Description
In this detailed paper regarding entrepreneurial inception the role of imprinting in entrepreneurial action.
Entrepreneurial inception: The role of imprinting in
entrepreneurial action
Blake D. Mathias
a,
?, David W. Williams
b
, Adam R. Smith
c
a
Department of Management, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA 70803, United States
b
College of Business Administration, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN 37996, United States
c
School of Business, Indiana University Kokomo, Kokomo, IN 46904, United States
a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t
Available online xxxx
Field Editor: Garry Bruton
Recent research highlights that founders' early decisions and the environmental conditions at
founding each imprint upon a new venture in ways that affect growth and survival. However,
we know much less about how the entrepreneur is imprinted and how the outcome of this
imprinting process in?uences the entrepreneur and the venture. Through semi-structured inter-
views and content analysis, our study examines entrepreneurs' formative experiences during sen-
sitive periods of transition, which we refer to as sources of imprint. We illustrate howthese sources
of imprint impact entrepreneurial decision making and explain how they guide entrepreneurs'
decisions as they progress through their entrepreneurial careers. In doing so, we improve our
understanding of how entrepreneurs navigate the entrepreneurial process.
Published by Elsevier Inc.
Keywords:
Entrepreneurship
Imprinting
Entrepreneurial decision making
Content analysis
1. Executive summary
The experiences and decisions through which an organization is created and the conditions under which it begins have non-trivial
consequences for its later life (Boeker, 1988; Kimberly, 1979; Stinchcombe, 1965). A burgeoning body of research has explored this
important phenomenon by espousing imprinting theory, which highlights the enduring impact of prior history on individual and or-
ganizational outcomes. However, the central focus within both the organizational and entrepreneurship literatures concerning im-
printing has largely been on the organization. In other words, scholars have concentrated on how organizations are imprinted and
what this means for the course of the organization.
In contrast, we focus on the imprinting process for individuals—namely, entrepreneurs. Although some organizational researchhas
focused on the implications imprinting has for individuals and their careers (Higgins, 2005; McEvily et al., 2012), we demonstrate the
broader implications of imprinting. Speci?cally, we explore how the imprinting process in?uences entrepreneurs' decision making
and their selection of current and potentially future opportunities.
Through semi-structured interviews and content analysis techniques, we shed light on entrepreneurs' decision making and their
ventures' development trajectories. By doing so, our theoretical contributions are threefold. First, we explore the role of imprinting in
entrepreneurial action. We explainhowimprinting may be a key mechanismto understandhowcertainformative experiences, which
we refer to as sources of imprint, have a lasting effect on entrepreneurial decision making. Second, we build upon prior research to il-
lustrate howdifferent sources of imprint signi?cantly in?uence which opportunities entrepreneurs select and, more broadly, the way
they navigate the entrepreneurial process differently as a result of different sources of imprint. Finally, we consider the importance of
educators in promoting entrepreneurial experiences that may guide the development of individuals' paths toward entrepreneurship
Journal of Business Venturing xxx (2014) xxx–xxx
? Corresponding author at: Rucks Department of Management, Louisiana State University, Business Education Complex, Room 2700, Baton Rouge, LA 70803,
United States.
E-mail addresses: [email protected] (B.D. Mathias), [email protected] (D.W. Williams), [email protected] (A.R. Smith).
JBV-05718; No of Pages 18http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusvent.2014.07.004
0883-9026/Published by Elsevier Inc.
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Journal of Business Venturing
Please cite this article as: Mathias, B.D., et al., Entrepreneurial inception: The role of imprinting in entrepreneurial action, J. Bus.
Venturing (2014),http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusvent.2014.07.004
as well as the different educational needs of entrepreneurs with different sources of imprint. Together, our study reveals the impor-
tance of imprinting by examining how sources of imprint have a persistent impact on entrepreneurs and their respective ventures.
2. Introduction
A long history of research in entrepreneurship has demonstrated that prior experiences play a critical role in the entrepreneurial
process (e.g., Shane, 2000; Westhead et al., 2005). Inpart, experiences are important because they impact not only what opportunities
individuals identify but also howthey evaluate, select, and ultimately act upon them(Busenitz and Lau, 1996). Some experiences im-
part a passing in?uence on entrepreneurs, while other experiences stick with them, altering the way in which they see and think
about the world (Politis, 2005).
Imprinting theory explains how individuals and organizations develop characteristics from experiences during a sensitive period
and persistently re?ect themdespite time passing and the environment changing (Marquis and Tilcsik, 2013). To date, scholars have
shown that imprinting is critical to organizations, including impacting outcomes like venture growth potential (Bamford et al., 2000)
and turnover rates (Burton and Beckman, 2007). Scholars have also emphasized the importance of imprinting to individuals, such
as by illustrating howearly career mentors and peers in?uence subsequent work choices (Azoulay et al., 2011) or howinitial network
ties confer persistent advantages to young lawyers (McEvily et al., 2012). Within entrepreneurship, imprinting research has revealed
how founding decisions—the choices made at the onset of the ?rm (DeTienne, 2010)—and founding conditions—the environmental
conditions at the ?rm inception (Boeker, 1989)—impact the ?rm throughout its life. Together, these efforts demonstrate that what
happens during venture founding (or the start of a career) has a persistent impact on the course of that organization (or individual).
Although these efforts have notably contributed to imprinting and entrepreneurship theory, extant research fails to explain how
salient experiences andenvironmental elements (what we refer toas sources of imprint) imprint entrepreneurs andhowthese sources
of imprint impact the way entrepreneurs manage their venture(s). Entrepreneurship research has shown that entrepreneurs bring in
a set of givens (i.e., knowledge, skills, and abilities) that are then imprinted on a venture (e.g., Bamford et al., 2000; Boeker, 1988;
Johnson, 2007), but it remains silent on how these givens impact entrepreneurs' decision making and the course of their ventures.
Largely, research in both the organizational and entrepreneurship literatures has focused on organizations as recipients of the im-
printing process and has primarily assumed that imprinting begins at venture inception (see Marquis and Tilcsik, 2013). However,
it is likely that entrepreneurs are also recipients of as well as contributors to the imprinting process. As such, certainsources of imprint
might in?uence entrepreneurs before they launch their ?rst venture and may persist throughout their entrepreneurial careers, likely
impacting their decision making and the trajectory of their ventures.
To address these limitations, we draw from the rich literature on entrepreneurial action and integrate it with imprinting theory
from psychology. In so doing, we shift the focus from how the organization is imprinted to a largely understudied element of the
entrepreneurial process: how the entrepreneur is imprinted. Speci?cally, we reveal how certain experiences and elements of the
environment (i.e., sources of imprint) impart a lasting and persistent stamp on entrepreneurs that is carried with them as they
make decisions for their ventures. Thus, we address the following research question: How do sources of imprint have a lasting impact
on entrepreneurs' decision making and their ventures' development trajectories?
Given the relative paucity of research explaining howsources of imprint in?uence entrepreneurs and their ventures and our goal
of developing new theoretical insights in this area, we selected a qualitative approach to study howsources of imprint impact entre-
preneurial action. Speci?cally, we conducted semi-structured interviews with entrepreneurs and content analyzed their verbalized
responses. Additionally, we followed up with each of our entrepreneurs a year after the original interviews to see how their future
actions unfolded.
With this approach, our study contributes to the literature in three ways. First, we demonstrate that imprinting may be a key
mechanism to understand how speci?c sources of imprint have a lasting in?uence on entrepreneurs. In line with calls for additional
researchto uncover the origins of howentrepreneurs think about opportunities (Grégoire et al., 2011), we adopt the relatively under-
utilized lens of imprinting to showthat sources of imprint affect entrepreneurs' current and future decision-making processes as well
as their opportunity selection. Second, we extend efforts emphasizing the importance of context and alignment in opportunity recog-
nition (Grégoire et al., 2010) and evaluation (Haynie et al., 2009; Williams and Grégoire, forthcoming) by showing that the sources of
prior knowledge (including when and under what conditions the knowledge was obtained), in addition to the knowledge itself, have
an enduring impact on entrepreneurial action. Finally, we contribute to research in entrepreneurial education by exploring howprior
experiences guide entrepreneurs' perceptions of who they are and what actions are most critical to their de?nition of success.
Speci?cally, we illustrate the importance of entrepreneurial educators by showing that the sources of entrepreneurial learning can sig-
ni?cantly impact how entrepreneurs make decisions and their priority of motives. Overall, we contribute to entrepreneurial decision
making and opportunity selection by exploring how sources of imprint have a lasting impact on entrepreneurs and their ventures.
3. Imprinting
Building on the work of Stinchcombe (1965), organizational research on imprinting has highlighted the enduring impact of prior his-
tory onorganizational outcomes by demonstrating howorganizations (or individuals) assume elements of their environment that persist
well beyond the founding phase (Milanov and Fernhaber, 2009). In their examinationof imprinting, most scholars have considered three
elements of imprinting: sensitive periods, stamps, and persistence (see Marquis and Tilcsik, 2013). Therefore, in line with prior work, we
de?ne imprinting as a time-sensitive (i.e., occurs at sensitive stages of life) learning process (i.e., a stamping process whereby the focal
entity re?ects elements of its environment) that initiates a development trajectory (i.e., produces persistent outcomes).
2 B.D. Mathias et al. / Journal of Business Venturing xxx (2014) xxx–xxx
Please cite this article as: Mathias, B.D., et al., Entrepreneurial inception: The role of imprinting in entrepreneurial action, J. Bus.
Venturing (2014),http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusvent.2014.07.004
Certainly, relatedliteratures have highlightedthe importance of learning, socialization, andprior experience inentrepreneurial de-
cision making and opportunity selection (Cope, 2005; Shepherd et al., 2003). For example, Shane (2000) shows that entrepreneurs
discover opportunities related to the information they already possess; Choi and Shepherd (2004) suggest that an entrepreneur
exploits an opportunity when he or she perceives greater knowledge of that opportunity; Ozgen and Baron (2007) show that three
social sources of opportunity-related information—mentors, informal industry networks, and forums—assist entrepreneurs in identi-
fying opportunities; and Haynie et al. (2009) posit that individuals do not simply search for the “best opportunities” but the best
opportunities “for them” (p. 357)—that is, opportunities that are complementary to their existing knowledge base. Together, these
studies suggest that knowledge obtained through socialization and prior experience is critical to the process of evaluating and
selecting opportunities.
However, withits three distinct pillars, imprinting provides knowledge througha unique formof social learning. Namely, it suggests
that when learning occurs is important (during time-sensitive periods), how long learning occurs is important (a stamping process),
and for how long learned behaviors persist is important (for years despite environmental changes). In other words, imprinting offers
a different perspective from extant research concerning prior knowledge and socialization by suggesting that the process through
which knowledge is obtained (beyond just the knowledge itself) is critical to decision making and opportunity selection.
With regard to organizational research, imprinting has attracted interest from a broad range of areas, including network analysis
(McEvily et al., 2012), top management teams (Beckman and Burton, 2008), career research (Azoulay et al., 2011; Higgins, 2005), in-
stitutional theory (Johnson, 2007), organizational turnover (Burton and Beckman, 2007), and organizational ecology (Carroll and
Hannan, 1989). It has also garnered attention across multiple levels of analysis, including industry- (Stinchcombe, 1965),
organizational- (Marquis and Huang, 2010), and individual-level studies (Kacperczyk, 2009). Perhaps not surprisingly, most of the or-
ganizational imprinting literature revolves around just that, the organization. For example, the sensitive stages are often characterized
by the time of organizational founding (Carroll and Hannan, 1989; Johnson, 2007), and the stamping process re?ects howelements of
the environment are mapped onto the organization (Carroll and Hannan, 2004).
With respect to the entrepreneurship literature, most imprinting research has taken one of two similar approaches. The ?rst ap-
proach is condition focused. This approach posits that new ventures' early conditions have a lasting impact on future outcomes
(Boeker, 1989; Eisenhardt and Schoonhoven, 1990; Milanov and Fernhaber, 2009). From this perspective, the founding conditions—
the environment, partnerships, competition, resource endowments, and other internal and external factors—in?uence a newventure,
which in turn imprint throughout the venture's lifecycle (Hannan, 1998; Sapienza et al., 2006). For example, Milanov and Fernhaber
(2009) suggest that initial alliance partners may serve as an important predictor of a new venture's network trajectory, and Boeker
(1989) posits that founding conditions play an important role in either limiting or encouraging strategic change. Put simply, this
stream of research ?nds that founding conditions impact the venture's life.
The second approach is decision focused. This approach suggests that entrepreneurs' initial decisions have a lasting impact on
future outcomes (Bird, 1992; Cooper et al., 1994; DeTienne, 2010). From this perspective, entrepreneurs imprint their ventures by
making important decisions early on in their venture's development. For example, DeTienne (2010) shows that entrepreneurs who
develop anexit strategy early in the life of the ?rmimprint their ?rms so that they are more likely to achieve their exit goals. Similarly,
Burtonand Beckman (2007) suggest that position incumbents leave legacies that constrainsubsequent positionholders and in?uence
successors' turnover rates, and Bamford et al. (2000) demonstrate that initial founding decisions signi?cantly relate to newventures'
growth potential. Overall, this stream of research ?nds that founding decisions impact the venture's life.
Extant research has also demonstrated that individuals can be imprinted through a variety of sources, such as through economic
conditions (Malmendier and Nagel, 2011), institutional conditions (Dokko et al., 2009; Higgins, 2005), equity partners (Breugst et al.,
2014-inthis issue), family members (Jaskiewicz et al., 2014-in this issue), or other individuals (Azoulay et al., 2011; Kacperczyk, 2009;
McEvily et al., 2012). In many ways, individual- and organizational-level imprinting share many characteristics: they both concern
time-sensitive learning processes that initiate development trajectories and persist despite environmental changes. However, in
many ways, they likely differ.
For example, whereas an organization's sensitive period is often classi?ed as the founding period (e.g., Milanov and Fernhaber,
2009), individuals can exhibit several sensitive periods, suchas during their formative years, early career, or periods of signi?cant eco-
nomic change (Marquis and Tilcsik, 2013). Additionally, imprinting effects for an organization are not necessarily ?xed, but they are
thought to be dif?cult to change, whereas individuals' learning processes are often ?uid and dynamic. Thus, for an imprint to persist
among individuals, that imprint must be relatively strong (Marquis, 2003; Vergne and Durand, 2010).
From organizational and career development research, we know that individuals can be imprinted through career experiences;
thus, imprinting can be an individual-level phenomenon (Azoulay et al., 2011; Kacperczyk, 2009; McEvily et al., 2012). From the en-
trepreneurship literature, we knowthat entrepreneurs can imprint their ventures through the relationships and decisions they make
(Boeker, 1988; Breugst et al., 2014-in this issue; Milanov and Shepherd, 2008). However, our understanding of entrepreneurs as re-
cipients of the imprinting process remains limited. Additionally, although prior research has shown that individuals (e.g., through
founder decisions) can imprint the organization, research has not yet fully addressed how the imprinting process impacts entrepre-
neurs' decision making with respect to their current venture and possible future ventures. Given that entrepreneurs can undergo an
imprinting process and that they can be highly in?uential in shaping their ?rms (Boeker, 1989; DeTienne, 2010), discovering howthe
entrepreneur is imprinted and howthat imprinting process impacts the trajectory of the entrepreneur and his or her venture remains
an important question with limited answers.
Recent researchhighlights what little is known regarding howthe imprinting process impacts entrepreneurs' decision making and
venture trajectories. For example, as Marquis and Tilcsik (2013) suggest in their review of the imprinting literature, “clearly,
individual-level imprints may have signi?cant consequences well beyond shaping individual cognition and behavior” (p. 219),
3 B.D. Mathias et al. / Journal of Business Venturing xxx (2014) xxx–xxx
Please cite this article as: Mathias, B.D., et al., Entrepreneurial inception: The role of imprinting in entrepreneurial action, J. Bus.
Venturing (2014),http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusvent.2014.07.004
however such research has yet to receive “serious empirical attention” (p. 223). In part, these limitations arise from two signi?cant
empirical challenges. The ?rst is that in order to understand the process of imprinting, one must garner an in-depth look into individ-
uals and their lives. To accomplish this, many traditional methods (e.g., survey, secondary data) are ill equipped. The second challenge
is that in order to understandthe effects of imprinting, one must observe these individuals over time. Accordingly, as we explain in the
next section, we adopt a qualitative perspective that allows us anin-depth look at entrepreneurs' decision making and also enables us
to look at potential sources of imprint and their persistence over time.
4. Methods
When selecting a method, we considered our research question (how potential sources of imprint matter to entrepreneurs' key
decisions over time), extant work (i.e., an area of imprinting for whichprior researchis incomplete and inadequate), and the intended
theoretical contributions (i.e., theory development rather than theory testing). In doing so, we determined that an inductive qualita-
tive research approach exhibited good methodological ?t with the current state of the literature (Edmondson and McManus, 2007;
Eisenhardt, 1989).
To answer our research question, we needed a methodological approach that allowed us to identify speci?c sources of imprint,
namely emotionally-signi?cant experiences during sensitive transition periods that continue to exert in?uence on entrepreneurs'
thinking. Further, we needed to be able to identify how such sources of imprint impact entrepreneurs' current and future decisions.
Thus, we developed a two-part research design. First, we conducted semi-structured interviews with entrepreneurs concerning
their past, present, and future. These interviews were content analyzed through an inductive process of dictionary building in
order to identify which sources of imprint had a lasting in?uence over time. Because some questions in the interviews involved ex-
periences that happened in the past, we triangulated those interviews with additional sources of information. Second, we conducted
a follow-up survey one year after our interviews in order to (1) validate that the answers to interview questions matched decisions
they actually made in the intervening year, (2) further elucidate the entrepreneurs' priority of goals for their venture, and (3) observe
how their future actions unfolded.
In sum, our research design ?rst centered on those salient experiences that led individuals to pursue entrepreneurship (i.e., launch
their ?rst venture). By doing so, we hoped to better understand the development of the cognitive and emotional factors that play a
role in entrepreneurial action (Grégoire et al., 2011). Then, we examined howthese experiences (potential sources of imprint) in?u-
ence current and future decision making. This process helped us recreate a timeline of how entrepreneurs viewed the past and how
speci?c sources of imprint affect how they think about entrepreneurial action in the present and their envisioned futures.
4.1. Sample
Two of the authors conducted semi-structured interviews and a follow-up survey with 25 entrepreneurs. The sampling strategy
was purposive and theory driven (Miles and Huberman, 1994). As imprinting theory suggests that differences in salient experiences
(i.e., potential sources of imprint) lead to different outcomes (Boeker, 1989; Burton and Beckman, 2007), we sought entrepreneurs
from a variety of industries and backgrounds in order to be exposed to potential differences in salient prior experiences. We de?ned
entrepreneurs as those who have founded and currently own a venture as well as a substantive voice in current venture decisions. We
accessed most of the entrepreneurs through an entrepreneurial organization in the southeastern United States. The remainder (less
than 15%) of our entrepreneurs were identi?ed through the ?rst author's network in a different geographical region—the midwestern
United States. Table 1 provides additional descriptive information on the participating entrepreneurs.
