Pro-activity of entrepreneurs in an incubation program of the
Erasmus Centre of Entrepreneurship, Rotterdam
Master Thesis
MSc. Business Studies – Entrepreneurship & Innovation Supervisor: Dr Ton Gruijters
Second reader: Dr Wietze van der Aa
Student: Jules van Son
Student ID: 10667601
Date: July 26, 2014
Abstract
This research investigates proactivity during an incubation process of the Erasmus Centre of
Entrepreneurship (ECE) in Rotterdam. The main objective of this study is to investigate how proactive behavior developed – in which central themes – and if it is something that can be facilitated and stimulated by an incubator. A longitudinal research was conducted by analyzing the incubation process; interviewing three entrepreneurs at four moments during a 10-week ‘Get started’ program. The results of this study found that proactivity in the incubation process of ECE developed in three central themes; 90-second pitch, testing assumptions and testing the system. Furthermore, did proactivity evolve reinforcing within these themes; for instance activities for the pitch, gave new insights for testing assumptions, which gave new ideas how to test the system and so on.
Table of Content
1. Introduction………...…………...5
2. Literature review………..……….7
Part I: General overview of incubation literature………...7
2.1.1 Development of incubator phenomenon………7
2.1.2 Definitions……….8
2.1.3 Development of incubators from 1960s until 21st century………...9
2.1.4 Changing value proposition………10
2.1.5 Different business models………...10
2.1.6 Incubator performance………11
2.1.7 Role in economic regions and society………....12
2.1.8 Role of incubator in entrepreneurial process………..13
2.1.9 Academic research………..14
Part II: Proactivity………....14
2.2.1 Concept of proactivity………...14
2.2.2 Proactive personality………...16
2.2.3 Personal initiative………....17
2.2.4 Proactivity and entrepreneurship……….18
2.2.5 Models on proactivity………..19
Part III: Proactive model………...19
3. Main questions and sub questions………...23
4. Method………...24
4.1 Sampling……….24
4.2 Data collection………....25
4.3 Data analysis………...25
5. Analysis..………...28
5.1 Motivation for incubator……….28
5.2 Participant I: Linda………..28
5.3 Participant II: Pierre………....37
5.4 Participant III: Sergui………..47
5.5 Comparison of the 3 entrepreneurs……….54
6. Recommendations………...61
6.1 For the Erasmus Centre of Entrepreneurship………..61
6.2 Further research………..63
8. References……….………64
9. Appendices………....70
9.1 Meet the entrepreneurs………..…70
1. Introduction
The motivation to do this research on the incubation process itself concerns the opening of a new incubator at the Erasmus Centre of Entrepreneurship (ECE) in Rotterdam. ECE consists three
components; 1) Research and education at the Erasmus University, 2) Trainings, workshops, speeches, events and so on for medium- and small sized firm, entrepreneurs and other interested parties, and 3) Student organizations that come together to discuss topics that relate to entrepreneurship to enrich themselves.
Figure 1. Erasmus centre of Entrepreneurship
The last few years ECE facilitated Area010, also in Rotterdam, an incubator that was quit successful. It was occupied almost fully with startups, but the fast growing companies left the incubator and rented accommodation somewhere else. According to the manager of the ECE, Martin Luxemburg, this business model was thus good, but keeping it constant remained difficult. The predecessor of ECE was more a more of real estate organization, that is what they want to do different. He argues the
importance of the incubator is to be place were startups grow. Now, they want to combine the three components (see figure 1) in one centre. All the three components have their own (financial) interest. ECE can make some money at the Startup campus with the courses they aim to do for medium and small sized enterprises. In turn his can flow back to startup and growth programs; which mainly cost money. Therefore the objective is to make the Startup Campus financially stable and self-sufficient. As from March, 2014 they opened the Startup Campus (SC). Consciously naming it a campus and not an incubator, cause they do not want to position as a traditional incubator. They rather strive the campus to be part of the ECE, where all kinds of people - that are interested or involved in
entrepreneurship - come together to follow education on entrepreneurship. From ECE, they want to write a book on entrepreneurship in combination with academic research on entrepreneurship. They want to use a core capacity of the Erasmus University – developing people to their full potential. Therefore the emphasis in their programs is not on the startups per se, but more the entrepreneurs itself. The objective is to help develop their skills.
Startup Campus; - Startup program - Accomodation - Growth programs - Accelerator - Workshops & trainings for medium/small sized firms and corporations Student associations; that want to come in contact with entrepreneurship & get inspired more in general.
Research & Education; on entrepreneurship at the Erasmus University
Due to the fact that the ECE expects more proactivity of entrepreneurs that join their incubation programs, the central research question of this paper is:
How does pro-activity of entrepreneurs develop from the start of an incubation process?
It is not necessarily that ECE wants to improve the proactivity of the entrepreneurs; they rather expect it as they believe this behavioral construct is important for entrepreneurs to succeed. They will give support and advise to a certain extent; meaning that they are not doing activities needed for the startups; they help, advise and facilitate when the entrepreneurs ask for it. In turn, ECE can offer their network and expertise. Therefore the aim of this paper is to describe and explain proactivity of entrepreneurs during one of their startup programs and see whether it increases due to the program.
2. Literature review
This study focuses on pro-activity of entrepreneurs in the incubation process; therefore both these well-established themes in entrepreneurship literature will be discussed.
Part I: General overview of incubation literature 2.1.1 Development incubator phenomenon
The concept of an incubator exists already for a few decades and still new incubators are launched. In many scholars one kind find its growing importance for the economies of the 21st century. Peters et al.
