The Origin and Evolution of New Businesses

"A significant number of successful companies are started by individuals who don't have extensive prior business training and experience."

"Serving niche markets not only allows entrepreneurs to start a business with limited funds, it also limits the competition they face from well-capitalized entities."

"In a new or changing market, entrepreneurs often do not require a significant innovation or insight to make a profit."

"A venture's dependence on the personal efforts of its founders represents a desirable source of uncertainty that adds a positive skew to its prospects."

"The founders of promising start-ups experiment with course changes to maximize short-run cash flow rather than to verify a general theory or to make the best possible long-term choices."

"Entrepreneurs utilize several strategies to contain the problems they face in securing resources and to take advantage of the mitigating factors."

"We can also identify two factors that predispose some individuals to look for and take advantage of chance events."

"Entrepreneurs have to cope with considerable?and sometimes unpleasantly delivered?rejection and difficult demands. "

"The success of corporate initiatives depends on factors that are quite different from those that pertain to bootstrapped start-ups."

"Having the right plan or concept from the outset has greater importance in a VC-backed start-up than in a promising start-up."

"A revolutionary venture requires major new insight about customer needs."

"Organizations cannot easily adapt their routines to the idiosyncrasies of individual opportunities."

"The business that merely rides a wave has to share its market with new entrants attracted by the high profits of the incumbents."

"Although the process of building coordinated assets is gradual, it ultimately results in a radical transformation."

"Audacious goals help entrepreneurs build large, long-lived firms in several ways."

"Strategies complement the role that an entrepreneur's goals play in building complementary assets."

"In fledgling companies, where entrepreneurs have to decide what assets they want to develop rather than match opportunities to existing assets, the overwhelming number of possibilities leads to intuitive, satisfying judgments."

"Few entrepreneurs who have the qualities required to start a promising business also possess the qualities required to build a large corporation."

"New businesses mitigate the constraints that result from the rules that large corporations must observe."

"Such companies represent a "new combination" or innovative production function that transforms capital, labor, and other inputs into products and services in a unique way."

"The factors that promote the formation of new businesses do not necessarily coincide with the factors that facilitate their subsequent growth."

"We must venture out of the domain of contemporary economists and examine the issue of personality."