4.2. Research design
In order to create a timeline of what sources of imprint are salient to entrepreneurs over time, we ?rst asked participating entre-
preneurs to tell us about themselves, their current business(es), and what led themto pursue entrepreneurship in general. This series
of questions exposed us to individuals' life histories and, more importantly, the people, events, and activities that led the entrepre-
neurs to identify and pursue new venture opportunities. Given that we wanted to understand how salient experiences (i.e., sources
of imprint) in?uence how entrepreneurs think about opportunities today and for the future, we selected an approach that captured
their current entrepreneurial mindset as well as their envisioned futures.
Following the interviews, whichranged from30 min to 2 h, the lead author transcribed the audio-recorded interviews, resulting in
more than 200 pages of single-spaced text. To con?rm the themes that emerged from the interview and ensure that an accurate de-
piction of the participant's imperative experiences were captured, the lead author sent a condensed (?2 pages) version of the inter-
view to the entrepreneur, who responded with notes and comments.
Although we acknowledge that entrepreneurs' perceptions of the past may be imperfect, we sought to understand, as a starting
point, whichexperiences entrepreneurs recall as being particularly salient. As launching one's ?rst business likely has signi?cant emo-
tional value, it is also likely that entrepreneurs have anenhanced memory of them(Dolan, 2002). Further, as imprinting, by de?nition,
re?ects those experiences that have a persistent in?uence, entrepreneurs should have a higher recall of those experiences (Marquis
and Tilcsik, 2013).
However, we took steps to identify and minimize retrospective bias by triangulating our interviews with archival and third-party
data. Speci?cally, we found information related to the entrepreneurs and their respective venture(s) that we could compare to their
interview responses, such as newspaper and magazine articles, LinkedIn reviews from previous employers or customers,
4 B.D. Mathias et al. / Journal of Business Venturing xxx (2014) xxx–xxx
Please cite this article as: Mathias, B.D., et al., Entrepreneurial inception: The role of imprinting in entrepreneurial action, J. Bus.
Venturing (2014),http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusvent.2014.07.004
organizational websites, third-party interviews, and business journals, and then matched the entrepreneurs' interview responses
with these independent information sources. This triangulation showed that the past experiences entrepreneurs verbalized in the in-
terviews occurred in the manner described.
After establishing a thorough account of the past experiences the entrepreneurs felt were most salient to their initial entrepre-
neurial pursuits, we asked participants various questions concerning how they make decisions in their current venture(s) and the
biggest challenges they currently face. We concluded with a discussion about their future plans for their business(es), including
where they saw themselves and their venture(s) in the next few years and what, if any, future projects/ventures they were consid-
ering. The goal of these questions was to derive what, if any, in?uence those early experiences had on current decision making and
the entrepreneurs' envisioned futures for themselves and their ventures.
Additionally, a year after we conducted the interviews, we followed up with each of our participants to see if and howtheir future
actions unfolded. Speci?cally, we sent respondents a survey and asked themto describe howsatis?edthey were withdifferent aspects
of their business (e.g., cash ?ow
1
), on what aspects of the business they were most focused, any major decisions they had made in the
past year, and important actions they had recently taken. In summary, our research design centered on revealing how past experi-
ences in?uence how entrepreneurs make decisions with regard to present and future opportunities.
4.3. Data analysis
Characteristic of qualitative research (Eisenhardt, 1989; Miles and Huberman, 1994), we went back and forth between the data
and the emerging theoretical framework through a highly iterative process. As Fig. 1 summarizes, this process encompassed two
primary phases: (1) discovery and narrowing and (2) enriching and validating (Pratt and Rosa, 2003).
We ?rst read through and analyzed the transcripts of the participants' interviewresponses, looking for commonalities and differ-
ences across respondents. In examining the text at a high-level, we began seeing certain themes emerging fromthe data, speci?cally
as they related to potential sources of imprint. We assigned working names and de?nitions to these categories, and we began to apply
?rst-order codes to certain pieces of text. For example, we came across interviewquotes like, “It all started with my parents. My dad
is an entrepreneur, and my mom has always been really supportive.” We noted that this statement highlights the concept of ‘family
support’ in entrepreneurship.
After identifying numerous categories, we began coding phrases, sentences, or paragraphs with these emergent themes and com-
paring how these themes related to one another and extant theory. Through a highly iterative process, we narrowed the entrepre-
neurs' discussion of the past, present, and future into a limited number of general themes, which we refer to as sources of imprint:
family; partners; education; work experience; work-related knowledge, skills, abilities (KSAs); technology; and the environment.
1
The aspects we asked about included cash ?ow, personal enjoyment, sales growth, net pro?ts, reducing debt, innovativeness, improving society, achieving some-
thing, gaining recognition, customer satisfaction, and launching another project/venture. All 25 entrepreneurs completed the follow-up survey.
Table 1
Description of sample.
Firm Source of imprint Year founded % owner Yrs of management
experience
a
Yrs of entrepreneurial
experience
# of ventures
founded
Fitness center Work Exp./KSA 2009 50% 0 8 4
Auto parts manufacturer Family/friends 1988 100% 0 24 4
Document management solutions Work Exp./KSA 2000 50% 4 14 3
Web design Mixed 2010 100% 0 1 1
Architectural Work Exp./KSA 2010 100% 9 1 1
Entrepreneurial consulting Mixed 2008 5% 5 25 7
Frozen yogurt restaurant Family/friends 2010 100% 0 4 2
Illustrations Tech./environ. 1989 100% 0 22 1
Golf swing aid Tech./environ. 2009 100% 0 2 1
Management consulting Work Exp./KSA 1997 100% 16 14 1
Speech consulting Work Exp./KSA 2010 100% 32 10 2
Accounting Family/friends 2007 100% 14 20 5
Referrals Tech./environ. 2000 100% 0 30+ 2
IT/AV home installation Work Exp./KSA 2010 85% 1 1 2
Catering/graphics design Tech./environ. 2011 51% 1 2 2
Social networking website Tech./environ. 2010 50% 10 4 2
Medical care Work Exp./KSA 2009 100% 21 2 1
Health care non-pro?t Work Exp./KSA 1996 100% 2 10 4
Architectural Work Exp./KSA 2007 99% 2 11 2
Construction/real estate Family/friends 1990 11% 0 20 3
Golf products Family/friends 2009 50% 0 30 5
Trucking/farm chemical sales Family/friends 1989 50% 0 30+ 2
Marketing coach Work Exp./KSA 2008 100% 10 1 6
Environmental data management Tech./environ. 2006 100% 9 5 1
Video production/book publishing Tech./environ. 2005 64% 0 14 4
a
Years of management experience prior to launching current business.
5 B.D. Mathias et al. / Journal of Business Venturing xxx (2014) xxx–xxx
Please cite this article as: Mathias, B.D., et al., Entrepreneurial inception: The role of imprinting in entrepreneurial action, J. Bus.
Venturing (2014),http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusvent.2014.07.004
Next, in order to further enrich, validate, and develop theoretical insights from these emergent themes, we employed content
analysis of the entrepreneurs' responses. We followed the general framework for enhancing construct validity when using content
analysis advocated by Short et al. (2010). The qualitative software program, QDA, aided in this process by identifying frequently
used words or phrases and comparing total word count across responses. We began building dictionaries for each of the categories
by ?nding words that matched with each construct. For example, our quote above included several words that we incorporated
into our dictionary for ‘family,’ such as parents, dad, and mom. We honed our dictionaries by examining the context in which each
of the words in our working dictionaries were used; this allowed us to determine when and if words should be added or deleted
and thus enhanced the reliability of our ?ndings (Short et al., 2010). We went back and forth between our working dictionaries
and our transcript data to re?ne our dictionary word lists. Table 2 lists the words in each of our ?nal dictionaries for the constructs
(sources of imprint).
4.4. Sources of imprint and entrepreneurial action
Next, since we were interested in understanding not only the salient sources of imprint but also how those imprints affect entre-
preneurial action, we created a dictionary titled ‘opportunity’ following the same procedures described above. With this dictionary,
we intended to capture vital entrepreneurial views and behaviors related to opportunity identi?cation, evaluation, and exploitation
by including words such as launch, create, and develop. Rather than capturing a speci?c opportunity, we sought to measure opportu-
nity more broadly by building a dictionary that incorporated entrepreneurs' general thinking about opportunities.
On the aggregate, this approach produced somewhat ambiguous results, but as we delved further into the transcripts, we recog-
nized certain patterns emerging. We realized that our data were highly congruent with speci?c sources of imprint. Therefore, we
grouped our entrepreneurs according to which source(s) of imprint were most salient to them. This process resulted in three
Phase 1: Discovery and Narrowing
1. Read through and analyze transcripts
2. Construct categories (i.e., sources of imprint)
a. Provide names for categories
b. Establish working definitions of categories
c. Begin coding transcript data with emerging
categories
3. Explore relationships between categories
a. Understand how categories relate to one
another
b. Understand how categories relate to extant
theory
4. Hone categories by collapsing overlapping
constructs
Phase 2: Enriching and Validating (Content
Analysis)
1. Identify commonly used words and phrases
2. Begin building dictionaries by finding words that
match category
3. Examine the context of word usage and add or
delete words based on the whether they accurately
reflect the definition of a category
4. Step back and re-examine the relationships
among the dictionaries and how they relate to one
another and extant theory
5. Refine and finalize word list in each dictionary
Fig. 1. Data analysis process*. *Adapted from Fig. 1 in Pratt and Rosa (2003: 397).
Table 2
Word lists for content analysis.
Construct Content analysis words
Opportunity Acted, came up with, concept, creat*, decid*, decision*, develop*, discover*, do it better, idea*, chance, identif*, looking, notice*,
open*, opportunity, launch*, recogniz*, saw a need, saw this need, search*, start*, realiz*, venture*
Sources of imprint
Family Baby, born, boyfriend, brother*, child*, dad, family, father, friend*, girlfriend, grandma, grandpa, relationship*, relative*, sister*,
spouse, son
Education Academ*, bachelor*, class*, colleg*, degree*, educat*, graduat*, instruct*, major*, MBA, professor*, program*, school*, semester*,
student*, teach*, theories, theory, universit*
Work experience Bosses, career, corporat*, internship, job, manager*, my boss, my supervisor, over me, position*, previous ?rm, prior ?rm,
profession, worked for
Knowledge/skills Begin*, build*, capital, design*, develop*, enter, entrepreneur*, entry, establish*, ?nanc*, ?nd*, found*, go, idea*, imagin*, initiate,
innovat*, inspir*, invent*, launch*, love, make, new business, passion*, pro?t*, set-up, start, venture, work
Partners Advisor*, alliance*, coach*, joint, board*, partner*, team*, network*
Technology Automate, blog*, computer, digital, electronic, engineering, Facebook, Google, innovat*, internet, laptop, online, paperless, social
media, software, systems, tech*, tweet, Twitter, web, website*, wireless
Environment Auster*, boom or bust, city, community, cutback*, economy, environment*, feast or famine, federal, government, industry, layoff*,
markets, policy, policies, politic*, recession, regulation*, state, town, competit*
* indicates wildcard (e.g., creat* would include words such as create, creates, creating, creativeness, etc.)
6 B.D. Mathias et al. / Journal of Business Venturing xxx (2014) xxx–xxx
Please cite this article as: Mathias, B.D., et al., Entrepreneurial inception: The role of imprinting in entrepreneurial action, J. Bus.
Venturing (2014),http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusvent.2014.07.004
categorizations of entrepreneurs: those imprinted by (1) family and friends (2) technology and the environment, or (3) work expe-
rience and work-related KSAs. Based on word frequency, we conducted a factor analysis. Inall but 2 of the 25 cases, each entrepreneur
loaded onto a single source of imprint category (i.e., factor loading N .5 without cross-loadings). While we acknowledge that not all
entrepreneurs fall neatly into one grouping and that these groupings are not exhaustive, this distinction allows for a better under-
standing of how different sources of imprint in?uence how the entrepreneurial decision-making process unfolds over time and
how the sources of imprint impact opportunity-related actions.
2
We visually mapped the opportunity dictionary with our sources of imprint dictionaries (e.g., family) to show how different
sources of imprint relate to how entrepreneurs think about opportunity. Fig. 2 shows the results of this visual mapping. The size of
the sphere represents how often (measured via word count) entrepreneurs used words in a respective dictionary. For example,
Fig. 2 demonstrates that the ‘family’ sphere (the circle that looks like an eye) is particularly large (i.e., important) for the past and
present for the ?rst group of entrepreneurs (see Row 1 labeled ‘Family & Friends’). The distance between spheres is determined by
Jaccard's coef?cient—a test to measure similarity between sets of data. In our case, the data are words. For example, Fig. 2 shows
that work-related KSAs were often discussed in conjunction with opportunity-related language for some entrepreneurs because
these spheres are closer in proximity to the opportunity sphere (see Row 3 labeled ‘Work Experience & KSA’).
As Fig. 2 shows, we found that for certain individuals, some sources of imprint waxed or waned in importance over time. For
example, for entrepreneurs imprinted by family and friends (see Row 1), work-related KSAs grew in importance from the past
to the present and then lessened in importance from the present to the future. However, for these same entrepreneurs, family,
friends, and partners had a signi?cant in?uence, speci?cally on their past and current (present) decision making (see Row 1). In
contrast to individuals imprinted by close relations, the technology and environment around their passions led some individuals,
albeit indirectly, to entrepreneurial action (see Row 2). Still, for others, ‘becoming an entrepreneur’ often occurred as individuals
realized that an opportunity existed and their unique expertise would allow them to pursue that opportunity. For these individuals,
the most salient and enduring source of imprint was their prior work experience and the knowledge and skills developed therein
(see Row 3).
In sum, we identi?ed three broad sources of imprint in?uencing entrepreneurs' thinking. While some sources waxed and
waned, others had an important in?uence over time. Although the sources of imprint themselves are not new to the entrepreneur-
ship literature, the ways in which they in?uence how entrepreneurs think about opportunities, how they make decisions, and how
they prime venture priorities represent particularly interesting outcomes of the imprinting process. We delve into these ?ndings
below.
5. Findings
The visual mapping exercise provides preliminary evidence of howimportant certain sources of imprint are to howentrepreneurs
think about opportunity. The spheres that are larger and closer to the ‘opportunity’ dictionary are likely more important to entrepre-
neurial decision making. This does not imply that entrepreneurs merely absorb stimuli without agency; certainly, entrepreneurs have
discretion over what in?uences their thought processes. Rather, we suggest that certain sources of imprint are more salient to some
than others and that these salient imprints have anindelible impact on howentrepreneurs evaluate and act upon opportunities. Inthe
following sections, we discuss our ?ndings regarding sources of imprint and entrepreneurs.
5.1. Source of imprint: family and friends
We found that family, friends, and partners maintain a signi?cant in?uence on some entrepreneurs and in?uence their past and
current decision making. For these individuals, imprinting often occurs early in life; thus, becoming an entrepreneur occurs inten-
tionally, and being an entrepreneur is a critical part of who they are. These entrepreneurs seek out ways to become entrepreneurs
and are passionate about the challenges of pursuing new venture opportunities even at the expense of growing their existing
business(es).
I know the ?rst time I thought about a business was when I was 10 years of age, sitting on my father's garage, and I looked at the
neighbor across the road … and they seemed more af?uent [than my own family], and they had a business. And I worked that out
at an early age that if you really want to be successful in life, you really have to have a business.
[Auto Parts Manufacturer, Owner]
I have always had businesses, even when I was a little kid. Right off the bat, I knew that [starting businesses] was something I liked.
[Golf Products, Owner]
I got into farming with my dad back when I was smaller because that is all we had to do was work. I always enjoyed that.
[Trucking/Farm Chemicals, Owner]
2
Interestingly, although our sample includes entrepreneurs with differences in age, years of entrepreneurial or management experience, and/or ownership percent-
age, our qualitative reviewof the transcripts as well as our statistical comparisons of the dictionaries showno signi?cant differences between entrepreneurs varying on
these demographics. Instead, the source of imprint represents the driving in?uence in our ?ndings.
7 B.D. Mathias et al. / Journal of Business Venturing xxx (2014) xxx–xxx
Please cite this article as: Mathias, B.D., et al., Entrepreneurial inception: The role of imprinting in entrepreneurial action, J. Bus.
Venturing (2014),http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusvent.2014.07.004
Like the individuals above who expressed aninterest in entrepreneurship at anearly age, many individuals are drawn to entrepre-
neurship years before they ever launch their ?rst business. Without question, interests and aspirations can change between the age of
10 and the time one pursues a profession, yet even before the age of 10, the development of the way individuals think about the world
has already begun (Kolb, 1984). Extensive research has shown that in the early stages of socialization, such as childhood and adoles-
cence, individuals' cognitions are especially susceptible to the in?uence of others (Bandura, 1986; Ibarra, 1999). As such, prominent
role models and mentors, such as parents, play an important role in guiding individuals' development and career selection (Keller
and Whiston, 2008; Ozgen and Baron, 2007). Being raised in a family of entrepreneurs does not ensure one will pursue a career in
entrepreneurship, but research has shown that individuals who growup in an entrepreneurial family or are at least exposed to entre-
preneurship early in life are far more likely to pursue entrepreneurial endeavors than those who are not (Crant, 1996; Scott and
Twomey, 1988).
It all started with my parents. My dad is an entrepreneur, and my momhas always been really supportive …I was just brought up in
that sense.
[Frozen Yogurt, Owner]
In a nutshell, I come froma family of business owners—parents, brothers, aunts, uncles, and highly creative people. I was never taught
to be an employee … I was always raised thinking like a business owner, and so I stink at being an employee—just not my thing.
[Accounting Firm, Owner]
My father was very much an entrepreneur and sort of instilled it inthe family. I come froma family of seven, and each one of themhas
a business or businesses that they are involved with … The spirit of entrepreneurship was infused in each of the kids.
[Construction/Real Estate, Owner]
For these entrepreneurs, family is clearly the most salient source of imprint underlying what led themto pursue entrepreneurship.
However, for imprinting to occur, actions must followfroma set of learned behaviors. That is, what has happened in the past must be
re?ected in individuals' present and future actions. When asked about how they make decisions currently in their business and
Fig. 2. The entrepreneurial nexus—with opportunity in center.
8 B.D. Mathias et al. / Journal of Business Venturing xxx (2014) xxx–xxx
Please cite this article as: Mathias, B.D., et al., Entrepreneurial inception: The role of imprinting in entrepreneurial action, J. Bus.
Venturing (2014),http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusvent.2014.07.004
speci?cally who or what they turn to in making those decisions, again these entrepreneurs often cited family members as instrumen-
tal in their decision-making process.
It really just depends on the situation, but there are a lot of times I turn to my parents. Like I said, my dad had been involved in real
estate and dealing with all these businesses for his whole life. My momis just a very personable person. Anytime I have the employee
issues, I'll turn to my mom. She is much better at dealing with people than I am, dad the same.
[Frozen Yogurt, Owner]
I have a momand dad who hit me with a two by four every so often [when I have bad business ideas]. My momreally keeps me on the
line. Everyone needs a mom like mine.