(2004) state that the demand for incubators will increase due to the complexity of business, the rise of the Internet, and other legal and regulatory issues. In an earlier study of Allen and Kahman (1985) they discovered that shared services were on an in-house basis, and further financial management and consulting services were offered at the incubators they studied. Further they conclude that incubators can be seen as business development tools with a positive influence on the environment for startups. Evans (1942) argued already in the early 1930s that if entrepreneurs stay focused on continuous innovation, an economy could survive. Nowadays the European Union has the ambition to become the most competitive economy in the world, and they want to achieve this by innovation. (Commission of the European Communities, 2000). An important dimension of the innovation process is represented by young startups. (Aerts et al., 2007)
Peters et al. (2004) state that around 90% of new ventures started each year will fail within five years due to a lack of management skills or capital. The reason for this is that these new ventures do not have all the necessary resources and neither can those resource be known before hand, they rather come up during the startup phase. Therefore there is a need for incubators that are able to provide the new ventures with resources and indirectly enable access to other resources via networks beyond the incubator. (Peters et al., 2004) Furthermore does the current economical situation not contribute to the attractiveness of creating new firms. (Sauner-Leroy, 2004)
Young companies often lack management skills and experience that are needed to cope with
environmental changes. These new firms change their behavior by a process of learning-by-doing. In turn they can develop novel sets of routine; like forms, rules, processes and strategies. (Levitt and March, 1988) Changing routines and procedures by experiential learning is a slow and gradual process. (Dosi et al., 2000) It is the lack of all these kinds of routines and procedures in the startup phase that contributes to a higher failure tendency. (Freeman et al., 1983) Coaching sessions on topics that concern this initial phase may contribute to a bigger base of knowledge for these young firms; thus positively influences their development and performance. (Colombo and Grilli, 2005) These elements of business support seem to be crucial learning aspects within Business Incubators (BIs) (Hansen et al., 2000)
In the literature one can agree that the first business incubator (BI) was found a few decades ago in 1959. It was called the Batavia Industrial Centre (BIC) and was located in the United States. It was not necessarily intended to function as an incubator from the start, but after a lack of potential candidates to rent the entire facility, they changed their focus and came up with subdivided partitions of the building to a variety of entrepreneurs. Some of those tenants asked for business advice once in a while or they needed assistance to raise capital. (Adkins, 2001) Even though in incubation literature the BIC is seen as the first incubator, it seemed more as a shared office space, with some additional services; thus more a real estate organization with extra supporting services.
Bruneel (2011) argues that as business incubator became more widespread in the early decades, primarily they functioned as providers of office space; facilitating companies in one building.
According to Camphell & Allen (1987) the first incubator that can be seen as the incubator in the form as we know it today started in 1972 in the United Kingdom. Two simultaneous movements were the initial start of it; older buildings were divided in working communities for design-related companies with communal facilities, services and management and the redevelopment and reuse of these old buildings were realized by artisans and craftsperson’s. In turn these movements were collectively supported to create an optimal work, or start-up environment so to say, for people in these trades. (Camphell & Allen, 1987). In the 21st century the role of the incubator in the entrepreneurial process
has changed when comparing it with the first incubator founded. As the BIC in the United States was mainly a business centre with office facilities, nowadays incubator offer trainings, workshops, coaching, offering tools, networking, consulting in all types of areas to startup firms or entrepreneurs. (Peters et al., 2004)
2.1.2 Definitions
Even though there have been many scholars written about the incubator phenomenon, a consistent definition is yet to be found. Scientists take different approaches when describing the BIs which services is contains, which startup phase the entrepreneurs is facing, funding that might be included, and so on. Taken the angle that Peters et al. (2004) used; an incubator can be understood as ‘’..a support environment for startup and fledging companies’’ (p. 83). Hackett & Dilts (2004) use the term incubator-incubation, which not only describes what it is, but also its role in an economy. They refer to it as ‘’economic development tools for job creation whose value proposition is embodied in the shared belief that operating incubators will result in more startups with fewer business failures.’’ (Hacket & Dilts, 2004: 6)
The following figure gives an overview of definitions used by several institutions and scientist who wrote about the incubation literature.
Figure 2.
Definitions of business incubation
National Business Incubation Association (NBIA, 2014) Business Incubation is a business support process that accelerates the successful
development of start-up and fledgling companies by providing entrepreneurs with an array of targeted resources and services. These services are usually developed or orchestrated by incubator management and offered both in the business incubator and through its network of contacts. A business incubator’s main goal is to produce successful firms that will leave the program financially viable and freestanding. These incubator graduates have the potential to create jobs, revitalize neighborhoods, commercialize new technologies, and strengthen local and national economies.
European Commission (EC, 2002) A business incubator is an organization that accelerates and systematizes the process of creating successful enterprises by providing them with a comprehensive and integrated range of support, including: Incubator space, business support services, and clustering and networking opportunities.
By providing their clients with services on a ‘one-stop-shop’ basis and enabling overheads to be reduced by sharing costs, business incubators significantly improve the survival and growth prospects of new start-ups. A successful business incubator will generate a steady flow of new businesses with above average job and wealth creation potential. Differences in stakeholder objectives for incubators, admission and exit criteria, the knowledge intensity of projects, and the precise configuration of facilities and services, will distinguish one type of business incubator from another (p. 9).
Grimaldi & Grandi (2005) The incubation concept seeks an effective means to link technology, capital and know-how in order to leverage
entrepreneurial talent, accelerate the development of new companies, and thus speed the exploitation of technology. Incubators assist emerging businesses by providing a variety of support services such as assistance in developing business and marketing plans, building management teams, obtaining capital, and access to a range of other more specialized professional services. In addition, incubators provide flexible space, shared equipment, and administrative services. After the incubating period, it is intended that ventures graduate to become independent, self-sustaining businesses. (p. 111)
Sherman and Chappell (1998) Business incubator is an economic development tool primarily designed to help create and new businesses in a
community. Business incubators help emerging businesses by providing various support services, such as assistance in developing business and marketing plans, building management teams, obtaining capital, and access to a range of more specialized professional services. They also provide flexible space, shared equipment, and administrative services (p. 313).
The literature identifies four main components (Hackett & Dilts, 2004; Bergek & Norrman, 2008; Bruneel et al., 2012); 1) Selection criteria, whether or not to accept a venture or entrepreneur 2) infrastructure, which are the office- and administrative facilities 3) business support, concerning support and advise in the form of coaching 4) mediation, which is about the purveyance of an internal and external network. Over the years, all these components evolved a small bit, but they do not differ greatly over time. Concerning the infrastructure for instance Bruneel et al. (2012) states: ‘’No significant differences regarding infrastructure across generations of BIs were found’’. This is in line with the article of Bergek & Norrman (2008), which concludes more or less the same. According to them most incubators offer the same general administrative services. Though they suggest that ‘’selection, business support and mediation are the main distinguishing components of incubator models’’(Bergek & Norrman, 2008: 11).
