of novel theoretical predictions about the conditions under which category spanning is rewarded by external audiences. To do this, we revisit the assumption that comprehensible organizational identities are associated with individual categories. Drawing on insights from cognitive psychology, we suggest that category spanning does not necessarily lead to confusion, but, rather, to interpretations that rely on a header-modifier structure where one category anchors cognition but is modified by features of the other. Audiences may have clear understandings about how categories fit together and cognate schema for evaluating firms that hybridize by spanning between them. An empirical examination of venture capital in the carbon nanotechnology industry supports our approach: start-ups were rewarded or punished for hybridization contingent on how they mixed science and technology in their patents, top management team, and collaborations. As such, we show that the category a firm starts in, how it hybridizes, and the degree to which this affects core versus peripheral identity markers may all affect how it is perceived.