[Accounting Firm, Owner]
For some entrepreneurs, they trade a family in?uence for that of close friends or partners in their decision-making processes.
Research also demonstrates that these individuals can imprint other individuals. For example, through the notion of imprinted ties,
McEvily et al. (2012) posit that mentors of early career lawyers impact the amount of knowledge young lawyers obtain and the sub-
sequent growth of their respective ?rms. Studies also highlight the important imprinting effects early career mentors have among
scientists in regard to patenting behavior (Azoulay et al., 2011) as well as the impact early career co-workers have on entrepreneurial
decisions years later (Kacperczyk, 2009). In our study, a real estate owner referenced his personal “network of relationships” as
important for guidance, and an auto parts owner made decisions by “empowering and consulting” his “close-knit of?ce” to make
decisions like “a team.”
I will look to my successes and failures and try to help my son with that [learning] and analogize that to other industries. What can we
learn from them? My network of relationships. I will also call on this network for guidance as well.
[Construction/Real Estate, Owner]
I do things as a team. I always like getting other viewpoints and second opinions. ‘Cause one good thing about being in this close-knit
of?ce—this is really the management teamhere. And they're always being consulted. Everything we do we do as a team…Everyone is
empowered with responsibilities, and everyone has a say with what goes on.
[Auto Parts Manufacturer, Owner]
Together, our interviews revealed family and close relationships imprint some entrepreneurs and guide their thought processes.
As one respondent suggested, she had “grown up thinking like a business owner,” while another respondent claimed “entrepreneur-
ship was infused[inhim] as a kid.” As the primary source of imprint, family and close-friends become critical for entrepreneurs as they
make decisions for their respective business(es), as illustrated in Fig. 2, Row 1. Whether it is actively seeking out advice from family
or consulting with close friends, these entrepreneurs tend to make decisions collectively by soliciting advice from individuals they
intimately know and trust.
By engaging family and friends in decision making, such as decisions within their existing ventures or decisions concerning
selecting new opportunities, these entrepreneurs open up their list of alternatives and actively search for the best opportunities
available to them. As the ideas generated in the decision-making process may (or may not) have originated from the entrepreneurs
themselves, a selected opportunity may (or may not) be related to what the entrepreneur currently knows. Instead, the information
might stimulate entrepreneurs to broaden their decision making and select opportunities fromwithin the realmof possibilities rather
than within the realm of what they intimately know. Thus, we put forth the following proposition:
Proposition 1. Entrepreneurs imprinted by family and friends engage in participative decision making and thus pursue venture opportu-
nities beyond their respective industry or ?eld.
Although growth is often a central goal for entrepreneurs (Stewart et al., 2003), growth is not necessarily the primary focus for
entrepreneurs imprinted by family. Instead, pursuing newideas, challenges, and opportunities may take precedence. Perhaps not sur-
prisingly, many of our participants could be classi?ed as serial entrepreneurs—on average, they had founded four ventures, and each
had started at least two businesses.
Prior researchshows that early exposure, suchas exposure to internationalization, imprints organizations for adaptability to uncer-
tain environments and internal receptivity for continual change (Sapienza et al., 2006). Our ?ndings indicate that the same is true for
entrepreneurs. Those individuals exposed to entrepreneurship at a young age, particularly through family, are repeatedly willing to
take on newchallenges by pursuing new businesses. For them, entrepreneurship is, to a large extent, about launching new ventures.
With prior exposure to the entrepreneurial process, these individuals are more receptive to new and unexplored challenges, and as
such, they are more likely to pursue new venture opportunities. When asked about their plans for the future, they claimed they
were driven by “more challenges” and “new opportunities” rather than pro?ts and growth:
That decision-making process is driven by the opportunities that present themselves, but also where we are ?nancially … It is driven
by the pool of resources we have to deploy capital and then what are the business opportunities presenting themselves.
[Construction/Real Estate, Owner]
9 B.D. Mathias et al. / Journal of Business Venturing xxx (2014) xxx–xxx
Please cite this article as: Mathias, B.D., et al., Entrepreneurial inception: The role of imprinting in entrepreneurial action, J. Bus.
Venturing (2014),http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusvent.2014.07.004
I don't really do things for the money. It's just a measurement of success. Last year, I was starting to get bored …so we're in the process
of negotiating in setting up a newEuropean distribution base—really tackle Europe …I need some more challenges, so I'mcreating a
lot of things to take it up to the next level.
[Auto Parts Manufacturer, Owner]
I would love, love, love to open a climbing gym … It is something I would be passionate about. It would be one of the few things
I would do even if the money wasn't behind it, like not a lot of pro?t.
[Frozen Yogurt, Owner]
I love the chaos of a start-up, so I would go out and look for start-ups or things to begin. I cannot stand it when things become routine.
[Accounting Firm, Owner]
Additionally, when asked in our follow-up survey what important actions they had taken over the past year, we found that these
entrepreneurs continued to place signi?cantly more importance on pursuing new ventures than other entrepreneurs with different
sources of imprint. For example, the auto parts manufacturer referenced above claimed that he “had launched his European division,”
while another entrepreneur claimed that he was “investing in three new business ventures and two non-pro?ts.” Table 3 illustrates
additional results of this survey, in whichentrepreneurs described major investment decisions they had made in the subsequent year.
This leads us to propose the following:
Proposition 2. Over time, entrepreneurs imprinted by family and friends focus on venture creation, rather than venture development, by
pursuing new and oftentimes unrelated ventures.
5.2. Source of imprint: technology and the environment associated with hobbies
Technology and the environment have a profound in?uence on some entrepreneurs. These individuals are ardent about inventing
through meeting unmet needs, solving problems, or making existing products better, and entrepreneurship seems to just happen,
often accidentally (Shah and Tripsas, 2007). Similar to Shah and Tripsas (2007) notion of user entrepreneurs and Fauchart and
Gruber's (2011) communitarians, these entrepreneurs largely engage in activities they enjoy and about which they are passionate.
Gradually, they recognize this passion as an opportunity and pursue it through a new venture.
The way I got into it [illustrating] was really even when I was a small kid, being the kid that could draw. I always thought it would be
cool to make a living by drawing …In the early 90s, I bought my ?rst Mac and just dabbled a little. I took one class in Photoshop, but
the rest was just trial and error.
[Illustrations, Owner]
I always really liked writing, so I always thought I'd have a career in writing. In my earlier years, I never really thought of myself as an
entrepreneur. I kind of fell into it [entrepreneurship] by accident. I have always been a restless person. I had been kind of messing
around with web development and web design [for technical writing and video production sales], but I had never started a business
before.
[Video/Publishing, Owner]
I just like to cook. It is a hobby. It is easy to get into and fun to do.
[Catering/Graphics Design, Owner]
Table 3
Quotes concerning actual investment decisions (1 year after initial interview).
Proposition Entrepreneur Example of actual decisions—1 year later
Proposition 2. Over time, entrepreneurs imprinted by family
and friends focus on venture creation, rather than venture
development, by pursuing new and oftentimes unrelated
ventures.
Real estate/construction
owner
“Invested in an online retail ?rm, as well as spent innumerable hours
on research for a CNG station and conversion ?rm.”
Golf products owner “We spent a bit on samples, travel, and generally pulling info together
to see if we are ready to go [into a new venture].”
Proposition 4. Over time, entrepreneurs imprinted by the
technology and environment associated with their hobbies
focus on ventures without regard for pecuniary motives.
Illustrations owner “I have invested my time and talents into my business. I have invested
?nancially in my existing business in the form of self-promotional
material and technology.”
Referrals owner “We've invested in new technology to help our clients.”
Proposition 6. Over time, entrepreneurs imprinted by
prior work experience and the KSAs derived from that
experience focus on growing their ventures.
Architectural ?rmowner “I am continuing to invest in the business I started in 2010.”
IT/AV home installation
owner
“I have invested into new products for my existing business.”
10 B.D. Mathias et al. / Journal of Business Venturing xxx (2014) xxx–xxx
Please cite this article as: Mathias, B.D., et al., Entrepreneurial inception: The role of imprinting in entrepreneurial action, J. Bus.
Venturing (2014),http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusvent.2014.07.004
For individuals like these, their passions for speci?c activities (or products) often lead them, albeit indirectly, to entrepreneurial
action. Prior knowledge is integral to the pursuit of opportunities, but how those opportunities emerge is also critical. Through
deep and active engagement in interests and hobbies, individuals can build up a stock of knowledge and discover and create new
products andservices (Zahra et al., 2006). For example, the golf swing aidowner referencedbelowspent more thananhour discussing
how he spent two years of his life developing a new product: a golf swing training aid.
I like to play golf. The problemI was having was that my golf shots were never consistent, and I knewthere were several people having
the same problem of shifting their weight wrong. That is when I had this idea for a sensor under my left foot. That is what started it
[the business].
[Golf Swing Aid, Owner]
Inmany ways, this individual was aninventor, yet he moved beyondtinkering by acting upon anopportunity andlaunching a new
venture. It was evident he was passionate about building this product and seeing its development through to fruition. As the product-
development process progressed, he began recognizing the possibilities (i.e., commercial opportunities) for what he had created, but
he lacked the prior knowledge for how to exploit that opportunity.
Again, this is just serendipity the way that this worked …I got anidea and a working prototype. Where do yougo with it? The average
guy doesn't know where to go. I didn't know where to go.
[Golf Swing Aid, Owner]
For entrepreneurs imprinted by the environment and technology, the entrepreneurial process is not centered on creating and
launching businesses. Rather, these individuals focus on creating and developing products and services about which they are passionate.
Ventures are just the vehicles through which they can exercise these passions. Entrenched in the development of their products and ser-
vices, these entrepreneurs are particularly attentive to the environmental andtechnological disruptions occurring intheir respective area.
If you'd asked me 10 years prior, “Would you be running your own company?” I was personally more of a—I like the security of
working for someone. I guess it took the changes in the world and the opening of the eyes.
[Environmental Data Management, Owner]
Together, our interviews indicated that for some entrepreneurs, technology and the environment related to inventing new
products or services, represents a particularly salient source of imprint. These individuals heavily emphasize the products or services
they invent/create which are grounded in their interests and hobbies as well as re?ect environmental changes and technological
advances. These passions develop through strong emotional engagement over time. For example, the golf swing aid owner had
“loved to golf [his] entire life.” He described his swing aid in great detail and directed the lead author toward some YouTube videos
demonstrating his product. The illustrations owner “enjoyed drawing, even as a small kid.” He discussed the evolution (moving
fromhand drawing into the digital age) of the illustrations industry at great length and howhis business ?lls unmet needs in the mar-
ketplace. Demonstrating his passion, he brought some of his work to the interview, including a poster and a book, and he presented
themto us as gifts. The social networking owner enthusiastically discussed his website, carefully described howit solves an important
problem, and explained how his partner and product developer initially responded to his idea.
Like user entrepreneurs (Shah and Tripsas, 2007; von Hippel, 1994, 2009), these entrepreneurs focus on an idea, an innovation, or
a solutionthat they personally enact. Althoughthey might initially lack the diverse entrepreneurial network typical of those imprinted
by friends and family, interestingly, they enjoy working independently or in a small community of individuals with like-minded
interests (i.e., user communities) to develop their innovations. For example, when they discussed how they make decisions in their
business(es), our participants focused on themselves and/or groups of individuals with similar interests.
A lot of decisions are just made by myself.
[Catering/Graphics Design, Owner]
I do ask for help, but I make most decisions myself.
[Video/Publishing, Owner]
I have about 75 blogs that I look at on a weekly basis. I'm constantly discussing with other people in social media things that are up
and coming and going on and what we think are going away.
[Web Design, Owner]
When individuals are embedded in a user community, the development and commercialization of their product can be highly in-
?uenced by the individuals in that community or the potential adopters of the product they have developed (Autio et al., 2013; Shah
and Tripsas, 2007). In other words, these individuals take the support, advice, and feedback they receive from community members
and potential product users and leverage that information to improve their product. By relying on themselves and others with highly
similar interests, these entrepreneurs' behaviors can be self-reinforcing, leading to greater levels of identi?cation over time (Dutton
11 B.D. Mathias et al. / Journal of Business Venturing xxx (2014) xxx–xxx
Please cite this article as: Mathias, B.D., et al., Entrepreneurial inception: The role of imprinting in entrepreneurial action, J. Bus.
Venturing (2014),http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusvent.2014.07.004
et al., 1994) and an increased likelihood of taking entrepreneurial action (Autio et al., 2013). Thus, in making decisions and pursuing
opportunities, these individuals often focus on the creation (and improvement) of a product that can be commercialized rather than
the creation of a business that offers products. As such, we suggest the following:
Proposition 3. Entrepreneurs imprinted by the technology and environment associated with their hobbies rely on themselves or user
community members when making decisions and thus orient toward ventures within their technology or hobby domain.
Context is highly signi?cant to the imprinting process (Johnson, 2007), and extensive research has shown the imprinting effect of
initial resources on the early growth path of new ventures (Hannan et al., 1996). However, when looking toward the future, fewen-
trepreneurs imprinted by technology or the environment focus on growth or the pursuit of newventures. Instead, their ‘development
trajectory’ leads them to continue to pursue their passion for their hobbies and interests, as re?ected in their venture's products or
services, such as improving products and designs or satisfying customers.
We're not trying to be on any kind of exponential growth curve and growto a $600 million company. That's not our goal. Our primary
goal is taking care of our customers and taking care of our employees, and I don't really have any interest in growing.
[Environmental Data Management, Owner]
I would like to start a design consortiumin the area. It's anidea I've been toying with—a place for all walks to come together and share
their stories and network and help each other out. My idea is kind of along the same lines of a non-pro?t, of bringing together the
surrounding area's web designers and web developers to not only give each other a sounding board for ideas and things like that
but to help each other out.
[Web Design, Owner]
While exposure to entrepreneurship at a young age leaves imprints on some entrepreneurs that guide them toward pursuing
many ventures, the imprints of technology and the environment lead entrepreneurs down a different path. These imprints do not nec-
essarily pertain to business or entrepreneurship but to the products or services associated with the entrepreneur's interests. As such,
these entrepreneurs' focus tends to be on what they invent that their venture produces.
Researchhas indicated that some individuals may be sopassionate about their inventor role that they may never actually take their
products to the market or found the venture to exploit the opportunity (Cardon et al., 2009: 517). Thus, it is perhaps not surprising
that our ?ndings suggest that once our participants eventually decided to pursue an opportunity, their passions were transferred to
their new venture. In their new ventures, they were fully involved in decision-making processes and highly vested in the success
of the company, where success is as much about intrinsic rewards (i.e., creating a product/service they are proud of and improving
upon it) as it is about extrinsic rewards.
When asked in our follow-up survey, entrepreneurs imprinted by technology and the environment valued personal enjoyment
more highly than other entrepreneurs, ranking personal enjoyment higher (2.8 out of 11) than those imprinted by work experience/
KSAs (4.0 out of 11) or family, friends, and partners (5.3 out of 11). Additionally, when asked about their investments and experiences
over the past year (see also Table 3), one entrepreneur imprinted by technology and the environment claimed her new venture had
been “very rewarding, both personally and ?nancially,” while another claimed he was “focused onhis existing business, and developing
newprototypes.” Together, these entrepreneurs—similar to user entrepreneurs (Shah and Tripsas, 2007; von Hippel, 1986)—continued
to put their passion and enjoyment ?rst by remaining focused on product and service development. As such, we propose the following:
Proposition 4. Over time, entrepreneurs imprinted by the technology and environment associated with their hobbies focus on ventures
without regard for pecuniary motives.
5.3. Source of imprint: prior work experience
Still for others, prior work experience and the KSAs derived from that experience are a highly salient source of imprint. For these
individuals, ‘becoming an entrepreneur’ often occurs as individuals realize that an opportunity exists, and their unique expertise and
skills in the ?eld allowthemto pursue and develop that opportunity. Not surprisingly, these entrepreneurs want to nurture a singular
emergent opportunity rather than create multiple newventures or continually solve newproblems. As such, going forward, these en-
trepreneurs remain most focused on a single business, with the goal of growing and building that business.
I was working in an environment with a lot of other people as a vice president for sales, and I realized that there was no one out there
consulting in the area of self-management. And I said, “maybe this is an issue” because I realized that [sales management] was a weak
link in a lot of companies. So I recognized this business opportunity ?rst.
[Management Consulting, Owner]
I got started, I worked for [redacted] company for about four years … And then, they were making changes to their direct sales and
going more toward channel sales. And when I saw that happening, I saw this opportunity to pursue in terms of document-
management solutions.
[Document Management Solutions, Owner]
12 B.D. Mathias et al. / Journal of Business Venturing xxx (2014) xxx–xxx
Please cite this article as: Mathias, B.D., et al., Entrepreneurial inception: The role of imprinting in entrepreneurial action, J. Bus.
Venturing (2014),http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusvent.2014.07.004
Many individuals possess years of professional experience before they take entrepreneurial action. Prior information, such as that
developed through work experience, is highly in?uential in an entrepreneur's ability to comprehend, synthesize, and apply new in-
formation; those who lack such prior information will likely be at a disadvantage in discovering or creating entrepreneurial opportu-
nities (Roberts, 1991). Further, Shane (2000) highlights three critical dimensions for entrepreneurial discovery: prior knowledge of
markets, prior knowledge of ways to serve markets, and prior knowledge of customer problems. Both the management consulting
owner and the document management solutions owner cited above described how their experiences as employees triggered their
recognition of an opportunity. Through their industry-speci?c experiences, these individuals accumulated a wealth of prior knowl-
edge—knowledge of the industry, markets, customers, and gaps in current product/service offerings—that allowed themto recognize
opportunities others had not.
Prior knowledge is critical to an entrepreneur's cognitive mindset (Westhead et al., 2005). For entrepreneurs imprinted by work
experience, the way in which they evaluate and select opportunities is largely based on prior knowledge and skills mainly derived
through professional work experience; other sources of imprint were less central.
I'man architect and have been practicing for 15 years now, working for various-sized ?rms. Last year, I don't knowif I was insane or
overly optimistic, but I decided to go out on my own and make a go of it.
[Architectural Firm, Owner]
I have over 20 years of corporate marketing and project management experience. After my ?fth layoff in 10 years, I started to think
well maybe I should start out on my own.
[Marketing Coach, Owner]
I was teaching an undergraduate course in professional communications for two years full time. Finally, I decided I don't want to do
this anymore, so I came up with this idea that seemed like a pretty obvious need: working with professional corporations in training
and development.
[Speech Consulting, Owner]
Through this wealth of experience, entrepreneurs like these realize a weak link, see the opportunity, and ?ll a need. These entre-
preneurs leverage their deep expertise in a ?eld to realize an opportunity, a source of imprint that also affects how they think about
current and future growth opportunities and how they make decisions.