2.1.3 Development of the incubator phenomenon from the 1960s until the 21st century
After 1960s when this phenomenon was established Hackett & Dilts (2004) argue that a sequence of other incubators were set up. In the 1960s and 1970s a first real effort for a more science-based incubator was the University City Science Centre (UCSC), which was a collaborative effort to realize commercializing research outputs. (Adkins, 2001) One can compare this with the current centres Universities set up for entrepreneurship, like in Holland; the Amsterdam Centre of Entrepreneurship (ACE), Utrecht Centre of Entrepreneurships (UCE) and so on; some have different emphasis on an industry or the phase of the startup.
In the 1980s and 1990s the popularity and amount of incubators increased, Hackett & Dilts (2004) explain this according to the founding of the National Business Incubation Association (NBIA) - an organization with the aim to advancing business incubation and entrepreneurship - and the surge in report-generating activities. These were efforts of the NBIA and similar type of organizations that studied the potential of business incubation.
As from the 1980s the BIs were outspread, though mainly in the form of office space, facilitating different startups in the same building. (Adkins, 2001) During this period the awareness became that in many cases entrepreneurs had a lack of business expertise, which was a crucial barrier to the success of startups; thus the value proposition of BIs evolved along these awakenings. (Bruneel et al., 2011)
Taken this awareness; throughout the 1990’s the value propositions were expanded beyond offering just the in-house business coaching and infrastructure. They have started to move towards developing the learning process of the startups; including access to networks. (Hansen et al., 2000)
2.1.4 Changing value proposition over time
Bruneel et al. (2011) did an extensive study on whether incubators adapted their value proposition over time by collecting data from seven BI’s and their tenants regarding the provision of service and selection criteria. They state that the phenomenon of the BI appears to be homogeneous over the years in terms of their value proposition. As was discussed earlier in this literature review, this is in line with the study of Bergek & Norrman (2008) who argue that BIs over time provide more or less the same general administrative services; only distinguishing on selection, business advise and mediation. Thus three generations of BIs over time had similar service portfolios. Though the second generation, which concerned BI’s in 1980s, added business support services. During this period BIs included knowledge-based services in their value proposition. Smilor and Gill (1986) argue that BIs offered more than just physical arrangements for young companies. During the 1980s, the idea came up that technology and innovation were important for economic growth; making BIs more popular to function as an engine to stimulate the creation of new technology-intensive companies. (Lewis, 2001)
The third generation of emerging BI’s in the 1990s, expanded the services with access to networks. (Bruneel et al., 2011) The further use of networks enables the startups to get access to potential customers, investors, suppliers and so on. (Hansen et al., 2000) These young firms can overcome resource constraints with networking. (Zhao & Aram, 1995) Alongside by the use of these networks the young firms can gain access to resources that are beyond their financial capacity. The BIs were able to build networks of early stage investors - like business angel network or venture capitalists – reducing the costs for the young firms to search for these investors. (Larson, 1992)
Further do Bruneel et al. (2011) argue that it can be assumed that participants of earlier generations – say the first - mostly tended to start at the BI at a young age, stay small as a firm and lack the ambition to grow fast. This low ambition to grow is shown in the sense that 10% seek for external finance, thus incubators of the first generation functioned more as a facilitator of established companies. The second generation seems to recruit mature companies, but a reason to do so is in order to have a stable flow of revenues from the tenant companies. Whereas the second-generation participants tend to look more actively for external finance, thus a greater level of ambition can be assumed. (Bruneel et al., 2011) This could explain the high amount of failure of BI’s in the earlier generations to provide the promised incubation. (Hansen et al., 2000)
2.1.5 Differing business models
The last few decades the BI phenomenon evolved by different types of business models, driven by the evolution of enterprise requirements and needs, which in turn instigated BIs to diversify their offerings. Grimaldi & Grandi (2005) developed two incubation models, containing the four categories earlier discussed in this literature review.
Figure 3.
The left side of the models concerns the public incubators, regarding their services that are more oriented to provide physical assets to support entrepreneurs of these young companies to get access to finance and expertise they lack themselves. These incubators establish supportive environments to foster them and guide them in creating a mid-long term focus. (Grimaldi & Grandi, 2005) The right side of the models thus concerns the private incubators; with services focused on finding financial investments, and more intangible and high-value assets with a short-term orientation. Furthermore do private incubators focus on connecting entrepreneurs with external partners (p. 4)
An important component that distinguishes the two models is that the right model concerns the networking attitude of the incubators. Grimaldi & Grandi (2005) refer to the work of Hansen et al., (2000) who states that networking attitude refers to the capacity of the incubating institutions to foster partnerships among start-up teams, thus facilitating the flow of knowledge and talent across companies, the forging of marketing and technology relationships, and the learning processes between them. Furthermore the right model is characterized by strong involvement on the part of the management team
The UBIs is placed the in the middle of the two models as their main objective is to offer access technological knowledge, academic infrastructure and networking to these knowledge-based startups. Also the reputation that accrues from university-affiliation is being exploited. Thus Grimaldi & Grandi (2005) explain that UBIs are more like incubator of the model 2.
2.1.6 Incubator’s performance
Exploring and analyzing the link between practices and best practices of BIs appeared to be difficult to study. A standard measure that is unambiguous for the performance of BIs does not exist. (Phan et al., 2005) Furthermore the sighting of quantitative measures, and their consequences, appears to be a subject for further examination for academics, as well as for practitioners. (Neely, 2005)
Vanderstraeten & Matthyssens (2010) examined the literature on performance measurement of BIs. They used the approach of Neely (2005) who suggested measuring performance at the individual level, as well as on the system level; in turn applying these to the incubator performance measurement. (Neely, 2005)
When discussing their finding Vanderstraeten & Matthyssens (2010) explain that they focused on four types of approaches: 1) goal, 2) stakeholder, 3) internal process and 4) system resource approach. They further state the of a few or only one performance measure of BI is not enough to have an exploratory
power (Vanderstraeten & Matthyssens, 2010), while simultaneously adopting too many performance measures can result in an overload of information and ignoring data (Tangen, 2004)
Even though agreement on incubation performances measures is yet to be found, there are scholars that consist assumptions for the best strategy. Hansen et al. (2000) states that specialisation is the best practice. They explain this by arguing that those BIs that pursue a strategy with high diversification face similar problems that traditional ones had. Startup entrepreneurs do have comparable problems that they need to overcome in the initial phase, but after that extra value created in a BI could be created with a diversified tenant portfolio. Cordis (2002) argues that a focus on a specific sector could enhance the expertise of the personnel of the BIs and added value for tenants. This is also in line with Teece et al. (1997) who argues that a more specialized BI allows the participating entrepreneurs to learn and integrate external information more easily in their own innovation process.
2.1.7 Role in economical regions and society
During the 1980s public policies of US and European governments were more affronted with unemployment in sectors such as heavy engineering and it became obvious that innovation and technology were very important for economic growth. The governments were aimed to rejuvenate the economy (Burneel et al., 2012) and BIs became a popular tool to stimulate new technology-intensive companies (Lewis, 2001) Also the last twenty years, BIs were more seen – and with greater importance attached to it – as tools to stimulate economic and technological development of countries. The incubators advocated the rise of promising entrepreneurial ideas, promoting the growth of young startups. (Grimaldi & Grandi, 2005)
Especially science based BIs were more seen as an engine by policy makers for revitalizing national and regional economies. More often Universities were asked to offer resources, talent and faculty time to economic development efforts. (Mian, 1996) Even though the first priority of Universities is education, they do have the ability to make a meaningful contribution to regional and local economies by doing research that could lead to patentable inventions and discoveries or faculty spin-off firms. (Chiese & Piccaluga, 2000)
In the study of Camphell & Allen (1984) they address literature on incubator development and how and why incubators tend to aid for development in declining areas, but also for supporting entrepreneurship and innovation through university-based incubators. They describe three historical roots of business incubation in the United States; 1) redevelopment of subordinated areas in cities, 2) an experiment by the National Science Foundation to foster entrepreneurship and innovation through universities; later adopted by other universities as well and 3) were the initiatives of successful entrepreneurs and investors who thought to transfer own experiences to other start-ups through an environment which would empower entrepreneurship and innovation. The second historical root, the university-related fostering of entrepreneurship and innovation, are also adopted by many universities around the world in the form of science parks; business incubators act here as a supportive facility of new tenants to these parks. (Camphell & Allen, 1987)
Camphell & Allen (1987) further argue that as from the first business incubator founded; most were publicly funded with the purpose to create jobs, urban economic revitalization and commercialization of university innovation. This is also argued by other scientists such as (Barrow, 2001) who argues that BI’s being publicly funded relates to the growing interest of policy makers for BI’s to function as economic revitalization programmes, supporting startups in the hope they develop into fast-growing and self-sustaining firms. (Barrow, 2001)
Though concerning that BIs already exist for decades, their role changed during the growing use of Internet. The aim was now on online technologies and services. (Grimaldi & Grandi, 2005) According to Chinsonmboon (2000) quick access to capital, synergy, speed to market and strategic cohesiveness appeared to become important for success of internet-related companies. The concept of the BI transformed due to this change in the market with a growing interest for both private and public BIs; as it concerns the importance of high-tech firms or more broadly speaking the new economy. (Grimaldi & Grandi, 2005) Thus the role of incubators was more important as private incubators aimed to create new ventures quickly (Hansen et al., 2000); by providing business support, access to their network facilitating office space in order to shorten the time that these startups needed to be ready for fast growth or a trade sale. (Grimaldi & Grandi, 2005).
Further do Grimaldi & Grandi (2005) make the assumption that a shift of attention went on when BIs adapted to new expectations of companies. Due to the Internet explosion, an increase of high-tech and knowledge-based firms have taken place; qualified by fast and different business models. Thus the aim of private incubators was to adapt to these changes by shortening their tenant’s time-to-market, offering them more specialized services, and bringing the entrepreneurs of these startups into a common network of larger technological and commercial companies.
In the study of Bearse (1998) they argue that despite efforts to make business incubators self-sufficient the majority stayed publicly funded and they further argue that this financial dependency has its effects. These include that incubators have justify continued subsidizing, which possibly can result in the people involved with the incubator over-reporting the successes and underreporting incubator failures.
2.1.8 Role of the incubator in the entrepreneurial process
One can view the role of the incubator as important in the entrepreneurial process; a phenomenon as a vehicle for business development. Peters et al. (2004) refer to the work of Baron and Shane (2003) who argue that the entrepreneurial process evolves over time and concerns several phases: 1) the idea for a new service, product or opportunity recognition, 2) initial decision to proceed and act upon the opportunity, 3) acquiring the necessitated resources, which involve finance, people and more information, 4) the launch of the startup, and 5) building a successfully growing company and eventually earning revenues for all the effort. (Baron and Shane, 2003)
According to Peters et al. (2004) events that take place during the entrepreneurial process are seen as outcomes in every phase that are influenced by three factors. First the individual-level factors are influential like skills, motivations and other personal characteristics of entrepreneurs, second the
group-level factors that concerns ideas, input from other people, interaction with venture capitalists, but also contact with customers or possible employees, and third societal-level factors have an effect (national policies, economical conditions, etc.). (Peters et al., 2004) One can assume that the incubator can play a role, when an entrepreneur proceeds in the phases of the entrepreneurial process.