While prior work experience can represent a valuable resource, it can also lead to highly industry- or ?rm-speci?c cognition
(Benner and Tripsas, 2012). Put differently, the thought processes through which individuals evaluate and select opportunities can
be deeply rooted in prior employment experiences. Sources of imprint, particularly those gained in a job or career, can push entrepre-
neurs into different patterns of personal choice (i.e., development trajectories) (Minniti and Bygrave, 2001). In talking with partici-
pants with work experience imprints, we found many had a deep-seated knowledge of their area of expertise. However, similar
to those imprinted by technology and the environment, these entrepreneurs often lacked or were uninterested in the business-side
requirements of running an enterprise:
I'd say the paperwork side of it [is the most challenging part of being an entrepreneur]. I'd like to just do what I love to do, and that's
train people—be a strength and conditioning coach. And the paperwork, the taxes, everything that has to be taken care of, I ?ndthat to
be probably the biggest hurdle just because I don't have a background in any of that stuff.
[Fitness Center, Owner]
I have made some mistakes in the past on delegating the wrong thing and trying to be the accountant. I aman architect. I need to be
an architect and delegate the accounting.
[Architectural Firm, Owner #2]
The most challenging part of being an entrepreneur is ?nding out what paperwork you need to actually ?ll out … Architects, most of
them, have large egos and think they can do everything. So they will do their own logos, graphics, and website design. Again, I have a
different approach. I realize there are people that are better at that part than I am.
[Architectural Firm (different than architectural ?rm above), Owner #1]
Many of these entrepreneurs are overwhelmed with and sometimes ill-prepared for the ‘paperwork’ associated with managing a
newventure. In other words, entrepreneurs imprinted by work experience often have little af?nity for starting a business; they prefer
to work in their business, not on their business. To ?ll these knowledge and interest gaps, these individuals rely heavily on business
coaches, boards of advisors, or partners with business backgrounds in running their business and making decisions. Therefore, entre-
preneurs with work experience imprints tend to concentrate in a speci?c area without branching out into new, unrelated areas. This
leads us to propose the following:
Proposition 5. Entrepreneurs imprinted by prior work experience and KSAs derived fromthat experience delegate decisions and thus focus
on venture opportunities in known knowledge ?elds.
13 B.D. Mathias et al. / Journal of Business Venturing xxx (2014) xxx–xxx
Please cite this article as: Mathias, B.D., et al., Entrepreneurial inception: The role of imprinting in entrepreneurial action, J. Bus.
Venturing (2014),http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusvent.2014.07.004
When asked about their plans for the future, many entrepreneurs in our study claimed they were driven by organic growth and
franchising opportunities:
At some point, with our business model, we're going to reach max capacity of members, and so there's a ceiling there for pro?ts. And
eventually opening a second location somewhere else I think is the route we'd like to go.
[Fitness Center, Owner]
Finding new clients and letting them know I'm here would let me grow my ?rm.
[Architectural Firm, Owner #1]
I would probably expand to greater locations or something like that or consider franchising the business out.
[IT/AV Home Installation, Owner]
I would actually consider creating a franchise.
[Speech Consulting, Owner]
Given that (1) prior knowledge and industry-speci?c work experience are particularly salient to these entrepreneurs and the op-
portunity they elect to exploit and (2) they lack business-speci?c knowledge and interests, we conclude that they will be unlikely to
pursue new, widely varying ventures. Rather, guided by their past professional experiences, these individuals will follow a develop-
ment trajectory that allows them to further capitalize on their existing skill set, such as expanding their current venture.
The follow-up survey indicated that these entrepreneurs did indeed put greater emphasis on pro?tably expanding their current
businesses than other entrepreneurs, who focused on new businesses and personal enjoyment. On average, entrepreneurs with
work experience imprints ranked cash ?ow a 2.9 (out of 11), compared to 4.4 for the other entrepreneurs. Additionally, in the
open-ended responses about investments over the past year (see Table 3), one entrepreneur mentioned that he had invested in a
“new website, new books, new videos, and new association memberships” in order to “get his name out there.” Similarly, another
mentioned “business marketing investments, such as networking and associations” to “let the public know I am here.” To position
them for growth, these entrepreneurs joined associations, networked, and developed promotional materials to improve their
brand awareness and extend their reach into new markets, all while maintaining a focus on cash ?ow and pro?ts. Stated formally,
we propose that:
Proposition 6. Over time, entrepreneurs imprinted by prior work experience and the KSAs derived from that experience focus on growing
their ventures.
6. Discussion
Prior research demonstrates that founding conditions and founder decisions each imprint upon ventures and thus in?uence each
venture's future path (DeTienne, 2010; Milanov and Fernhaber, 2009). Building on this important research, we show that different
sources of imprint alter how entrepreneurs navigate the entrepreneurial process and how they take entrepreneurial action. In
doing so, we elucidate that speci?c sources of imprint have unique effects on entrepreneurs' decision making and priorities related
to their ventures.
6.1. Implications for imprinting and development trajectories
A major contribution of our study is the integration of imprinting theory at the individual level with research in entrepreneurship
on entrepreneurial decision making and action. To date, researchhas shown that the founding conditions and the founder decisions at
the onset of a venture have a signi?cant impact on the venture's development trajectory (DeTienne, 2010; Milanov and Fernhaber,
2009; Stinchcombe, 1965). We extend this line of thought by illustrating how certain sources of imprint have an enduring effect on
how entrepreneurs think about themselves, their opportunities, and their ventures. We highlight what sources of imprint affect
how entrepreneurs identify and develop their initial new venture opportunity and which sources of imprint provide a lasting effect
on howentrepreneurs think about opportunities. Therefore, we provide a more nuanced viewof the factors that play a role in entre-
preneurial decision making.
Speci?cally, our results indicate that when the intent to become an entrepreneur is imprinted on individuals early in life through
friends and family, individuals are more likely to be intrigued by the entrepreneurial pursuit and will thus be more likely to take en-
trepreneurial action as well as pursue more newventure opportunities. Thus, these individuals are not just more likely to become en-
trepreneurs but are more likely to continue to behave entrepreneurially by founding multiple, potentially unrelated ventures across
different product or service areas. When the source of imprint stems from a particular hobby or activity, they focus less on new ven-
tures, growth, or pro?ts. Instead, they make decisions in a self-reliant manner and take pleasure in developing products and services
related to these activities. Finally, when a career in a given profession (e.g., architecture) is the most salient source of imprint, in-
dividuals will delegate decision making and select opportunities to start and grow their business in their ?eld rather than search
for new and unrelated opportunities.
14 B.D. Mathias et al. / Journal of Business Venturing xxx (2014) xxx–xxx
Please cite this article as: Mathias, B.D., et al., Entrepreneurial inception: The role of imprinting in entrepreneurial action, J. Bus.
Venturing (2014),http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusvent.2014.07.004
Our examination of entrepreneurs' past, present, and future actions demonstrates not just that history matters but how history
matters. The past is important not only for the identi?cation and selection of an opportunity to start a ?rst venture but also to the
progression of that opportunity and potentially others. Interestingly, each source of imprint provides insight into the antecedents
of entrepreneurs' passions and motivations for pursuing (or not pursuing) opportunities. For example, different sets of passions
emerged during sensitive stages in each entrepreneur's life. Whether it was the entrepreneur who discussed “seeing his wealthy
neighbor at the age of 10 and realizing [he] wanted to be an entrepreneur” or one who “always loved to play golf and invented a
swing aid to improve [his] game,” the development of speci?c passions has animportant impact on entrepreneurs andtheir decisions.
This parallels recent work in entrepreneurship on passion and identity (Cardon et al., 2009; Fauchart and Gruber, 2011) and suggests
an important area for future research at the intersection of imprinting and identity theory. The imprinting process and corresponding
sources of imprint guide entrepreneurs' perceptions of who they are with respect to others (social identity) and what roles are salient
(role identity).
By utilizing imprinting theory, we do not imply that entrepreneurs are merely sponges imprinted by everything that happens in
life. Rather, entrepreneurs exert critical-thinking skills and make determinations for howthey perceive (or do not perceive) opportu-
nities. Without question, not everything that happens in life equally affects how entrepreneurs think about opportunities. Although
our investigation shows that what happens during sensitive stages of life—when imprinting begins—considerably matters to the fu-
ture growth and development of entrepreneurial ventures, the process of learning can also be re?exive in nature (Archer, 2003;
Mutch, 2007). In other words, it is not that entrepreneurs are imprinted and that knowledge is ‘stuck’ with the entrepreneur, but
that entrepreneurs are greatly in?uenced by those complex, and often recursive, combinations of events, people, activities, and expe-
riences that occur throughout life. This notion of re?exivity might explain why certain sources of imprint wax or wane in importance
over time, and we encourage future research to explore this further.
6.2. Imprinting and entrepreneurial decision making
Although we focus our theoretical efforts on imprinting theory, our study fundamentally involves entrepreneurial decision
making: which opportunities entrepreneurs decide to pursue, how entrepreneurs go about making important decisions, and what
decisions entrepreneurs make regarding priorities for the future of their ventures. We show that different sources of imprint result
in different decisions and different decision-making processes. Thus, sources of imprint represent an important antecedent to and
generally understudied aspect of entrepreneurship.
Our study deviates from much of the current research on entrepreneurial decision making in that we center on how and why
history matters for entrepreneurial decision making. In contrast to important research that centers on developing theory regarding
entrepreneurs' espoused and/or de facto decision models (e.g., Choi and Shepherd, 2004), we show that sources of imprint initiate
a pattern of in?uence that may begin signi?cantly prior to the decisions an entrepreneur makes today. For example, prior research
demonstrates that the extent to which a current opportunity is “related to the entrepreneur's existing knowledge, skills, and
abilities” (Haynie et al., 2009: 349) directly in?uences the entrepreneurs' evaluation and selection of that opportunity and that
prior knowledge moderates the effects of opportunity attributes on entrepreneurs' opportunity-related decision making (Wood
and Williams, 2014).
We go beyond these ?ndings to illustrate that howand where prior knowledge is gained not only in?uences entrepreneurs' deci-
sions to start a venture but also their decision-making processes whenrunning the venture. Speci?cally, we showthat these sources of
imprint are vital to which opportunities entrepreneurs identify and enact as well as the exploitation patterns of these opportunities,
notably the future growth and trajectories of their ventures. We suggest that sources of imprint can provide more than just alignable
knowledge critical to identifying, evaluating, and exploiting opportunities; they provide insight into the origins of such knowledge
corridors (Venkataraman, 1997) and their persistent in?uence over time.
Sources of imprint offer increased clarity for context that supplements our understanding of prior knowledge and the decisions
entrepreneurs make regarding opportunities. Although we inform how sources of imprint in?uence entrepreneurial decision
making, our picture of this process is far from complete. The factors in?uencing how individuals think about opportunities are in-
herently complex, highlighting areas for future research. Building on the idea of sources of imprint as the origins of knowledge
corridors, a potentially fruitful area of inquiry could be to integrate the strategic groups or clustering literature with research on
prior knowledge. For example, Shane's (2000) seminal work examines how eight entrepreneurs pursued eight vastly different
opportunities from one single innovation. Reversing this approach could offer useful insights for the study of entrepreneurship.
Such an endeavor could explore how different career paths and cognitive schemas can lead to the same opportunity pursuit
(i.e., equi?nality).
Our efforts could also help further our understanding of entrepreneurial typologies, speci?cally as it relates to user entrepreneur-
ship. In some instances, a user community might provide better information for decision making than friends or family members.
For example, a community-based social structure, one in which ideas and information are voluntarily shared among users, could
lead to greater success with opportunities that are centered on technologies and products and require signi?cant human capital.
However, a social network-based structure, one in which ideas and information are shared between close or familial ties, could
lead to greater success with opportunities that are centered on relationships and require signi?cant social capital. Additionally,
our study demonstrates that sources of imprint represent a useful way to think about ‘types’ of entrepreneurs, explaining why dif-
ferent entrepreneurs may pursue similar opportunities quite differently. Ultimately, the strategies resulting from different sources of
imprint may prove useful as a contingency leading to (or away from) equi?nality in venture success among entrepreneurs pursuing
similar opportunities.
15 B.D. Mathias et al. / Journal of Business Venturing xxx (2014) xxx–xxx
Please cite this article as: Mathias, B.D., et al., Entrepreneurial inception: The role of imprinting in entrepreneurial action, J. Bus.
Venturing (2014),http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusvent.2014.07.004
6.3. Implications for entrepreneurs and education
Consider our study's two entrepreneurs who founded golf product companies. One played golf professionally and started multiple
businesses at a relatively early age; the other played golf leisurely in retirement and launched a business after developing a new
gol?ng product. Despite having seemingly similar sources of imprint as golfers who started their own businesses, this surface-level
similarity does not tell the full story. One entrepreneur expressed a passionate interest in being an entrepreneur early in his career
and discovered an entrepreneurial opportunity related to his knowledge base. The other invented a product to solve a problem,
and the act of starting a venture re?ected his need to take the invention to market. The two entrepreneurs make decisions very
differently and foresee different paths for their own futures and their venture's futures, as the quotations below highlight:
I am never content where they [ventures] are. That can sometimes wear you out, but to me, that is what drives me. I de?nitely push
things to fruition. So they [ventures] are either going to work, and we build them, or we don't think they are going to work, and we
move on to new businesses.
[Golf Products, Owner]
I want to go back to play golf and the things I was doing before I had this idea. It is so ironic: I don't have time to play golf because
I invented a gol?ng swing aid to help golfers. What is wrong with that picture?
[Golf Swing Aid, Owner]
The above differences in seemingly similar entrepreneurs imply an important aspect of prior experience, context, and howentre-
preneurs are made (Hodgetts and Kuratko, 1995). Knowing that individuals have prior experience in gol?ng does not provide the
complete picture. In addition to what knowledge entrepreneurs possess, an understanding of where, when, and how that experience
occurs is also critical to predict entrepreneurs' future paths and decisions, and imprinting explains howthis learning process unfolds.
Our research thus highlights the importance of nurturing (e.g., mentors, work experience) in entrepreneurship. We show that role
models and educational experiences can have an indelible effect on entrepreneurs' evaluation and selection of opportunities and
their paths as entrepreneurs in general. As such, understanding how entrepreneurs are made is important.
Further, these important differences in sources of imprint suggest implications for entrepreneurial education and future research
that take a more nuanced approached to examining such sources of imprint. For example, many schools worldwide are expanding
their entrepreneurship curriculums; however, we knowlittle about which educational experiences are most salient to entrepreneurs
(Martin et al., 2013). Future research on the effects of different courses, cases, or competitions could not only shed light on imprinting
and entrepreneurship theory but also improve the effectiveness of entrepreneurship programs. For example, future research could
explore the extent to which entrepreneurs with different sources of imprint need different types of entrepreneurial education at
different stages of their lives.
6.4. Limitations and future research
Our study's limitations provide avenues for future research. First, we asked entrepreneurs to recall what led them to pursue their
?rst venture, and asking participants to recall past experiences may introduce retrospective bias. However, it was important for us to
uncover which sources of imprint entrepreneurs felt impacted their past decisions so we could compare these to how the same en-
trepreneurs approached current and future decisions. Thus, we strove to identify emotionally and cognitively-salient in?uences
that extend beyond the initial venture-creation decision. Further, we triangulated our interview responses with archival and third-
party information sources. We also followed up with our entrepreneurs by sending a condensed interviewreport back to each partic-
ipant highlighting the most important aspects of themselves and their business(es) and had them respond with comments
concerning inaccuracies. However, we cannot fully explain the extent to which biases in?uenced respondents' recollection and per-
ceptions of past events.
Second, we focus on the outcome of the imprinting process, not the learning process that takes place during imprinting. Future
research examining the imprinting process in situ would reveal a great deal about howimprinting occurs and would minimize poten-
tial retrospective bias. Such research could examine individuals prior to becoming entrepreneurs, follow them as they progress
through their career, and track what sources of imprint impact their entrepreneurial pursuits and at what points in time certain
sources of imprint fade or grow in importance. Such research could also examine when—if at all—certain sources of imprint cease
to continue in?uencing the entrepreneur's decision making and thus when the lasting effect ends.
Further, our sampling strategy introduced the potential for regional bias, survivorship bias, and endogeneity. Despite our efforts to
limit such biases, each of these re?ects potential limitations in the generalizability of our study. However, we note that our sampling
strategy, although intended to be as representative as possible, was designed to provide variety in sources of imprint but not neces-
sarily to create an exhaustive typology of sources of imprint. Instead, we sought to develop theory that would lend insight into how
such sources of imprint in?uence howentrepreneurs think, make decisions, and operate their ventures today and in their envisioned
futures. Thus, it is possible that other samples of entrepreneurs (e.g., those from different geographical or cultural regions, those not
associatedwithan entrepreneurial organization, and/or those whose ventures have already failed) might identify other sources of im-
print as particularly in?uential. We encourage future research that identi?es additional sources of imprint, examines the effects
of these differences, and includes samples that measure the success and failure of entrepreneurs from a variety of regions and
backgrounds.
16 B.D. Mathias et al. / Journal of Business Venturing xxx (2014) xxx–xxx
Please cite this article as: Mathias, B.D., et al., Entrepreneurial inception: The role of imprinting in entrepreneurial action, J. Bus.
Venturing (2014),http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusvent.2014.07.004
Our research also raises important questions about the order of causality of our constructs—namely, whether entrepreneurial
decision-making processes (i.e., participative, self-reliant, delegative) are in?uenced by venture motivations (i.e., new ventures,
non-pecuniary motives, growth) or whether venture motivations in?uence decision-making processes. For example, individuals
who are interested in constantly launching new ventures may continually engage family and friends (i.e., participative decision
making) because it is unlikely that they have in-depth knowledge of each opportunity they are interested in acting upon. Alternative-
ly, through continuous engagement in participative decision making, these individuals might constantly be exposed to diverse view-
points and a wide range of ideas, which in turn leads these entrepreneurs to often pursue new, and unrelated opportunities. We
encourage future research to explore the causal connection between entrepreneurial decision making and venture motivations.
Future research could also examine the boundary conditions of our ?ndings. For example, although we found that exposure to en-
trepreneurship through friends and family imprints entrepreneurs, we do not knowwhether this imprint is a result of only successful
entrepreneurship. In other words, the successfulness (or unsuccessfulness) of family and friends in entrepreneurship may imprint
individuals in distinct ways, with some imprints perhaps guiding entrepreneurs toward (or away from) pursuing new ventures.
7. Conclusion
Much research has focused on what leads individuals to become entrepreneurs and howsome experiences lead some individuals
to be more likely to become entrepreneurs. We extend this work by examining how different sources of imprint have a lasting in?u-
ence not just on the initial venture founded by entrepreneurs but, more importantly, in the decisions entrepreneurs make about their
ventures and their futures and the process by which they make such decisions. By illustrating the in?uence of different sources of im-
print, we explain how they guide entrepreneurs' decisions as they progress through their entrepreneurial careers and elucidate the
ways in which entrepreneurs navigate the entrepreneurial process differently. Thus, we demonstrate the potential for research at
the crossroads of imprinting theory and entrepreneurial action and hope to encourage future research along these lines.
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18 B.D. Mathias et al. / Journal of Business Venturing xxx (2014) xxx–xxx
Please cite this article as: Mathias, B.D., et al., Entrepreneurial inception: The role of imprinting in entrepreneurial action, J. Bus.