2.1.9 Academic research on the incubator phenomenon
Concerning on what has been written about incubator the study of Hacket & Dilts (2004) provides a systematic review of the 5 phases. In the their review they found that most studies focused on descriptions of incubator facilities and there was less attention on the incubatees, the innovations they wanted to diffuse, and the incubation outcomes that have been achieved. They suggest that further research should focus on these aspects, but also on the incubation process itself. This is in line with the article of Bergek & Norman (2008), which states that the majority of studies focused on the outcome, without relating it to the organization and management of the incubation process. According to them the incubation model is treated as a ‘black box’ for a long time and it needs to be opened to be able to design a ‘best practice’ model for incubation. Also Bahbra-Remedios & Cornelius (2003) argue that despite the rising numbers of incubators and the research conducted on effectiveness there are still no findings on whether the incubators achieve their goals and their impact on the entrepreneurs. To evaluate these performances they suggest that given the difficulty to obtain financial data from new ventures, it is better to conduct operational measures in order to built a framework for measuring the performance of tenants of an incubator (Bahbra-Remedios & Cornelius, 2003). To evaluate how incubators perform Bearse (1998) notes that most commonly one relates it to their objectives and goals. Audretsch (2002) states that the nature of the service and facilities, and the way in which they are provided can be an important influence on the success of the incubatees and eventually for the performance of the incubator.
This part of the literature functioned as an overview on what academic literature has been written on the incubation phenomenon. The theory is a quit mature, thus an overview is needed on how the incubator concept changed over time. The definitions were discussed, how performances were measured, the role of an incubator in entrepreneurship, and a discussion of the academic review of Hackett & Dilts (2004); describing gaps in incubation literature. This concerns that processes of incubators need to be described. This in combination that ECE expects more pro-activity of tenants gives the clarification to study this variable in the context of an incubation process. In the second part of the literature the phenomenon of pro-activity will be discussed.
Part II: Pro-activity
2.2.1 Concept of pro-activity
Even years after initial academic literature of the concept of pro-activity were written, an exact
definition of pro-activity today is yet to be found. Although the term is widely used and acknowledged, scientists emphasize different components of this type of behaviour and there is no agreement on absolute criteria for it, about the definitions or which typologies to use.
Concerning the academic literature on proactive behaviour; Grant & Ashford (2008) give an overview on academic literature and studied it as distinct phenomena, Frese & Fay (2001) argue it in the light of personal initiative, Ashford, Blatt, & Vande Walle (2003) discuss feedback seeking, Bateman & Crant (1993) studied proactive personality and created self-report scale to measure the proactive construct which is still widely used in scholars, or an example of proactive behaviour like expressing voice, studied by LePine & Van Dyne (2001) and eventually taking charge is discussed by Morrison & Phelps (1999). Though Bateman & Crant suggest in their later work that the concept of proactivity is a term, open to different meanings and interpretations; they argue that one can find many definitions and synonyms in the literature, open to different explanations and meanings. (Bateman & Crant, 1999) The scholars thus mentioned will be discussed to show the diversity on proactive literature; in turn this aims to provide a broader and clearer overview.
Pro-activity can be explained as “taking initiative in improving current circumstances; it involves challenging the status quo rather than passively adapting present conditions” (Crant, 2000: 436). This explanation is complemented with the notion that the in-role, as well as the extra-role behavior, is part of proactive behavior. (Crant, 2000) Further it concerns someone that creates a positive change in their environment, unheeding of situational constraints (Seibert et al., 2001) and it can be non-required behavior that stresses a challenge intended to improve a situation rather than criticize it, also known as voice (van Dyne & LePine, 1998). Thus proactive people seek for opportunities, show initiative and perceive to bring a valuable change (Bateman & Grant, 1993). Compared to individuals that are the opposite of proactive, more passive, lack to show initiative or fail to do so and are more likely to adapt and endure to current conditions of the environment. (Bateman & Crant, 1993: 105) In one sentence Fuller & Marler (2009) describe individuals with proactive personalities as those that enact to their environment by proactive behavior.
It can be understood as behavior that entails self-initiated, anticipatory action, with the aim of changing a situation or oneself. (Bindl and Parker, in press.). Though if one compares this with the later work of Bateman & Crant (1999) they define the concept as ‘’to change things, in an intended direction, for the better’’. (p. 63) According to them this definition thus entails three components, indicating that a shortage on one of these components can make the behavior flexible, reactive, adaptive, unintentional or even counterproductive.
The concept of proactivity is interpreted in most scholars as something positive, leaving potential negative aspects aside (Bateman & Crant, 1999; 1993; Crant, 2000; Seibert et al., 2000; van Dyne & LePine, 1998). Though this is mainly discussed in the context of work spheres, there are some studies that discuss the negative sides of proactivity like Grant & Ashford (2008) arguing that ‘’insofar as proactive behavior involves expanding additional effort, challenging the status quo, and disrupting deviating from assigned tasks, prescribed roles, reified norms, accepted practices, and existing routines, researchers should expect to find mixed effects and unintended consequences for groups, organizations, and employees themselves.’’ (p.24) They further stress the possible negative influence proactive behavior can have on an organization as it entail behavior mostly based on reaching personal gain
(Grant & Ashford, 2008), but as the focus of this paper is on entrepreneurship and in particular on the startup phase – which mainly concerns one individual or a few – this will not be of great concern. Parker et al. (2006) argues that pro-activity has two dimensions: 1) proactive idea is the
implementation of an idea which involves a person taking initiative to improve a working place, either by delegating others or implementation and 2) proactive problem solving which concerns self-starting, future-oriented responses in order to prevent the reoccurrence of a problem (by addressing its root cause) or by solving it in a nonstandard way. Though Parker et al. (2006) refers to the work of Frese & Fay (2001) that what behaviors are proactive by contexts. The cause for this is that something unusual in one situation may be routine in another situation.
An approach that emerged from the review of Parker et al. (2006) is that proactive behavior is
important when fulfilling someone’s responsibility, goal and endeavors. This is line with Crant (2000), who also see the role of goals in proactive behavior, further he states that motivational states (self-efficacy) and contextual factors (environment or management support) influence proactive behavior directly. The findings of the study of Parker et al. (2006) suggest that in order to improve proactive workforces one needs to build self-efficacy of employees and stimulate flexible role orientations. They also found that self-efficacy might be partly driven by characteristics that persons bring to a certain situation, but the aspects of the situation itself affect them as well. (p. 646)
Grant & Ashford (2008) discuss three components that differentiate proactivity from other types of behavior that is work related: 1) anticipation, 2) planning and 3) action that is aimed towards future impact. One can interpret that proactivity solely as a limited set of activities and accordingly not as certain. Viewing proactivity in this manner leaves room for antecendents and consequences of proactive behavior discussed by Crant (2000).
Crant (2000) developed an integrative framework of proactive behavior where he discussed two categories: 1) actions that reflect the more broad categories; challenging the status quo or creating favorable conditions and 2) contextual proactive behavior, which addresses specific behaviors that happen in a limited domain. This integrated framework relates to constructs of proactive behavior.
2.2.2 Proactive personality
Bateman & Grant (1993) were one of the first to study the proactive construct in the form of proactive personality. They argue that individuals with a proactive personality have certain characteristics that distinguish them from those that do not have it. A distinguishing characteristic seems to be the level of action with the aim to make an environmental change. (Bateman & Grant, 1993) Furthermore they define the concept as a personality where individuals scan for opportunities, show initiative, take action and maintain this stance until they bring about a meaningful change. These individuals take it upon themselves to have an impact on their environment and more in general on the world. They have developed a Proactive Personality Scale, which measures the concept with a 17-items questionnaire. It is a self-report scale that can easily be used to measure the proactive construct and expose systematic
variability in the construct among individuals. This paper uses the Proactive Personality Scale - complementary to the qualitative data - to measure the proactive construct of tenants during a incubator program. On the following page the 17-items questionnaire is pictured.
This measurement is broadly acknowledged in proactive literature and themes that are related to the concept, such as career outcomes (Seibert et al., 2009) and entrepreneurship (Becherer & Maurer, 1999; Crant, 1996); which will be explained later in this literature review. Although they were the pioneers in measuring this construct, it was a matter of time for criticism to follow; mainly focusing on the dispositional character. According to Grant & Ashford (2008) is seems that Bateman & Crant’s concept shows little information on what types of behavior can be revealed as proactive. The
dispositional character does not include differences in proactive levels within one individual. However the focus of this paper will not be on proactive personality, as it is assumed that a personality not changes notably during the length of a 10-week program.
2.2.3 Personal initiative
A few years after Bateman & Crant (1993) studies the concept of proactive personality, the first academic studies were done on the phenomenon of personal initiative. Frese et al. (1996) developed this concept and defined personal initiative as ‘a behavior syndrome resulting in an individual’s taking an active self-starting approach to work.’ (p. 38). In later work of Frese & Fay (2000) it becomes clear this newly developed concept of personal initiative is closely related to proactivity. They contend that it does not differ from proactivity theoretically, just naming it different. On the one hand when Frese & Fay (2000) developed this concept, more ambiguity is initiated around the proactive construct, but this also enables to view the concept in a broader context; talking about proactivity as behavior, instead of an individual being proactive. They define personal initiative as taking initiative, more of a self-start, going beyond job requirements when an individual tries to reach a goal (Frese & Fay, 2001). Though personal initiative will be treated in the context of entrepreneurship; explained later in this literature review.
Frese & Fay (2001) mainly focused with their personal initiative on the behavioral aspect of proactive construct, recognizing that situational forces can have an influence on predicting proactivity. It is a perspective that is both forward looking and anticipatory in nature, while at the same time paying less attention on the idea of Bateman & Crant (1993) that the actions of an individual should imply a change.
Eventually, Frese & Fay (2001) argue that the three aspects of personal initiative reinforce each other; proactivity leads to self-starting goals, goals beyond what is expected in work spheres, and when implemented one has to deal with overcoming barriers. These barriers are the cause of the changes self-started goals initiate. Further reasoned, overcoming of barriers lead again to self-starting goals, due to problems that need to be solved in a creative manner that require a self-start. Persistence is needed to reach an individual’s goal. As PI implies a change of process, procedure et cetera, often setbacks of failure come up. It requires persistence of the one that is taking the initiative to be able to get pass the
resistance of other people for instance. (Frese & Fray, 2001)
2.2.4 Proactivity and entrepreneurship
‘’Individuals’ work experiences now tend to span multiple employers, work arrangements, and types of competencies and that individuals are increasingly responsible for managing the transitions in their own careers’’ (Seibert et al., 2001: 845). This means that in many scholars one can observe that careers become more ‘boundaryless’ in the 21st century and Seibert et al. (2001) refers to the work of Jackson
(1996) stating that in turn individuals need to be pro-active in this environment.
In general terms personality seems to be something scientist agree on to influence working life. Seiber et al. (2001) discussed two reasons for this, namely; 1) work life contains many ‘weak’ situations where the personality plays a vital role in the choice of behavior and 2) careers are products of behaviors accumulated over time. The meta-analysis review of Fuller & Marler (2009) discusses the proactive personality literature. They refer to the work of Byrne et al. (2008), which states that proactive personality is positively related to objective career success outcomes. Thus it seems that pro-activity can play a role in successful careers.
It is plausible to reason that as pro-activity seems to be important in working life for companies, it also plays a role in entrepreneurship. Concerning the idea that pro-activity involves behavior of people that act upon their own ideas and will strive to make a meaningful change, it can logically be related to entrepreneurship. Empirical evidence is found by Becherer & Maurer (1999) who related proactive personality, as a unidimensional construct, to be positively related to entrepreneurship. This is in line with the study of Crant (1996), which also found empirical evidence that pro-activity is positively associated with entrepreneurial intentions. Further reasoned; one can assume that it has a positive influence on the performance of entrepreneurship.
The importance of the self-starting component of personal initiative for entrepreneurs gets illustrated by Shane & Venkataraman (2000), discussing that entrepreneurs have the need to start something new, creating and grasping opportunities. Self-starting is more broadly explained by Frese & Fay (2001), arguing that it’s an individual acting without being told; either without explicit instructions or role requirements.
In short self-efficacy is an individuals judgment about their capability to perform a task, which in turn is a critical motivation variable. (Gist & Mitchell, 1992). Thus the more people feel capable of performing tasks they tend to do them more effectively (Barling & Beattie, 1983), and it raises the feeling of control, but also the perceived likelihood of success, thereby they suggest it is vital for pro-activity like initiative (Morisson & Phelps, 1999). This initiative can be viewed more broad within the concept of personal initiative (PI) as self-start.
(PI). Frese & Fay (2001) argue that PI enables people in becoming entrepreneurs and when people have high PI it appears to sharpen and for a partly modify it. Thus one can say PI to has a positive impact on entrepreneurs, also in their startup phase.