Venturing (2014),http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusvent.2014.07.004
doc_864881348.pdf
In this detailed paper regarding entrepreneurial inception the role of imprinting in entrepreneurial action.
Entrepreneurial inception: The role of imprinting in
entrepreneurial action
Blake D. Mathias
a,
?, David W. Williams
b
, Adam R. Smith
c
a
Department of Management, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA 70803, United States
b
College of Business Administration, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN 37996, United States
c
School of Business, Indiana University Kokomo, Kokomo, IN 46904, United States
a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t
Available online xxxx
Field Editor: Garry Bruton
Recent research highlights that founders' early decisions and the environmental conditions at
founding each imprint upon a new venture in ways that affect growth and survival. However,
we know much less about how the entrepreneur is imprinted and how the outcome of this
imprinting process in?uences the entrepreneur and the venture. Through semi-structured inter-
views and content analysis, our study examines entrepreneurs' formative experiences during sen-
sitive periods of transition, which we refer to as sources of imprint. We illustrate howthese sources
of imprint impact entrepreneurial decision making and explain how they guide entrepreneurs'
decisions as they progress through their entrepreneurial careers. In doing so, we improve our
understanding of how entrepreneurs navigate the entrepreneurial process.
Published by Elsevier Inc.
Keywords:
Entrepreneurship
Imprinting
Entrepreneurial decision making
Content analysis
1. Executive summary
The experiences and decisions through which an organization is created and the conditions under which it begins have non-trivial
consequences for its later life (Boeker, 1988; Kimberly, 1979; Stinchcombe, 1965). A burgeoning body of research has explored this
important phenomenon by espousing imprinting theory, which highlights the enduring impact of prior history on individual and or-
ganizational outcomes. However, the central focus within both the organizational and entrepreneurship literatures concerning im-
printing has largely been on the organization. In other words, scholars have concentrated on how organizations are imprinted and
what this means for the course of the organization.
In contrast, we focus on the imprinting process for individuals—namely, entrepreneurs. Although some organizational researchhas
focused on the implications imprinting has for individuals and their careers (Higgins, 2005; McEvily et al., 2012), we demonstrate the
broader implications of imprinting. Speci?cally, we explore how the imprinting process in?uences entrepreneurs' decision making
and their selection of current and potentially future opportunities.
Through semi-structured interviews and content analysis techniques, we shed light on entrepreneurs' decision making and their
ventures' development trajectories. By doing so, our theoretical contributions are threefold. First, we explore the role of imprinting in
entrepreneurial action. We explainhowimprinting may be a key mechanismto understandhowcertainformative experiences, which
we refer to as sources of imprint, have a lasting effect on entrepreneurial decision making. Second, we build upon prior research to il-
lustrate howdifferent sources of imprint signi?cantly in?uence which opportunities entrepreneurs select and, more broadly, the way
they navigate the entrepreneurial process differently as a result of different sources of imprint. Finally, we consider the importance of
educators in promoting entrepreneurial experiences that may guide the development of individuals' paths toward entrepreneurship
Journal of Business Venturing xxx (2014) xxx–xxx
? Corresponding author at: Rucks Department of Management, Louisiana State University, Business Education Complex, Room 2700, Baton Rouge, LA 70803,
United States.
E-mail addresses: [email protected] (B.D. Mathias), [email protected] (D.W. Williams), [email protected] (A.R. Smith).
JBV-05718; No of Pages 18http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusvent.2014.07.004
0883-9026/Published by Elsevier Inc.
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Journal of Business Venturing
Please cite this article as: Mathias, B.D., et al., Entrepreneurial inception: The role of imprinting in entrepreneurial action, J. Bus.
Venturing (2014),http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusvent.2014.07.004
as well as the different educational needs of entrepreneurs with different sources of imprint. Together, our study reveals the impor-
tance of imprinting by examining how sources of imprint have a persistent impact on entrepreneurs and their respective ventures.
2. Introduction
A long history of research in entrepreneurship has demonstrated that prior experiences play a critical role in the entrepreneurial
process (e.g., Shane, 2000; Westhead et al., 2005). Inpart, experiences are important because they impact not only what opportunities
individuals identify but also howthey evaluate, select, and ultimately act upon them(Busenitz and Lau, 1996). Some experiences im-
part a passing in?uence on entrepreneurs, while other experiences stick with them, altering the way in which they see and think
about the world (Politis, 2005).
Imprinting theory explains how individuals and organizations develop characteristics from experiences during a sensitive period
and persistently re?ect themdespite time passing and the environment changing (Marquis and Tilcsik, 2013). To date, scholars have
shown that imprinting is critical to organizations, including impacting outcomes like venture growth potential (Bamford et al., 2000)
and turnover rates (Burton and Beckman, 2007). Scholars have also emphasized the importance of imprinting to individuals, such
as by illustrating howearly career mentors and peers in?uence subsequent work choices (Azoulay et al., 2011) or howinitial network
ties confer persistent advantages to young lawyers (McEvily et al., 2012). Within entrepreneurship, imprinting research has revealed
how founding decisions—the choices made at the onset of the ?rm (DeTienne, 2010)—and founding conditions—the environmental
conditions at the ?rm inception (Boeker, 1989)—impact the ?rm throughout its life. Together, these efforts demonstrate that what
happens during venture founding (or the start of a career) has a persistent impact on the course of that organization (or individual).
Although these efforts have notably contributed to imprinting and entrepreneurship theory, extant research fails to explain how
salient experiences andenvironmental elements (what we refer toas sources of imprint) imprint entrepreneurs andhowthese sources
of imprint impact the way entrepreneurs manage their venture(s). Entrepreneurship research has shown that entrepreneurs bring in
a set of givens (i.e., knowledge, skills, and abilities) that are then imprinted on a venture (e.g., Bamford et al., 2000; Boeker, 1988;
Johnson, 2007), but it remains silent on how these givens impact entrepreneurs' decision making and the course of their ventures.
Largely, research in both the organizational and entrepreneurship literatures has focused on organizations as recipients of the im-
printing process and has primarily assumed that imprinting begins at venture inception (see Marquis and Tilcsik, 2013). However,
it is likely that entrepreneurs are also recipients of as well as contributors to the imprinting process. As such, certainsources of imprint
might in?uence entrepreneurs before they launch their ?rst venture and may persist throughout their entrepreneurial careers, likely
impacting their decision making and the trajectory of their ventures.
To address these limitations, we draw from the rich literature on entrepreneurial action and integrate it with imprinting theory
from psychology. In so doing, we shift the focus from how the organization is imprinted to a largely understudied element of the
entrepreneurial process: how the entrepreneur is imprinted. Speci?cally, we reveal how certain experiences and elements of the
environment (i.e., sources of imprint) impart a lasting and persistent stamp on entrepreneurs that is carried with them as they
make decisions for their ventures. Thus, we address the following research question: How do sources of imprint have a lasting impact
on entrepreneurs' decision making and their ventures' development trajectories?
Given the relative paucity of research explaining howsources of imprint in?uence entrepreneurs and their ventures and our goal
of developing new theoretical insights in this area, we selected a qualitative approach to study howsources of imprint impact entre-
preneurial action. Speci?cally, we conducted semi-structured interviews with entrepreneurs and content analyzed their verbalized
responses. Additionally, we followed up with each of our entrepreneurs a year after the original interviews to see how their future
actions unfolded.
With this approach, our study contributes to the literature in three ways. First, we demonstrate that imprinting may be a key
mechanism to understand how speci?c sources of imprint have a lasting in?uence on entrepreneurs. In line with calls for additional
researchto uncover the origins of howentrepreneurs think about opportunities (Grégoire et al., 2011), we adopt the relatively under-
utilized lens of imprinting to showthat sources of imprint affect entrepreneurs' current and future decision-making processes as well
as their opportunity selection. Second, we extend efforts emphasizing the importance of context and alignment in opportunity recog-
nition (Grégoire et al., 2010) and evaluation (Haynie et al., 2009; Williams and Grégoire, forthcoming) by showing that the sources of
prior knowledge (including when and under what conditions the knowledge was obtained), in addition to the knowledge itself, have
an enduring impact on entrepreneurial action. Finally, we contribute to research in entrepreneurial education by exploring howprior
experiences guide entrepreneurs' perceptions of who they are and what actions are most critical to their de?nition of success.
Speci?cally, we illustrate the importance of entrepreneurial educators by showing that the sources of entrepreneurial learning can sig-
ni?cantly impact how entrepreneurs make decisions and their priority of motives. Overall, we contribute to entrepreneurial decision
making and opportunity selection by exploring how sources of imprint have a lasting impact on entrepreneurs and their ventures.
3. Imprinting
Building on the work of Stinchcombe (1965), organizational research on imprinting has highlighted the enduring impact of prior his-
tory onorganizational outcomes by demonstrating howorganizations (or individuals) assume elements of their environment that persist
well beyond the founding phase (Milanov and Fernhaber, 2009). In their examinationof imprinting, most scholars have considered three
elements of imprinting: sensitive periods, stamps, and persistence (see Marquis and Tilcsik, 2013). Therefore, in line with prior work, we
de?ne imprinting as a time-sensitive (i.e., occurs at sensitive stages of life) learning process (i.e., a stamping process whereby the focal
entity re?ects elements of its environment) that initiates a development trajectory (i.e., produces persistent outcomes).
2 B.D. Mathias et al. / Journal of Business Venturing xxx (2014) xxx–xxx
Please cite this article as: Mathias, B.D., et al., Entrepreneurial inception: The role of imprinting in entrepreneurial action, J. Bus.
Venturing (2014),http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusvent.2014.07.004
Certainly, relatedliteratures have highlightedthe importance of learning, socialization, andprior experience inentrepreneurial de-
cision making and opportunity selection (Cope, 2005; Shepherd et al., 2003). For example, Shane (2000) shows that entrepreneurs
discover opportunities related to the information they already possess; Choi and Shepherd (2004) suggest that an entrepreneur
exploits an opportunity when he or she perceives greater knowledge of that opportunity; Ozgen and Baron (2007) show that three
social sources of opportunity-related information—mentors, informal industry networks, and forums—assist entrepreneurs in identi-
fying opportunities; and Haynie et al. (2009) posit that individuals do not simply search for the “best opportunities” but the best
opportunities “for them” (p. 357)—that is, opportunities that are complementary to their existing knowledge base. Together, these
studies suggest that knowledge obtained through socialization and prior experience is critical to the process of evaluating and
selecting opportunities.
However, withits three distinct pillars, imprinting provides knowledge througha unique formof social learning. Namely, it suggests
that when learning occurs is important (during time-sensitive periods), how long learning occurs is important (a stamping process),
and for how long learned behaviors persist is important (for years despite environmental changes). In other words, imprinting offers
a different perspective from extant research concerning prior knowledge and socialization by suggesting that the process through
which knowledge is obtained (beyond just the knowledge itself) is critical to decision making and opportunity selection.
With regard to organizational research, imprinting has attracted interest from a broad range of areas, including network analysis
(McEvily et al., 2012), top management teams (Beckman and Burton, 2008), career research (Azoulay et al., 2011; Higgins, 2005), in-
stitutional theory (Johnson, 2007), organizational turnover (Burton and Beckman, 2007), and organizational ecology (Carroll and
Hannan, 1989). It has also garnered attention across multiple levels of analysis, including industry- (Stinchcombe, 1965),
organizational- (Marquis and Huang, 2010), and individual-level studies (Kacperczyk, 2009). Perhaps not surprisingly, most of the or-
ganizational imprinting literature revolves around just that, the organization. For example, the sensitive stages are often characterized
by the time of organizational founding (Carroll and Hannan, 1989; Johnson, 2007), and the stamping process re?ects howelements of
the environment are mapped onto the organization (Carroll and Hannan, 2004).
With respect to the entrepreneurship literature, most imprinting research has taken one of two similar approaches. The ?rst ap-
proach is condition focused. This approach posits that new ventures' early conditions have a lasting impact on future outcomes
(Boeker, 1989; Eisenhardt and Schoonhoven, 1990; Milanov and Fernhaber, 2009). From this perspective, the founding conditions—
the environment, partnerships, competition, resource endowments, and other internal and external factors—in?uence a newventure,
which in turn imprint throughout the venture's lifecycle (Hannan, 1998; Sapienza et al., 2006). For example, Milanov and Fernhaber
(2009) suggest that initial alliance partners may serve as an important predictor of a new venture's network trajectory, and Boeker
(1989) posits that founding conditions play an important role in either limiting or encouraging strategic change. Put simply, this
stream of research ?nds that founding conditions impact the venture's life.
The second approach is decision focused. This approach suggests that entrepreneurs' initial decisions have a lasting impact on
future outcomes (Bird, 1992; Cooper et al., 1994; DeTienne, 2010). From this perspective, entrepreneurs imprint their ventures by
making important decisions early on in their venture's development. For example, DeTienne (2010) shows that entrepreneurs who
develop anexit strategy early in the life of the ?rmimprint their ?rms so that they are more likely to achieve their exit goals. Similarly,
Burtonand Beckman (2007) suggest that position incumbents leave legacies that constrainsubsequent positionholders and in?uence
successors' turnover rates, and Bamford et al. (2000) demonstrate that initial founding decisions signi?cantly relate to newventures'
growth potential. Overall, this stream of research ?nds that founding decisions impact the venture's life.
Extant research has also demonstrated that individuals can be imprinted through a variety of sources, such as through economic
conditions (Malmendier and Nagel, 2011), institutional conditions (Dokko et al., 2009; Higgins, 2005), equity partners (Breugst et al.,
2014-inthis issue), family members (Jaskiewicz et al., 2014-in this issue), or other individuals (Azoulay et al., 2011; Kacperczyk, 2009;
McEvily et al., 2012). In many ways, individual- and organizational-level imprinting share many characteristics: they both concern
time-sensitive learning processes that initiate development trajectories and persist despite environmental changes. However, in
many ways, they likely differ.
For example, whereas an organization's sensitive period is often classi?ed as the founding period (e.g., Milanov and Fernhaber,
2009), individuals can exhibit several sensitive periods, suchas during their formative years, early career, or periods of signi?cant eco-
nomic change (Marquis and Tilcsik, 2013). Additionally, imprinting effects for an organization are not necessarily ?xed, but they are
thought to be dif?cult to change, whereas individuals' learning processes are often ?uid and dynamic. Thus, for an imprint to persist
among individuals, that imprint must be relatively strong (Marquis, 2003; Vergne and Durand, 2010).
From organizational and career development research, we know that individuals can be imprinted through career experiences;
thus, imprinting can be an individual-level phenomenon (Azoulay et al., 2011; Kacperczyk, 2009; McEvily et al., 2012). From the en-
trepreneurship literature, we knowthat entrepreneurs can imprint their ventures through the relationships and decisions they make
(Boeker, 1988; Breugst et al., 2014-in this issue; Milanov and Shepherd, 2008). However, our understanding of entrepreneurs as re-
cipients of the imprinting process remains limited. Additionally, although prior research has shown that individuals (e.g., through
founder decisions) can imprint the organization, research has not yet fully addressed how the imprinting process impacts entrepre-
neurs' decision making with respect to their current venture and possible future ventures. Given that entrepreneurs can undergo an
imprinting process and that they can be highly in?uential in shaping their ?rms (Boeker, 1989; DeTienne, 2010), discovering howthe
entrepreneur is imprinted and howthat imprinting process impacts the trajectory of the entrepreneur and his or her venture remains
an important question with limited answers.
Recent researchhighlights what little is known regarding howthe imprinting process impacts entrepreneurs' decision making and
venture trajectories. For example, as Marquis and Tilcsik (2013) suggest in their review of the imprinting literature, “clearly,
individual-level imprints may have signi?cant consequences well beyond shaping individual cognition and behavior” (p. 219),
3 B.D. Mathias et al. / Journal of Business Venturing xxx (2014) xxx–xxx
Please cite this article as: Mathias, B.D., et al., Entrepreneurial inception: The role of imprinting in entrepreneurial action, J. Bus.
Venturing (2014),http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusvent.2014.07.004
however such research has yet to receive “serious empirical attention” (p. 223). In part, these limitations arise from two signi?cant
empirical challenges. The ?rst is that in order to understand the process of imprinting, one must garner an in-depth look into individ-
uals and their lives. To accomplish this, many traditional methods (e.g., survey, secondary data) are ill equipped. The second challenge
is that in order to understandthe effects of imprinting, one must observe these individuals over time. Accordingly, as we explain in the
next section, we adopt a qualitative perspective that allows us anin-depth look at entrepreneurs' decision making and also enables us
to look at potential sources of imprint and their persistence over time.
4. Methods
When selecting a method, we considered our research question (how potential sources of imprint matter to entrepreneurs' key
decisions over time), extant work (i.e., an area of imprinting for whichprior researchis incomplete and inadequate), and the intended
theoretical contributions (i.e., theory development rather than theory testing). In doing so, we determined that an inductive qualita-
tive research approach exhibited good methodological ?t with the current state of the literature (Edmondson and McManus, 2007;
Eisenhardt, 1989).
To answer our research question, we needed a methodological approach that allowed us to identify speci?c sources of imprint,
namely emotionally-signi?cant experiences during sensitive transition periods that continue to exert in?uence on entrepreneurs'
thinking. Further, we needed to be able to identify how such sources of imprint impact entrepreneurs' current and future decisions.
Thus, we developed a two-part research design. First, we conducted semi-structured interviews with entrepreneurs concerning
their past, present, and future. These interviews were content analyzed through an inductive process of dictionary building in
order to identify which sources of imprint had a lasting in?uence over time. Because some questions in the interviews involved ex-
periences that happened in the past, we triangulated those interviews with additional sources of information. Second, we conducted
a follow-up survey one year after our interviews in order to (1) validate that the answers to interview questions matched decisions
they actually made in the intervening year, (2) further elucidate the entrepreneurs' priority of goals for their venture, and (3) observe
how their future actions unfolded.
In sum, our research design ?rst centered on those salient experiences that led individuals to pursue entrepreneurship (i.e., launch
their ?rst venture). By doing so, we hoped to better understand the development of the cognitive and emotional factors that play a
role in entrepreneurial action (Grégoire et al., 2011). Then, we examined howthese experiences (potential sources of imprint) in?u-
ence current and future decision making. This process helped us recreate a timeline of how entrepreneurs viewed the past and how
speci?c sources of imprint affect how they think about entrepreneurial action in the present and their envisioned futures.
4.1. Sample
Two of the authors conducted semi-structured interviews and a follow-up survey with 25 entrepreneurs. The sampling strategy
was purposive and theory driven (Miles and Huberman, 1994). As imprinting theory suggests that differences in salient experiences
(i.e., potential sources of imprint) lead to different outcomes (Boeker, 1989; Burton and Beckman, 2007), we sought entrepreneurs
from a variety of industries and backgrounds in order to be exposed to potential differences in salient prior experiences. We de?ned
entrepreneurs as those who have founded and currently own a venture as well as a substantive voice in current venture decisions. We
accessed most of the entrepreneurs through an entrepreneurial organization in the southeastern United States. The remainder (less
than 15%) of our entrepreneurs were identi?ed through the ?rst author's network in a different geographical region—the midwestern
United States. Table 1 provides additional descriptive information on the participating entrepreneurs.