2.2.5 Models on proactivity
Crant (2000) developed an integrated framework with antecedents and consequences of proactive behavior; where individual differences and contextual factors are central constructs in predicting proactivity. The individual differences lead to proactivity according to Crant (2000), explaining that it can be separated in general actions and context-specific behaviors. The general actions concern an individual identifying opportunities in order to change the status quo. The context-specific behaviors occur, as the name implies, in certain situations like feedback seeking, innovation, socialization or feedback seeking. Crant reviews four constructs of proactive behavior: personal initiative, proactive personality, taking charge and role of breadth self-efficacy. Grant & Ashford (2008) developed a model on proactivity as well with a more integrated focus; consisting the opportunity of predicting proactive behaviors. With the more integrated nature of their model, Grant & Ashford (2008) differentiate themselves from Crant (2000).
The models discussed offer the potential to predict proactive behavior, where performance appears to be an important consequence of the proactive construct. One year after Crant’s publication Frese & Fay (2001) came up with a more integrated model, which will be explained the next part of the literature review.
To finalize part II of the literature on proactivity; it appears that research on this concept already started decades ago, where different angles have been used. An approach of proactivity as a personality, discussed by Bateman & Crant (1993) has been widely acknowledged and cited by other scientists. However, at the end of the 20th and the beginning of the 21st century, instead of viewing it as a
personality the focus shifted towards proactivity as a type of behavior that is influenced by its environment and the individual itself (Frese & Fay, 2001). The approach in this research will be more to proactivity as behavior; therefore the integrated model of Frese & Fay (2001) will be used in this study to explore proactivity of the entrepreneurs. In Part III the model will be discussed more elaborately and in the method section it will be explained how this model is used during the data collection and analysis.
Part III: Proactive model 2.3.1 Integrated model
Frese & Fay (2001) made an integrated model that complemented the framework of Crant (2000). They tend to focus on the interactive nature of all the components; several types of antecedents,
consequences and proactive behavior seem to influence each other back and forth. The main consequence of their model concerns proactivity, stressing the importance of personal initiative; discussing that this applies both on organizational an individual level. However, this paper solely focuses on the individual level, as the aim of this study is to analyze proactivity of entrepreneurs in an
incubation process grows and explore if it grows. The antecedent personality is suggested by Frese & Fay (2001) as something that is less changeable. This view is also taken in this paper, not only because the assumption is taken that personality rarely changes at all, but certainly not in a period of 10 weeks in which the participants of this research were interviewed. In addition will the antecedents
Knowledge, skills and abilities (KSA) be explored as concepts during the interviews as far as possible; solely by exploring the background of the entrepreneurs in the first interview. Eventually, the
consequence ‘high performance’ is interesting to explore to see what proactive behavior brings about, but the focus of this paper is on the development of proactive behavior and not on performance.
Figure 4: Antecedents and consequences of Personal Initiative (Frese & Fay 2001: 154)
Frese & Fay (2001) argue that the antecedents ‘Personality’ and ‘Knowledge, Skills, Abilities’ are distal causes of personal initiative. Whereas ‘Orientations’ are more medium specifity; which means they are more specific and action-oriented, therefore closer and more proximal to PI. ‘Environment’ is more a mix of proximal and distal causes. Therefore the antecedents ‘environmental support’ and ‘orientations’ will be leading in this research, conjointly with the central concept ‘personal initiative’. Within PI only the three aspects self-starting, pro-active and persisting will be used and the dimension ‘pro-company’ will be disregarded, because the focus is on startup entrepreneurs that do not work for a company. In short, the three aspects of personal initiative (PI) will be explained. Self-starting implies an individual that pursues something without someone telling them, or if there is no explicit
instruction, or an explicit role requirement. Thus it concerns self-set goals. Frese & Fay (2001) define proactivity as ‘’to have a long-term focus and not to wait until one must respond to a demand.’’ (p.140) In turn, this long-term focus enables to anticipate on new demands, problems or opportunities, enabling the person to prepare to deal with it right away. The third aspect is persistence that is needed to reach the goal. Thus, further reasoned one can illustrate that PI implies a change, and these normally do not work out perfectly; usually setbacks of failure come up. Individuals that are influenced by changes may
not enjoy having to adapt to something new, therefore persistence is necessary in order to overcome barriers. (Frese & Fay, 2001)
To go in a little deeper on the self-starting concept; it entails four components. (1) First one has the goal, which is seen as the starting point of PI. The goal is developed through a translation process from tasks of the environment towards goals. Second, (2) there is moment of information collection and prognosis. This can be active - scanning the environment for potential cues - or reactive to external demands. Then, (3) there is the planning component; which is the link between thinking and acting. One can make a distinction between an opportunistic plan - scanning the environment for opportunities on the short-term - and a well-developed plan, for the long-term. Eventually there is (4) Monitoring and feedback, as the same of self-start implies the individual also has to check their own behavior; see whether the person is going in the right direction.
Firgure 5: Facets of personal initiative (Frese & Fay, 2001: 144)
The aspect ‘proactive’ refers to all the components of self-start. For instance proactive goals imply a long-term approach, because every step of action sequence is aimed to tackle future problems and seeking for opportunities. Proactivity in the ‘information collection and prognosis’ phase means that an individual searches for problem areas and tries to find alternative strategies before the problems appear; in turn the information is used to know future opportunities. The component ‘planning’ of the self-start entails that a person develops a back-up plan, in case things go wrong. Finally does proactivity in ‘monitoring and feedback’ concern the development of pre-signals if problems or opportunities will occur in the future.