4.2. Research design
In order to create a timeline of what sources of imprint are salient to entrepreneurs over time, we ?rst asked participating entre-
preneurs to tell us about themselves, their current business(es), and what led themto pursue entrepreneurship in general. This series
of questions exposed us to individuals' life histories and, more importantly, the people, events, and activities that led the entrepre-
neurs to identify and pursue new venture opportunities. Given that we wanted to understand how salient experiences (i.e., sources
of imprint) in?uence how entrepreneurs think about opportunities today and for the future, we selected an approach that captured
their current entrepreneurial mindset as well as their envisioned futures.
Following the interviews, whichranged from30 min to 2 h, the lead author transcribed the audio-recorded interviews, resulting in
more than 200 pages of single-spaced text. To con?rm the themes that emerged from the interview and ensure that an accurate de-
piction of the participant's imperative experiences were captured, the lead author sent a condensed (?2 pages) version of the inter-
view to the entrepreneur, who responded with notes and comments.
Although we acknowledge that entrepreneurs' perceptions of the past may be imperfect, we sought to understand, as a starting
point, whichexperiences entrepreneurs recall as being particularly salient. As launching one's ?rst business likely has signi?cant emo-
tional value, it is also likely that entrepreneurs have anenhanced memory of them(Dolan, 2002). Further, as imprinting, by de?nition,
re?ects those experiences that have a persistent in?uence, entrepreneurs should have a higher recall of those experiences (Marquis
and Tilcsik, 2013).
However, we took steps to identify and minimize retrospective bias by triangulating our interviews with archival and third-party
data. Speci?cally, we found information related to the entrepreneurs and their respective venture(s) that we could compare to their
interview responses, such as newspaper and magazine articles, LinkedIn reviews from previous employers or customers,
4 B.D. Mathias et al. / Journal of Business Venturing xxx (2014) xxx–xxx
Please cite this article as: Mathias, B.D., et al., Entrepreneurial inception: The role of imprinting in entrepreneurial action, J. Bus.
Venturing (2014),http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusvent.2014.07.004
organizational websites, third-party interviews, and business journals, and then matched the entrepreneurs' interview responses
with these independent information sources. This triangulation showed that the past experiences entrepreneurs verbalized in the in-
terviews occurred in the manner described.
After establishing a thorough account of the past experiences the entrepreneurs felt were most salient to their initial entrepre-
neurial pursuits, we asked participants various questions concerning how they make decisions in their current venture(s) and the
biggest challenges they currently face. We concluded with a discussion about their future plans for their business(es), including
where they saw themselves and their venture(s) in the next few years and what, if any, future projects/ventures they were consid-
ering. The goal of these questions was to derive what, if any, in?uence those early experiences had on current decision making and
the entrepreneurs' envisioned futures for themselves and their ventures.
Additionally, a year after we conducted the interviews, we followed up with each of our participants to see if and howtheir future
actions unfolded. Speci?cally, we sent respondents a survey and asked themto describe howsatis?edthey were withdifferent aspects
of their business (e.g., cash ?ow
1
), on what aspects of the business they were most focused, any major decisions they had made in the
past year, and important actions they had recently taken. In summary, our research design centered on revealing how past experi-
ences in?uence how entrepreneurs make decisions with regard to present and future opportunities.
4.3. Data analysis
Characteristic of qualitative research (Eisenhardt, 1989; Miles and Huberman, 1994), we went back and forth between the data
and the emerging theoretical framework through a highly iterative process. As Fig. 1 summarizes, this process encompassed two
primary phases: (1) discovery and narrowing and (2) enriching and validating (Pratt and Rosa, 2003).
We ?rst read through and analyzed the transcripts of the participants' interviewresponses, looking for commonalities and differ-
ences across respondents. In examining the text at a high-level, we began seeing certain themes emerging fromthe data, speci?cally
as they related to potential sources of imprint. We assigned working names and de?nitions to these categories, and we began to apply
?rst-order codes to certain pieces of text. For example, we came across interviewquotes like, “It all started with my parents. My dad
is an entrepreneur, and my mom has always been really supportive.” We noted that this statement highlights the concept of ‘family
support’ in entrepreneurship.
After identifying numerous categories, we began coding phrases, sentences, or paragraphs with these emergent themes and com-
paring how these themes related to one another and extant theory. Through a highly iterative process, we narrowed the entrepre-
neurs' discussion of the past, present, and future into a limited number of general themes, which we refer to as sources of imprint:
family; partners; education; work experience; work-related knowledge, skills, abilities (KSAs); technology; and the environment.
1
The aspects we asked about included cash ?ow, personal enjoyment, sales growth, net pro?ts, reducing debt, innovativeness, improving society, achieving some-
thing, gaining recognition, customer satisfaction, and launching another project/venture. All 25 entrepreneurs completed the follow-up survey.
Table 1
Description of sample.
Firm Source of imprint Year founded % owner Yrs of management
experience
a
Yrs of entrepreneurial
experience
# of ventures
founded
Fitness center Work Exp./KSA 2009 50% 0 8 4
Auto parts manufacturer Family/friends 1988 100% 0 24 4
Document management solutions Work Exp./KSA 2000 50% 4 14 3
Web design Mixed 2010 100% 0 1 1
Architectural Work Exp./KSA 2010 100% 9 1 1
Entrepreneurial consulting Mixed 2008 5% 5 25 7
Frozen yogurt restaurant Family/friends 2010 100% 0 4 2
Illustrations Tech./environ. 1989 100% 0 22 1
Golf swing aid Tech./environ. 2009 100% 0 2 1
Management consulting Work Exp./KSA 1997 100% 16 14 1
Speech consulting Work Exp./KSA 2010 100% 32 10 2
Accounting Family/friends 2007 100% 14 20 5
Referrals Tech./environ. 2000 100% 0 30+ 2
IT/AV home installation Work Exp./KSA 2010 85% 1 1 2
Catering/graphics design Tech./environ. 2011 51% 1 2 2
Social networking website Tech./environ. 2010 50% 10 4 2
Medical care Work Exp./KSA 2009 100% 21 2 1
Health care non-pro?t Work Exp./KSA 1996 100% 2 10 4
Architectural Work Exp./KSA 2007 99% 2 11 2
Construction/real estate Family/friends 1990 11% 0 20 3
Golf products Family/friends 2009 50% 0 30 5
Trucking/farm chemical sales Family/friends 1989 50% 0 30+ 2
Marketing coach Work Exp./KSA 2008 100% 10 1 6
Environmental data management Tech./environ. 2006 100% 9 5 1
Video production/book publishing Tech./environ. 2005 64% 0 14 4
a
Years of management experience prior to launching current business.
5 B.D. Mathias et al. / Journal of Business Venturing xxx (2014) xxx–xxx
Please cite this article as: Mathias, B.D., et al., Entrepreneurial inception: The role of imprinting in entrepreneurial action, J. Bus.
Venturing (2014),http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusvent.2014.07.004
Next, in order to further enrich, validate, and develop theoretical insights from these emergent themes, we employed content
analysis of the entrepreneurs' responses. We followed the general framework for enhancing construct validity when using content
analysis advocated by Short et al. (2010). The qualitative software program, QDA, aided in this process by identifying frequently
used words or phrases and comparing total word count across responses. We began building dictionaries for each of the categories
by ?nding words that matched with each construct. For example, our quote above included several words that we incorporated
into our dictionary for ‘family,’ such as parents, dad, and mom. We honed our dictionaries by examining the context in which each
of the words in our working dictionaries were used; this allowed us to determine when and if words should be added or deleted
and thus enhanced the reliability of our ?ndings (Short et al., 2010). We went back and forth between our working dictionaries
and our transcript data to re?ne our dictionary word lists. Table 2 lists the words in each of our ?nal dictionaries for the constructs
(sources of imprint).
4.4. Sources of imprint and entrepreneurial action
Next, since we were interested in understanding not only the salient sources of imprint but also how those imprints affect entre-
preneurial action, we created a dictionary titled ‘opportunity’ following the same procedures described above. With this dictionary,
we intended to capture vital entrepreneurial views and behaviors related to opportunity identi?cation, evaluation, and exploitation
by including words such as launch, create, and develop. Rather than capturing a speci?c opportunity, we sought to measure opportu-
nity more broadly by building a dictionary that incorporated entrepreneurs' general thinking about opportunities.
On the aggregate, this approach produced somewhat ambiguous results, but as we delved further into the transcripts, we recog-
nized certain patterns emerging. We realized that our data were highly congruent with speci?c sources of imprint. Therefore, we
grouped our entrepreneurs according to which source(s) of imprint were most salient to them. This process resulted in three
Phase 1: Discovery and Narrowing
1. Read through and analyze transcripts
2. Construct categories (i.e., sources of imprint)
a. Provide names for categories
b. Establish working definitions of categories
c. Begin coding transcript data with emerging
categories
3. Explore relationships between categories
a. Understand how categories relate to one
another
b. Understand how categories relate to extant
theory
4. Hone categories by collapsing overlapping
constructs
Phase 2: Enriching and Validating (Content
Analysis)
1. Identify commonly used words and phrases
2. Begin building dictionaries by finding words that
match category
3. Examine the context of word usage and add or
delete words based on the whether they accurately
reflect the definition of a category
4. Step back and re-examine the relationships
among the dictionaries and how they relate to one
another and extant theory
5. Refine and finalize word list in each dictionary
Fig. 1. Data analysis process*. *Adapted from Fig. 1 in Pratt and Rosa (2003: 397).
Table 2
Word lists for content analysis.
Construct Content analysis words
Opportunity Acted, came up with, concept, creat*, decid*, decision*, develop*, discover*, do it better, idea*, chance, identif*, looking, notice*,
open*, opportunity, launch*, recogniz*, saw a need, saw this need, search*, start*, realiz*, venture*
Sources of imprint
Family Baby, born, boyfriend, brother*, child*, dad, family, father, friend*, girlfriend, grandma, grandpa, relationship*, relative*, sister*,
spouse, son
Education Academ*, bachelor*, class*, colleg*, degree*, educat*, graduat*, instruct*, major*, MBA, professor*, program*, school*, semester*,
student*, teach*, theories, theory, universit*
Work experience Bosses, career, corporat*, internship, job, manager*, my boss, my supervisor, over me, position*, previous ?rm, prior ?rm,
profession, worked for
Knowledge/skills Begin*, build*, capital, design*, develop*, enter, entrepreneur*, entry, establish*, ?nanc*, ?nd*, found*, go, idea*, imagin*, initiate,
innovat*, inspir*, invent*, launch*, love, make, new business, passion*, pro?t*, set-up, start, venture, work
Partners Advisor*, alliance*, coach*, joint, board*, partner*, team*, network*
Technology Automate, blog*, computer, digital, electronic, engineering, Facebook, Google, innovat*, internet, laptop, online, paperless, social
media, software, systems, tech*, tweet, Twitter, web, website*, wireless
Environment Auster*, boom or bust, city, community, cutback*, economy, environment*, feast or famine, federal, government, industry, layoff*,
markets, policy, policies, politic*, recession, regulation*, state, town, competit*
* indicates wildcard (e.g., creat* would include words such as create, creates, creating, creativeness, etc.)
6 B.D. Mathias et al. / Journal of Business Venturing xxx (2014) xxx–xxx
Please cite this article as: Mathias, B.D., et al., Entrepreneurial inception: The role of imprinting in entrepreneurial action, J. Bus.
Venturing (2014),http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusvent.2014.07.004
categorizations of entrepreneurs: those imprinted by (1) family and friends (2) technology and the environment, or (3) work expe-
rience and work-related KSAs. Based on word frequency, we conducted a factor analysis. Inall but 2 of the 25 cases, each entrepreneur
loaded onto a single source of imprint category (i.e., factor loading N .5 without cross-loadings). While we acknowledge that not all
entrepreneurs fall neatly into one grouping and that these groupings are not exhaustive, this distinction allows for a better under-
standing of how different sources of imprint in?uence how the entrepreneurial decision-making process unfolds over time and
how the sources of imprint impact opportunity-related actions.
2
We visually mapped the opportunity dictionary with our sources of imprint dictionaries (e.g., family) to show how different
sources of imprint relate to how entrepreneurs think about opportunity. Fig. 2 shows the results of this visual mapping. The size of
the sphere represents how often (measured via word count) entrepreneurs used words in a respective dictionary. For example,
Fig. 2 demonstrates that the ‘family’ sphere (the circle that looks like an eye) is particularly large (i.e., important) for the past and
present for the ?rst group of entrepreneurs (see Row 1 labeled ‘Family & Friends’). The distance between spheres is determined by
Jaccard's coef?cient—a test to measure similarity between sets of data. In our case, the data are words. For example, Fig. 2 shows
that work-related KSAs were often discussed in conjunction with opportunity-related language for some entrepreneurs because
these spheres are closer in proximity to the opportunity sphere (see Row 3 labeled ‘Work Experience & KSA’).
As Fig. 2 shows, we found that for certain individuals, some sources of imprint waxed or waned in importance over time. For
example, for entrepreneurs imprinted by family and friends (see Row 1), work-related KSAs grew in importance from the past
to the present and then lessened in importance from the present to the future. However, for these same entrepreneurs, family,
friends, and partners had a signi?cant in?uence, speci?cally on their past and current (present) decision making (see Row 1). In
contrast to individuals imprinted by close relations, the technology and environment around their passions led some individuals,
albeit indirectly, to entrepreneurial action (see Row 2). Still, for others, ‘becoming an entrepreneur’ often occurred as individuals
realized that an opportunity existed and their unique expertise would allow them to pursue that opportunity. For these individuals,
the most salient and enduring source of imprint was their prior work experience and the knowledge and skills developed therein
(see Row 3).
In sum, we identi?ed three broad sources of imprint in?uencing entrepreneurs' thinking. While some sources waxed and
waned, others had an important in?uence over time. Although the sources of imprint themselves are not new to the entrepreneur-
ship literature, the ways in which they in?uence how entrepreneurs think about opportunities, how they make decisions, and how
they prime venture priorities represent particularly interesting outcomes of the imprinting process. We delve into these ?ndings
below.
5. Findings
The visual mapping exercise provides preliminary evidence of howimportant certain sources of imprint are to howentrepreneurs
think about opportunity. The spheres that are larger and closer to the ‘opportunity’ dictionary are likely more important to entrepre-
neurial decision making. This does not imply that entrepreneurs merely absorb stimuli without agency; certainly, entrepreneurs have
discretion over what in?uences their thought processes. Rather, we suggest that certain sources of imprint are more salient to some
than others and that these salient imprints have anindelible impact on howentrepreneurs evaluate and act upon opportunities. Inthe
following sections, we discuss our ?ndings regarding sources of imprint and entrepreneurs.
5.1. Source of imprint: family and friends
We found that family, friends, and partners maintain a signi?cant in?uence on some entrepreneurs and in?uence their past and
current decision making. For these individuals, imprinting often occurs early in life; thus, becoming an entrepreneur occurs inten-
tionally, and being an entrepreneur is a critical part of who they are. These entrepreneurs seek out ways to become entrepreneurs
and are passionate about the challenges of pursuing new venture opportunities even at the expense of growing their existing
business(es).
I know the ?rst time I thought about a business was when I was 10 years of age, sitting on my father's garage, and I looked at the
neighbor across the road … and they seemed more af?uent [than my own family], and they had a business. And I worked that out
at an early age that if you really want to be successful in life, you really have to have a business.
[Auto Parts Manufacturer, Owner]
I have always had businesses, even when I was a little kid. Right off the bat, I knew that [starting businesses] was something I liked.
[Golf Products, Owner]
I got into farming with my dad back when I was smaller because that is all we had to do was work. I always enjoyed that.
[Trucking/Farm Chemicals, Owner]
2
Interestingly, although our sample includes entrepreneurs with differences in age, years of entrepreneurial or management experience, and/or ownership percent-
age, our qualitative reviewof the transcripts as well as our statistical comparisons of the dictionaries showno signi?cant differences between entrepreneurs varying on
these demographics. Instead, the source of imprint represents the driving in?uence in our ?ndings.
7 B.D. Mathias et al. / Journal of Business Venturing xxx (2014) xxx–xxx
Please cite this article as: Mathias, B.D., et al., Entrepreneurial inception: The role of imprinting in entrepreneurial action, J. Bus.
Venturing (2014),http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusvent.2014.07.004
Like the individuals above who expressed aninterest in entrepreneurship at anearly age, many individuals are drawn to entrepre-
neurship years before they ever launch their ?rst business. Without question, interests and aspirations can change between the age of
10 and the time one pursues a profession, yet even before the age of 10, the development of the way individuals think about the world
has already begun (Kolb, 1984). Extensive research has shown that in the early stages of socialization, such as childhood and adoles-
cence, individuals' cognitions are especially susceptible to the in?uence of others (Bandura, 1986; Ibarra, 1999). As such, prominent
role models and mentors, such as parents, play an important role in guiding individuals' development and career selection (Keller
and Whiston, 2008; Ozgen and Baron, 2007). Being raised in a family of entrepreneurs does not ensure one will pursue a career in
entrepreneurship, but research has shown that individuals who growup in an entrepreneurial family or are at least exposed to entre-
preneurship early in life are far more likely to pursue entrepreneurial endeavors than those who are not (Crant, 1996; Scott and
Twomey, 1988).
It all started with my parents. My dad is an entrepreneur, and my momhas always been really supportive …I was just brought up in
that sense.
[Frozen Yogurt, Owner]
In a nutshell, I come froma family of business owners—parents, brothers, aunts, uncles, and highly creative people. I was never taught
to be an employee … I was always raised thinking like a business owner, and so I stink at being an employee—just not my thing.
[Accounting Firm, Owner]
My father was very much an entrepreneur and sort of instilled it inthe family. I come froma family of seven, and each one of themhas
a business or businesses that they are involved with … The spirit of entrepreneurship was infused in each of the kids.
[Construction/Real Estate, Owner]
For these entrepreneurs, family is clearly the most salient source of imprint underlying what led themto pursue entrepreneurship.
However, for imprinting to occur, actions must followfroma set of learned behaviors. That is, what has happened in the past must be
re?ected in individuals' present and future actions. When asked about how they make decisions currently in their business and
Fig. 2. The entrepreneurial nexus—with opportunity in center.
8 B.D. Mathias et al. / Journal of Business Venturing xxx (2014) xxx–xxx
Please cite this article as: Mathias, B.D., et al., Entrepreneurial inception: The role of imprinting in entrepreneurial action, J. Bus.
Venturing (2014),http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusvent.2014.07.004
speci?cally who or what they turn to in making those decisions, again these entrepreneurs often cited family members as instrumen-
tal in their decision-making process.
It really just depends on the situation, but there are a lot of times I turn to my parents. Like I said, my dad had been involved in real
estate and dealing with all these businesses for his whole life. My momis just a very personable person. Anytime I have the employee
issues, I'll turn to my mom. She is much better at dealing with people than I am, dad the same.
[Frozen Yogurt, Owner]
I have a momand dad who hit me with a two by four every so often [when I have bad business ideas]. My momreally keeps me on the
line. Everyone needs a mom like mine.
[Accounting Firm, Owner]
For some entrepreneurs, they trade a family in?uence for that of close friends or partners in their decision-making processes.
Research also demonstrates that these individuals can imprint other individuals. For example, through the notion of imprinted ties,
McEvily et al. (2012) posit that mentors of early career lawyers impact the amount of knowledge young lawyers obtain and the sub-
sequent growth of their respective ?rms. Studies also highlight the important imprinting effects early career mentors have among
scientists in regard to patenting behavior (Azoulay et al., 2011) as well as the impact early career co-workers have on entrepreneurial
decisions years later (Kacperczyk, 2009). In our study, a real estate owner referenced his personal “network of relationships” as
important for guidance, and an auto parts owner made decisions by “empowering and consulting” his “close-knit of?ce” to make
decisions like “a team.”
I will look to my successes and failures and try to help my son with that [learning] and analogize that to other industries. What can we
learn from them? My network of relationships. I will also call on this network for guidance as well.
[Construction/Real Estate, Owner]
I do things as a team. I always like getting other viewpoints and second opinions. ‘Cause one good thing about being in this close-knit
of?ce—this is really the management teamhere. And they're always being consulted. Everything we do we do as a team…Everyone is
empowered with responsibilities, and everyone has a say with what goes on.
[Auto Parts Manufacturer, Owner]
Together, our interviews revealed family and close relationships imprint some entrepreneurs and guide their thought processes.
As one respondent suggested, she had “grown up thinking like a business owner,” while another respondent claimed “entrepreneur-
ship was infused[inhim] as a kid.” As the primary source of imprint, family and close-friends become critical for entrepreneurs as they
make decisions for their respective business(es), as illustrated in Fig. 2, Row 1. Whether it is actively seeking out advice from family
or consulting with close friends, these entrepreneurs tend to make decisions collectively by soliciting advice from individuals they
intimately know and trust.
By engaging family and friends in decision making, such as decisions within their existing ventures or decisions concerning
selecting new opportunities, these entrepreneurs open up their list of alternatives and actively search for the best opportunities
available to them. As the ideas generated in the decision-making process may (or may not) have originated from the entrepreneurs
themselves, a selected opportunity may (or may not) be related to what the entrepreneur currently knows. Instead, the information
might stimulate entrepreneurs to broaden their decision making and select opportunities fromwithin the realmof possibilities rather
than within the realm of what they intimately know. Thus, we put forth the following proposition:
Proposition 1. Entrepreneurs imprinted by family and friends engage in participative decision making and thus pursue venture opportu-
nities beyond their respective industry or ?eld.
Although growth is often a central goal for entrepreneurs (Stewart et al., 2003), growth is not necessarily the primary focus for
entrepreneurs imprinted by family. Instead, pursuing newideas, challenges, and opportunities may take precedence. Perhaps not sur-
prisingly, many of our participants could be classi?ed as serial entrepreneurs—on average, they had founded four ventures, and each
had started at least two businesses.
Prior researchshows that early exposure, suchas exposure to internationalization, imprints organizations for adaptability to uncer-
tain environments and internal receptivity for continual change (Sapienza et al., 2006). Our ?ndings indicate that the same is true for
entrepreneurs. Those individuals exposed to entrepreneurship at a young age, particularly through family, are repeatedly willing to
take on newchallenges by pursuing new businesses. For them, entrepreneurship is, to a large extent, about launching new ventures.
With prior exposure to the entrepreneurial process, these individuals are more receptive to new and unexplored challenges, and as
such, they are more likely to pursue new venture opportunities. When asked about their plans for the future, they claimed they
were driven by “more challenges” and “new opportunities” rather than pro?ts and growth:
That decision-making process is driven by the opportunities that present themselves, but also where we are ?nancially … It is driven
by the pool of resources we have to deploy capital and then what are the business opportunities presenting themselves.
[Construction/Real Estate, Owner]
9 B.D. Mathias et al. / Journal of Business Venturing xxx (2014) xxx–xxx
Please cite this article as: Mathias, B.D., et al., Entrepreneurial inception: The role of imprinting in entrepreneurial action, J. Bus.
Venturing (2014),http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusvent.2014.07.004
I don't really do things for the money. It's just a measurement of success. Last year, I was starting to get bored …so we're in the process
of negotiating in setting up a newEuropean distribution base—really tackle Europe …I need some more challenges, so I'mcreating a
lot of things to take it up to the next level.
[Auto Parts Manufacturer, Owner]
I would love, love, love to open a climbing gym … It is something I would be passionate about. It would be one of the few things
I would do even if the money wasn't behind it, like not a lot of pro?t.
[Frozen Yogurt, Owner]
I love the chaos of a start-up, so I would go out and look for start-ups or things to begin. I cannot stand it when things become routine.
[Accounting Firm, Owner]
Additionally, when asked in our follow-up survey what important actions they had taken over the past year, we found that these
entrepreneurs continued to place signi?cantly more importance on pursuing new ventures than other entrepreneurs with different
sources of imprint. For example, the auto parts manufacturer referenced above claimed that he “had launched his European division,”
while another entrepreneur claimed that he was “investing in three new business ventures and two non-pro?ts.” Table 3 illustrates
additional results of this survey, in whichentrepreneurs described major investment decisions they had made in the subsequent year.
This leads us to propose the following:
Proposition 2. Over time, entrepreneurs imprinted by family and friends focus on venture creation, rather than venture development, by
pursuing new and oftentimes unrelated ventures.
5.2. Source of imprint: technology and the environment associated with hobbies
Technology and the environment have a profound in?uence on some entrepreneurs. These individuals are ardent about inventing
through meeting unmet needs, solving problems, or making existing products better, and entrepreneurship seems to just happen,
often accidentally (Shah and Tripsas, 2007). Similar to Shah and Tripsas (2007) notion of user entrepreneurs and Fauchart and
Gruber's (2011) communitarians, these entrepreneurs largely engage in activities they enjoy and about which they are passionate.
Gradually, they recognize this passion as an opportunity and pursue it through a new venture.
The way I got into it [illustrating] was really even when I was a small kid, being the kid that could draw. I always thought it would be
cool to make a living by drawing …In the early 90s, I bought my ?rst Mac and just dabbled a little. I took one class in Photoshop, but
the rest was just trial and error.
[Illustrations, Owner]
I always really liked writing, so I always thought I'd have a career in writing. In my earlier years, I never really thought of myself as an
entrepreneur. I kind of fell into it [entrepreneurship] by accident. I have always been a restless person. I had been kind of messing
around with web development and web design [for technical writing and video production sales], but I had never started a business
before.
[Video/Publishing, Owner]
I just like to cook. It is a hobby. It is easy to get into and fun to do.
[Catering/Graphics Design, Owner]
Table 3
Quotes concerning actual investment decisions (1 year after initial interview).
Proposition Entrepreneur Example of actual decisions—1 year later
Proposition 2. Over time, entrepreneurs imprinted by family
and friends focus on venture creation, rather than venture
development, by pursuing new and oftentimes unrelated
ventures.
Real estate/construction
owner
“Invested in an online retail ?rm, as well as spent innumerable hours
on research for a CNG station and conversion ?rm.”
Golf products owner “We spent a bit on samples, travel, and generally pulling info together
to see if we are ready to go [into a new venture].”
Proposition 4. Over time, entrepreneurs imprinted by the
technology and environment associated with their hobbies
focus on ventures without regard for pecuniary motives.
Illustrations owner “I have invested my time and talents into my business. I have invested
?nancially in my existing business in the form of self-promotional
material and technology.”
Referrals owner “We've invested in new technology to help our clients.”
Proposition 6. Over time, entrepreneurs imprinted by
prior work experience and the KSAs derived from that
experience focus on growing their ventures.
Architectural ?rmowner “I am continuing to invest in the business I started in 2010.”
IT/AV home installation
owner
“I have invested into new products for my existing business.”
10 B.D. Mathias et al. / Journal of Business Venturing xxx (2014) xxx–xxx
Please cite this article as: Mathias, B.D., et al., Entrepreneurial inception: The role of imprinting in entrepreneurial action, J. Bus.
Venturing (2014),http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusvent.2014.07.004
For individuals like these, their passions for speci?c activities (or products) often lead them, albeit indirectly, to entrepreneurial
action. Prior knowledge is integral to the pursuit of opportunities, but how those opportunities emerge is also critical. Through
deep and active engagement in interests and hobbies, individuals can build up a stock of knowledge and discover and create new
products andservices (Zahra et al., 2006). For example, the golf swing aidowner referencedbelowspent more thananhour discussing
how he spent two years of his life developing a new product: a golf swing training aid.
I like to play golf. The problemI was having was that my golf shots were never consistent, and I knewthere were several people having
the same problem of shifting their weight wrong. That is when I had this idea for a sensor under my left foot. That is what started it
[the business].
[Golf Swing Aid, Owner]
Inmany ways, this individual was aninventor, yet he moved beyondtinkering by acting upon anopportunity andlaunching a new
venture. It was evident he was passionate about building this product and seeing its development through to fruition. As the product-
development process progressed, he began recognizing the possibilities (i.e., commercial opportunities) for what he had created, but
he lacked the prior knowledge for how to exploit that opportunity.
Again, this is just serendipity the way that this worked …I got anidea and a working prototype. Where do yougo with it? The average
guy doesn't know where to go. I didn't know where to go.
[Golf Swing Aid, Owner]
For entrepreneurs imprinted by the environment and technology, the entrepreneurial process is not centered on creating and
launching businesses. Rather, these individuals focus on creating and developing products and services about which they are passionate.
Ventures are just the vehicles through which they can exercise these passions. Entrenched in the development of their products and ser-
vices, these entrepreneurs are particularly attentive to the environmental andtechnological disruptions occurring intheir respective area.
If you'd asked me 10 years prior, “Would you be running your own company?” I was personally more of a—I like the security of
working for someone. I guess it took the changes in the world and the opening of the eyes.
[Environmental Data Management, Owner]
Together, our interviews indicated that for some entrepreneurs, technology and the environment related to inventing new
products or services, represents a particularly salient source of imprint. These individuals heavily emphasize the products or services
they invent/create which are grounded in their interests and hobbies as well as re?ect environmental changes and technological
advances. These passions develop through strong emotional engagement over time. For example, the golf swing aid owner had
“loved to golf [his] entire life.” He described his swing aid in great detail and directed the lead author toward some YouTube videos
demonstrating his product. The illustrations owner “enjoyed drawing, even as a small kid.” He discussed the evolution (moving
fromhand drawing into the digital age) of the illustrations industry at great length and howhis business ?lls unmet needs in the mar-
ketplace. Demonstrating his passion, he brought some of his work to the interview, including a poster and a book, and he presented
themto us as gifts. The social networking owner enthusiastically discussed his website, carefully described howit solves an important
problem, and explained how his partner and product developer initially responded to his idea.
Like user entrepreneurs (Shah and Tripsas, 2007; von Hippel, 1994, 2009), these entrepreneurs focus on an idea, an innovation, or
a solutionthat they personally enact. Althoughthey might initially lack the diverse entrepreneurial network typical of those imprinted
by friends and family, interestingly, they enjoy working independently or in a small community of individuals with like-minded
interests (i.e., user communities) to develop their innovations. For example, when they discussed how they make decisions in their
business(es), our participants focused on themselves and/or groups of individuals with similar interests.
A lot of decisions are just made by myself.
[Catering/Graphics Design, Owner]
I do ask for help, but I make most decisions myself.
[Video/Publishing, Owner]
I have about 75 blogs that I look at on a weekly basis. I'm constantly discussing with other people in social media things that are up
and coming and going on and what we think are going away.
[Web Design, Owner]
When individuals are embedded in a user community, the development and commercialization of their product can be highly in-
?uenced by the individuals in that community or the potential adopters of the product they have developed (Autio et al., 2013; Shah
and Tripsas, 2007). In other words, these individuals take the support, advice, and feedback they receive from community members
and potential product users and leverage that information to improve their product. By relying on themselves and others with highly
similar interests, these entrepreneurs' behaviors can be self-reinforcing, leading to greater levels of identi?cation over time (Dutton
11 B.D. Mathias et al. / Journal of Business Venturing xxx (2014) xxx–xxx
Please cite this article as: Mathias, B.D., et al., Entrepreneurial inception: The role of imprinting in entrepreneurial action, J. Bus.
Venturing (2014),http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusvent.2014.07.004
et al., 1994) and an increased likelihood of taking entrepreneurial action (Autio et al., 2013). Thus, in making decisions and pursuing
opportunities, these individuals often focus on the creation (and improvement) of a product that can be commercialized rather than
the creation of a business that offers products. As such, we suggest the following:
Proposition 3. Entrepreneurs imprinted by the technology and environment associated with their hobbies rely on themselves or user
community members when making decisions and thus orient toward ventures within their technology or hobby domain.
Context is highly signi?cant to the imprinting process (Johnson, 2007), and extensive research has shown the imprinting effect of
initial resources on the early growth path of new ventures (Hannan et al., 1996). However, when looking toward the future, fewen-
trepreneurs imprinted by technology or the environment focus on growth or the pursuit of newventures. Instead, their ‘development
trajectory’ leads them to continue to pursue their passion for their hobbies and interests, as re?ected in their venture's products or
services, such as improving products and designs or satisfying customers.
We're not trying to be on any kind of exponential growth curve and growto a $600 million company. That's not our goal. Our primary
goal is taking care of our customers and taking care of our employees, and I don't really have any interest in growing.
[Environmental Data Management, Owner]
I would like to start a design consortiumin the area. It's anidea I've been toying with—a place for all walks to come together and share
their stories and network and help each other out. My idea is kind of along the same lines of a non-pro?t, of bringing together the
surrounding area's web designers and web developers to not only give each other a sounding board for ideas and things like that
but to help each other out.
[Web Design, Owner]
While exposure to entrepreneurship at a young age leaves imprints on some entrepreneurs that guide them toward pursuing
many ventures, the imprints of technology and the environment lead entrepreneurs down a different path. These imprints do not nec-
essarily pertain to business or entrepreneurship but to the products or services associated with the entrepreneur's interests. As such,
these entrepreneurs' focus tends to be on what they invent that their venture produces.
Researchhas indicated that some individuals may be sopassionate about their inventor role that they may never actually take their
products to the market or found the venture to exploit the opportunity (Cardon et al., 2009: 517). Thus, it is perhaps not surprising
that our ?ndings suggest that once our participants eventually decided to pursue an opportunity, their passions were transferred to
their new venture. In their new ventures, they were fully involved in decision-making processes and highly vested in the success
of the company, where success is as much about intrinsic rewards (i.e., creating a product/service they are proud of and improving
upon it) as it is about extrinsic rewards.
When asked in our follow-up survey, entrepreneurs imprinted by technology and the environment valued personal enjoyment
more highly than other entrepreneurs, ranking personal enjoyment higher (2.8 out of 11) than those imprinted by work experience/
KSAs (4.0 out of 11) or family, friends, and partners (5.3 out of 11). Additionally, when asked about their investments and experiences
over the past year (see also Table 3), one entrepreneur imprinted by technology and the environment claimed her new venture had
been “very rewarding, both personally and ?nancially,” while another claimed he was “focused onhis existing business, and developing
newprototypes.” Together, these entrepreneurs—similar to user entrepreneurs (Shah and Tripsas, 2007; von Hippel, 1986)—continued
to put their passion and enjoyment ?rst by remaining focused on product and service development. As such, we propose the following:
Proposition 4. Over time, entrepreneurs imprinted by the technology and environment associated with their hobbies focus on ventures
without regard for pecuniary motives.
5.3. Source of imprint: prior work experience
Still for others, prior work experience and the KSAs derived from that experience are a highly salient source of imprint. For these
individuals, ‘becoming an entrepreneur’ often occurs as individuals realize that an opportunity exists, and their unique expertise and
skills in the ?eld allowthemto pursue and develop that opportunity. Not surprisingly, these entrepreneurs want to nurture a singular
emergent opportunity rather than create multiple newventures or continually solve newproblems. As such, going forward, these en-
trepreneurs remain most focused on a single business, with the goal of growing and building that business.
I was working in an environment with a lot of other people as a vice president for sales, and I realized that there was no one out there
consulting in the area of self-management. And I said, “maybe this is an issue” because I realized that [sales management] was a weak
link in a lot of companies. So I recognized this business opportunity ?rst.
[Management Consulting, Owner]
I got started, I worked for [redacted] company for about four years … And then, they were making changes to their direct sales and
going more toward channel sales. And when I saw that happening, I saw this opportunity to pursue in terms of document-
management solutions.
[Document Management Solutions, Owner]
12 B.D. Mathias et al. / Journal of Business Venturing xxx (2014) xxx–xxx
Please cite this article as: Mathias, B.D., et al., Entrepreneurial inception: The role of imprinting in entrepreneurial action, J. Bus.
Venturing (2014),http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusvent.2014.07.004
Many individuals possess years of professional experience before they take entrepreneurial action. Prior information, such as that
developed through work experience, is highly in?uential in an entrepreneur's ability to comprehend, synthesize, and apply new in-
formation; those who lack such prior information will likely be at a disadvantage in discovering or creating entrepreneurial opportu-
nities (Roberts, 1991). Further, Shane (2000) highlights three critical dimensions for entrepreneurial discovery: prior knowledge of
markets, prior knowledge of ways to serve markets, and prior knowledge of customer problems. Both the management consulting
owner and the document management solutions owner cited above described how their experiences as employees triggered their
recognition of an opportunity. Through their industry-speci?c experiences, these individuals accumulated a wealth of prior knowl-
edge—knowledge of the industry, markets, customers, and gaps in current product/service offerings—that allowed themto recognize
opportunities others had not.
Prior knowledge is critical to an entrepreneur's cognitive mindset (Westhead et al., 2005). For entrepreneurs imprinted by work
experience, the way in which they evaluate and select opportunities is largely based on prior knowledge and skills mainly derived
through professional work experience; other sources of imprint were less central.
I'man architect and have been practicing for 15 years now, working for various-sized ?rms. Last year, I don't knowif I was insane or
overly optimistic, but I decided to go out on my own and make a go of it.
[Architectural Firm, Owner]
I have over 20 years of corporate marketing and project management experience. After my ?fth layoff in 10 years, I started to think
well maybe I should start out on my own.
[Marketing Coach, Owner]
I was teaching an undergraduate course in professional communications for two years full time. Finally, I decided I don't want to do
this anymore, so I came up with this idea that seemed like a pretty obvious need: working with professional corporations in training
and development.
[Speech Consulting, Owner]
Through this wealth of experience, entrepreneurs like these realize a weak link, see the opportunity, and ?ll a need. These entre-
preneurs leverage their deep expertise in a ?eld to realize an opportunity, a source of imprint that also affects how they think about
current and future growth opportunities and how they make decisions.
While prior work experience can represent a valuable resource, it can also lead to highly industry- or ?rm-speci?c cognition
(Benner and Tripsas, 2012). Put differently, the thought processes through which individuals evaluate and select opportunities can
be deeply rooted in prior employment experiences. Sources of imprint, particularly those gained in a job or career, can push entrepre-
neurs into different patterns of personal choice (i.e., development trajectories) (Minniti and Bygrave, 2001). In talking with partici-
pants with work experience imprints, we found many had a deep-seated knowledge of their area of expertise. However, similar
to those imprinted by technology and the environment, these entrepreneurs often lacked or were uninterested in the business-side
requirements of running an enterprise:
I'd say the paperwork side of it [is the most challenging part of being an entrepreneur]. I'd like to just do what I love to do, and that's
train people—be a strength and conditioning coach. And the paperwork, the taxes, everything that has to be taken care of, I ?ndthat to
be probably the biggest hurdle just because I don't have a background in any of that stuff.
[Fitness Center, Owner]
I have made some mistakes in the past on delegating the wrong thing and trying to be the accountant. I aman architect. I need to be
an architect and delegate the accounting.
[Architectural Firm, Owner #2]
The most challenging part of being an entrepreneur is ?nding out what paperwork you need to actually ?ll out … Architects, most of
them, have large egos and think they can do everything. So they will do their own logos, graphics, and website design. Again, I have a
different approach. I realize there are people that are better at that part than I am.
[Architectural Firm (different than architectural ?rm above), Owner #1]
Many of these entrepreneurs are overwhelmed with and sometimes ill-prepared for the ‘paperwork’ associated with managing a
newventure. In other words, entrepreneurs imprinted by work experience often have little af?nity for starting a business; they prefer
to work in their business, not on their business. To ?ll these knowledge and interest gaps, these individuals rely heavily on business
coaches, boards of advisors, or partners with business backgrounds in running their business and making decisions. Therefore, entre-
preneurs with work experience imprints tend to concentrate in a speci?c area without branching out into new, unrelated areas. This
leads us to propose the following:
Proposition 5. Entrepreneurs imprinted by prior work experience and KSAs derived fromthat experience delegate decisions and thus focus
on venture opportunities in known knowledge ?elds.
13 B.D. Mathias et al. / Journal of Business Venturing xxx (2014) xxx–xxx
Please cite this article as: Mathias, B.D., et al., Entrepreneurial inception: The role of imprinting in entrepreneurial action, J. Bus.
Venturing (2014),http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusvent.2014.07.004
When asked about their plans for the future, many entrepreneurs in our study claimed they were driven by organic growth and
franchising opportunities:
At some point, with our business model, we're going to reach max capacity of members, and so there's a ceiling there for pro?ts. And
eventually opening a second location somewhere else I think is the route we'd like to go.
[Fitness Center, Owner]
Finding new clients and letting them know I'm here would let me grow my ?rm.
[Architectural Firm, Owner #1]
I would probably expand to greater locations or something like that or consider franchising the business out.
[IT/AV Home Installation, Owner]
I would actually consider creating a franchise.
[Speech Consulting, Owner]
Given that (1) prior knowledge and industry-speci?c work experience are particularly salient to these entrepreneurs and the op-
portunity they elect to exploit and (2) they lack business-speci?c knowledge and interests, we conclude that they will be unlikely to
pursue new, widely varying ventures. Rather, guided by their past professional experiences, these individuals will follow a develop-
ment trajectory that allows them to further capitalize on their existing skill set, such as expanding their current venture.
The follow-up survey indicated that these entrepreneurs did indeed put greater emphasis on pro?tably expanding their current
businesses than other entrepreneurs, who focused on new businesses and personal enjoyment. On average, entrepreneurs with
work experience imprints ranked cash ?ow a 2.9 (out of 11), compared to 4.4 for the other entrepreneurs. Additionally, in the
open-ended responses about investments over the past year (see Table 3), one entrepreneur mentioned that he had invested in a
“new website, new books, new videos, and new association memberships” in order to “get his name out there.” Similarly, another
mentioned “business marketing investments, such as networking and associations” to “let the public know I am here.” To position
them for growth, these entrepreneurs joined associations, networked, and developed promotional materials to improve their
brand awareness and extend their reach into new markets, all while maintaining a focus on cash ?ow and pro?ts. Stated formally,
we propose that:
Proposition 6. Over time, entrepreneurs imprinted by prior work experience and the KSAs derived from that experience focus on growing
their ventures.
6. Discussion
Prior research demonstrates that founding conditions and founder decisions each imprint upon ventures and thus in?uence each
venture's future path (DeTienne, 2010; Milanov and Fernhaber, 2009). Building on this important research, we show that different
sources of imprint alter how entrepreneurs navigate the entrepreneurial process and how they take entrepreneurial action. In
doing so, we elucidate that speci?c sources of imprint have unique effects on entrepreneurs' decision making and priorities related
to their ventures.
6.1. Implications for imprinting and development trajectories
A major contribution of our study is the integration of imprinting theory at the individual level with research in entrepreneurship
on entrepreneurial decision making and action. To date, researchhas shown that the founding conditions and the founder decisions at
the onset of a venture have a signi?cant impact on the venture's development trajectory (DeTienne, 2010; Milanov and Fernhaber,
2009; Stinchcombe, 1965). We extend this line of thought by illustrating how certain sources of imprint have an enduring effect on
how entrepreneurs think about themselves, their opportunities, and their ventures. We highlight what sources of imprint affect
how entrepreneurs identify and develop their initial new venture opportunity and which sources of imprint provide a lasting effect
on howentrepreneurs think about opportunities. Therefore, we provide a more nuanced viewof the factors that play a role in entre-
preneurial decision making.
Speci?cally, our results indicate that when the intent to become an entrepreneur is imprinted on individuals early in life through
friends and family, individuals are more likely to be intrigued by the entrepreneurial pursuit and will thus be more likely to take en-
trepreneurial action as well as pursue more newventure opportunities. Thus, these individuals are not just more likely to become en-
trepreneurs but are more likely to continue to behave entrepreneurially by founding multiple, potentially unrelated ventures across
different product or service areas. When the source of imprint stems from a particular hobby or activity, they focus less on new ven-
tures, growth, or pro?ts. Instead, they make decisions in a self-reliant manner and take pleasure in developing products and services
related to these activities. Finally, when a career in a given profession (e.g., architecture) is the most salient source of imprint, in-
dividuals will delegate decision making and select opportunities to start and grow their business in their ?eld rather than search
for new and unrelated opportunities.
14 B.D. Mathias et al. / Journal of Business Venturing xxx (2014) xxx–xxx
Please cite this article as: Mathias, B.D., et al., Entrepreneurial inception: The role of imprinting in entrepreneurial action, J. Bus.
Venturing (2014),http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusvent.2014.07.004
Our examination of entrepreneurs' past, present, and future actions demonstrates not just that history matters but how history
matters. The past is important not only for the identi?cation and selection of an opportunity to start a ?rst venture but also to the
progression of that opportunity and potentially others. Interestingly, each source of imprint provides insight into the antecedents
of entrepreneurs' passions and motivations for pursuing (or not pursuing) opportunities. For example, different sets of passions
emerged during sensitive stages in each entrepreneur's life. Whether it was the entrepreneur who discussed “seeing his wealthy
neighbor at the age of 10 and realizing [he] wanted to be an entrepreneur” or one who “always loved to play golf and invented a
swing aid to improve [his] game,” the development of speci?c passions has animportant impact on entrepreneurs andtheir decisions.
This parallels recent work in entrepreneurship on passion and identity (Cardon et al., 2009; Fauchart and Gruber, 2011) and suggests
an important area for future research at the intersection of imprinting and identity theory. The imprinting process and corresponding
sources of imprint guide entrepreneurs' perceptions of who they are with respect to others (social identity) and what roles are salient
(role identity).
By utilizing imprinting theory, we do not imply that entrepreneurs are merely sponges imprinted by everything that happens in
life. Rather, entrepreneurs exert critical-thinking skills and make determinations for howthey perceive (or do not perceive) opportu-
nities. Without question, not everything that happens in life equally affects how entrepreneurs think about opportunities. Although
our investigation shows that what happens during sensitive stages of life—when imprinting begins—considerably matters to the fu-
ture growth and development of entrepreneurial ventures, the process of learning can also be re?exive in nature (Archer, 2003;
Mutch, 2007). In other words, it is not that entrepreneurs are imprinted and that knowledge is ‘stuck’ with the entrepreneur, but
that entrepreneurs are greatly in?uenced by those complex, and often recursive, combinations of events, people, activities, and expe-
riences that occur throughout life. This notion of re?exivity might explain why certain sources of imprint wax or wane in importance
over time, and we encourage future research to explore this further.
6.2. Imprinting and entrepreneurial decision making
Although we focus our theoretical efforts on imprinting theory, our study fundamentally involves entrepreneurial decision
making: which opportunities entrepreneurs decide to pursue, how entrepreneurs go about making important decisions, and what
decisions entrepreneurs make regarding priorities for the future of their ventures. We show that different sources of imprint result
in different decisions and different decision-making processes. Thus, sources of imprint represent an important antecedent to and
generally understudied aspect of entrepreneurship.
Our study deviates from much of the current research on entrepreneurial decision making in that we center on how and why
history matters for entrepreneurial decision making. In contrast to important research that centers on developing theory regarding
entrepreneurs' espoused and/or de facto decision models (e.g., Choi and Shepherd, 2004), we show that sources of imprint initiate
a pattern of in?uence that may begin signi?cantly prior to the decisions an entrepreneur makes today. For example, prior research
demonstrates that the extent to which a current opportunity is “related to the entrepreneur's existing knowledge, skills, and
abilities” (Haynie et al., 2009: 349) directly in?uences the entrepreneurs' evaluation and selection of that opportunity and that
prior knowledge moderates the effects of opportunity attributes on entrepreneurs' opportunity-related decision making (Wood
and Williams, 2014).
We go beyond these ?ndings to illustrate that howand where prior knowledge is gained not only in?uences entrepreneurs' deci-
sions to start a venture but also their decision-making processes whenrunning the venture. Speci?cally, we showthat these sources of
imprint are vital to which opportunities entrepreneurs identify and enact as well as the exploitation patterns of these opportunities,
notably the future growth and trajectories of their ventures. We suggest that sources of imprint can provide more than just alignable
knowledge critical to identifying, evaluating, and exploiting opportunities; they provide insight into the origins of such knowledge
corridors (Venkataraman, 1997) and their persistent in?uence over time.
Sources of imprint offer increased clarity for context that supplements our understanding of prior knowledge and the decisions
entrepreneurs make regarding opportunities. Although we inform how sources of imprint in?uence entrepreneurial decision
making, our picture of this process is far from complete. The factors in?uencing how individuals think about opportunities are in-
herently complex, highlighting areas for future research. Building on the idea of sources of imprint as the origins of knowledge
corridors, a potentially fruitful area of inquiry could be to integrate the strategic groups or clustering literature with research on
prior knowledge. For example, Shane's (2000) seminal work examines how eight entrepreneurs pursued eight vastly different
opportunities from one single innovation. Reversing this approach could offer useful insights for the study of entrepreneurship.
Such an endeavor could explore how different career paths and cognitive schemas can lead to the same opportunity pursuit
(i.e., equi?nality).
Our efforts could also help further our understanding of entrepreneurial typologies, speci?cally as it relates to user entrepreneur-
ship. In some instances, a user community might provide better information for decision making than friends or family members.
For example, a community-based social structure, one in which ideas and information are voluntarily shared among users, could
lead to greater success with opportunities that are centered on technologies and products and require signi?cant human capital.
However, a social network-based structure, one in which ideas and information are shared between close or familial ties, could
lead to greater success with opportunities that are centered on relationships and require signi?cant social capital. Additionally,
our study demonstrates that sources of imprint represent a useful way to think about ‘types’ of entrepreneurs, explaining why dif-
ferent entrepreneurs may pursue similar opportunities quite differently. Ultimately, the strategies resulting from different sources of
imprint may prove useful as a contingency leading to (or away from) equi?nality in venture success among entrepreneurs pursuing
similar opportunities.
15 B.D. Mathias et al. / Journal of Business Venturing xxx (2014) xxx–xxx
Please cite this article as: Mathias, B.D., et al., Entrepreneurial inception: The role of imprinting in entrepreneurial action, J. Bus.
Venturing (2014),http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusvent.2014.07.004
6.3. Implications for entrepreneurs and education
Consider our study's two entrepreneurs who founded golf product companies. One played golf professionally and started multiple
businesses at a relatively early age; the other played golf leisurely in retirement and launched a business after developing a new
gol?ng product. Despite having seemingly similar sources of imprint as golfers who started their own businesses, this surface-level
similarity does not tell the full story. One entrepreneur expressed a passionate interest in being an entrepreneur early in his career
and discovered an entrepreneurial opportunity related to his knowledge base. The other invented a product to solve a problem,
and the act of starting a venture re?ected his need to take the invention to market. The two entrepreneurs make decisions very
differently and foresee different paths for their own futures and their venture's futures, as the quotations below highlight:
I am never content where they [ventures] are. That can sometimes wear you out, but to me, that is what drives me. I de?nitely push
things to fruition. So they [ventures] are either going to work, and we build them, or we don't think they are going to work, and we
move on to new businesses.
[Golf Products, Owner]
I want to go back to play golf and the things I was doing before I had this idea. It is so ironic: I don't have time to play golf because
I invented a gol?ng swing aid to help golfers. What is wrong with that picture?
[Golf Swing Aid, Owner]
The above differences in seemingly similar entrepreneurs imply an important aspect of prior experience, context, and howentre-
preneurs are made (Hodgetts and Kuratko, 1995). Knowing that individuals have prior experience in gol?ng does not provide the
complete picture. In addition to what knowledge entrepreneurs possess, an understanding of where, when, and how that experience
occurs is also critical to predict entrepreneurs' future paths and decisions, and imprinting explains howthis learning process unfolds.
Our research thus highlights the importance of nurturing (e.g., mentors, work experience) in entrepreneurship. We show that role
models and educational experiences can have an indelible effect on entrepreneurs' evaluation and selection of opportunities and
their paths as entrepreneurs in general. As such, understanding how entrepreneurs are made is important.
Further, these important differences in sources of imprint suggest implications for entrepreneurial education and future research
that take a more nuanced approached to examining such sources of imprint. For example, many schools worldwide are expanding
their entrepreneurship curriculums; however, we knowlittle about which educational experiences are most salient to entrepreneurs
(Martin et al., 2013). Future research on the effects of different courses, cases, or competitions could not only shed light on imprinting
and entrepreneurship theory but also improve the effectiveness of entrepreneurship programs. For example, future research could
explore the extent to which entrepreneurs with different sources of imprint need different types of entrepreneurial education at
different stages of their lives.
6.4. Limitations and future research
Our study's limitations provide avenues for future research. First, we asked entrepreneurs to recall what led them to pursue their
?rst venture, and asking participants to recall past experiences may introduce retrospective bias. However, it was important for us to
uncover which sources of imprint entrepreneurs felt impacted their past decisions so we could compare these to how the same en-
trepreneurs approached current and future decisions. Thus, we strove to identify emotionally and cognitively-salient in?uences
that extend beyond the initial venture-creation decision. Further, we triangulated our interview responses with archival and third-
party information sources. We also followed up with our entrepreneurs by sending a condensed interviewreport back to each partic-
ipant highlighting the most important aspects of themselves and their business(es) and had them respond with comments
concerning inaccuracies. However, we cannot fully explain the extent to which biases in?uenced respondents' recollection and per-
ceptions of past events.
Second, we focus on the outcome of the imprinting process, not the learning process that takes place during imprinting. Future
research examining the imprinting process in situ would reveal a great deal about howimprinting occurs and would minimize poten-
tial retrospective bias. Such research could examine individuals prior to becoming entrepreneurs, follow them as they progress
through their career, and track what sources of imprint impact their entrepreneurial pursuits and at what points in time certain
sources of imprint fade or grow in importance. Such research could also examine when—if at all—certain sources of imprint cease
to continue in?uencing the entrepreneur's decision making and thus when the lasting effect ends.
Further, our sampling strategy introduced the potential for regional bias, survivorship bias, and endogeneity. Despite our efforts to
limit such biases, each of these re?ects potential limitations in the generalizability of our study. However, we note that our sampling
strategy, although intended to be as representative as possible, was designed to provide variety in sources of imprint but not neces-
sarily to create an exhaustive typology of sources of imprint. Instead, we sought to develop theory that would lend insight into how
such sources of imprint in?uence howentrepreneurs think, make decisions, and operate their ventures today and in their envisioned
futures. Thus, it is possible that other samples of entrepreneurs (e.g., those from different geographical or cultural regions, those not
associatedwithan entrepreneurial organization, and/or those whose ventures have already failed) might identify other sources of im-
print as particularly in?uential. We encourage future research that identi?es additional sources of imprint, examines the effects
of these differences, and includes samples that measure the success and failure of entrepreneurs from a variety of regions and
backgrounds.
16 B.D. Mathias et al. / Journal of Business Venturing xxx (2014) xxx–xxx
Please cite this article as: Mathias, B.D., et al., Entrepreneurial inception: The role of imprinting in entrepreneurial action, J. Bus.
Venturing (2014),http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusvent.2014.07.004
Our research also raises important questions about the order of causality of our constructs—namely, whether entrepreneurial
decision-making processes (i.e., participative, self-reliant, delegative) are in?uenced by venture motivations (i.e., new ventures,
non-pecuniary motives, growth) or whether venture motivations in?uence decision-making processes. For example, individuals
who are interested in constantly launching new ventures may continually engage family and friends (i.e., participative decision
making) because it is unlikely that they have in-depth knowledge of each opportunity they are interested in acting upon. Alternative-
ly, through continuous engagement in participative decision making, these individuals might constantly be exposed to diverse view-
points and a wide range of ideas, which in turn leads these entrepreneurs to often pursue new, and unrelated opportunities. We
encourage future research to explore the causal connection between entrepreneurial decision making and venture motivations.
Future research could also examine the boundary conditions of our ?ndings. For example, although we found that exposure to en-
trepreneurship through friends and family imprints entrepreneurs, we do not knowwhether this imprint is a result of only successful
entrepreneurship. In other words, the successfulness (or unsuccessfulness) of family and friends in entrepreneurship may imprint
individuals in distinct ways, with some imprints perhaps guiding entrepreneurs toward (or away from) pursuing new ventures.
7. Conclusion
Much research has focused on what leads individuals to become entrepreneurs and howsome experiences lead some individuals
to be more likely to become entrepreneurs. We extend this work by examining how different sources of imprint have a lasting in?u-
ence not just on the initial venture founded by entrepreneurs but, more importantly, in the decisions entrepreneurs make about their
ventures and their futures and the process by which they make such decisions. By illustrating the in?uence of different sources of im-
print, we explain how they guide entrepreneurs' decisions as they progress through their entrepreneurial careers and elucidate the
ways in which entrepreneurs navigate the entrepreneurial process differently. Thus, we demonstrate the potential for research at
the crossroads of imprinting theory and entrepreneurial action and hope to encourage future research along these lines.
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Please cite this article as: Mathias, B.D., et al., Entrepreneurial inception: The role of imprinting in entrepreneurial action, J. Bus.
Venturing (2014),http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusvent.2014.07.004
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