There is also the idea that the self-starting components are guarded against disorder. For instance when a plan is implemented, routine work is left behind and changes come up. Soon it is likely that errors appear due to these changes. These barriers may have to be over won; therefore backup plans need to be thought of. The issue of overcoming barriers is not to protect plans during the sequence of action, but rather protect the goals. (Frese & Fay, 2001)
The three aspects of the central construct PI moreover reinforce each other, as Frese & Fay (2001) refer to the work of Frese et al. (1997) who explains this as follows: ‘’A proactive stance leads to the development of self-started goals, because a proactive orientation toward the future makes it more likely to develop goals that go beyond what one is expected to do. Self-started goals lead to the need to overcome barriers because of the changes inherent in their implementation. Overcoming barriers also leads to self-starting goals, because unusual solutions often require a self-start. Finally, self-starting implies that one looks at potential future issues, and, therefore, there is a higher degree of proactivity. Thus, there is a tendency for these three aspects of PI to co-occur.’’ (p.9)
The first antecedents of PI are orientations, antecedents that are motivating; making the individual believe they can cope with potential negative consequences like change, stress or errors. The first antecedent is (1) control appraisal - means believing one can influence decisions - that has two versions; control in outcome and control in action. (2) Second, there is self-efficacy is the control over one’s actions. (3) Control and responsibility aspirations can be discussed as an experience an individual can have that negative sanctions will happen when they do something wrong. Therefore the individual needs to accept the responsibility, if they want to have control. Frese & Fay (2001) state that the orientations - control appraisal, self-efficacy and control aspiration - affect PI.
The second antecedent is ‘environmental support’ - conditions at work - that influence the orientations. To approach personal initiative Frese & Fay (2001) argue that it requires the expectation of the individual to be in control of the situations – or actions – and this control in turn moticates the person. The three antecedents that are expected to be important in this research are: (1) Control and complexity at work affect orientations of control aspirations, control appraisal, and work-specific self-efficacy. When control at work is going down, helplesness can occur; according to Heckhausen & Schulz (1995) this entails a decrease of control and responsibility aspirations. On the other side, a lack of control can also increase aspirations on the short run higher control. (2) Stressors should have a positive
relationship to PI. This may seem counterintuitive at first, but stressors are a sign that something is wrong, therefore activating the person to deal with negative situations in order to improve it. Often, stressors occur due to new activities or procedures on the short run; good strategies are needed to handle these. This may lead to a higher change orientation and control aspirations, and, in turn to higher PI. They refer to the work of Fay & Sonnentage (1998) who argue that stress at work can contribute to a higher degree of PI.
To finalize this chapter, an explanation will be given for the motivation to use the model of Frese & Fay (2001) to analyze proactivity of the entrepreneurs during this research. As there is a lot of literature on proactivity, the choice has been made to use solely one model to explore the complex cohesion between the aspects of proactivity and its antecedents. Furthermore, in general a qualitative approach on studying proactivity gives the opportunity to explore the complex coherence; something that is not possible with a quantitative approach.
3. Main research question and sub questions
When the interviews were conducted only the three aspects (self-start, long term focus and persistence) of personal initiative discussed by Frese & Fay (2001) were used as a direction for probe questions, but this will be explained more elaborately in the method section. As Frese & Fay (2001) explain that personal initiative does not differ theoretically from proactive behavior, it will also be used during the analysis of the interviews to identify proactive behavior; identifying activities and thoughts discussed by the entrepreneurs as being proactive. Furthermore, the antecedents ‘environmental support’ and ‘orientations’ will help in explaining how and why the proactive behavior occurs. The main research question is:
How does pro-activity of entrepreneurs develop from the start of an incubation process?
The objective of this research is to provide knowledge about the proactive behavior of the
entrepreneurs during the 10-week program of an incubation process. Therefore one expectation in this research is:
Proposition 1: The ‘Get started’ program increases proactive behaviour of entrepreneurs during the incubation process.
In order to find an answer to the first proposition an analysis of the data interviews will be done with the integrated model of Frese & Fay (2001); identifying proactive behavior with the central concept of personal initiative. After this is identified an overview can be given on which themes during the incubation process the proactivity of the entrepreneurs occurred; and moreover increased or decreased during the course of the program. Therefore, the role of proposition 1 is to explore which themes are pertinent in which proactivity of entrepreneur’s increases. The next step is to explore which
antecedents of the integrated model of Frese & Fay (2001) influence proactivity and if not what alternative causes are. Accordingly, the role of propositions 2 and 3 is to explore how and why proactivity develops:
Proposition 2: ‘Orientations’ influence the development of proactive behaviour during the incubation process.
Proposition 3: ‘Environmental supports’ influence the development of proactive behaviour during the incubation process.
4. Method
This paper concerns a longitudinal research, in which processes are analyzed again at later times during data collection. (Flick, 2014) The approach during data collection was a grounded theory approach, which can be explained as “a qualitative research method that uses a systematic set of procedures to develop an inductively derived grounded theory about a phenomenon” (Strauss & Corbin, 1998:24) Thereby; local concepts, principle, or process features of the phenomenon are identified. (Straus & Corbin, 1967) The qualitative data is obtained to describe and explain the process entrepreneurs underwent during the start of an incubation process; while simultaneously explaining why proactivity increases or decreases for the participants. The strength of choosing ECE to study is that they do not facilitate a traditional incubator; but rather develop a campus where everyone that is interested or involved in entrepreneurship joins at the Startup campus to follow workshops on entrepreneurship, startup programs, networking events and so on. They make a comparison of ECE with the top sport centre; a place where top sport people, trainers and other’s involved come together. As Siggelkow (2007) state that choosing a particular organization can be desirable, because it allows certain insights that cannot be found in other organizations.
4.1 Sampling
The participants were selected through self-selection (Boeije, 2009). Initially the aim was to send a request for participants to all the tenants of the GSP by email, but one of the coaches replied that due to privacy reasons they could not give this information. Instead the request could be send to them and they would send it to the entrepreneurs of GSP. Three entrepreneurs replied to be willing to participate in 4 repeating interviews during the length of the program. After this self-selection, one additional participant was identified through purposive sampling (Patton, 1990) (i.e. selecting information-rich cases for study in depth). After the participants were selected and interviews were conducted, the following characteristic came up:
Participant Gender Age Total amount of interviews Interviews at home Interviews through Skype Interviews at Startup Campus Linda Female 40 4 0 3 1 Pierre Male 26 4 4 0 0 Sergui Male 24 4 0 2 2 4.2 Data collection
Linda, Pierre and Sergui were the focus group to study in the 10-week program, with approximately 2-3 weeks between the next interviews. In longitudinal research, the data collection takes place with the same method repeatedly; this offers the potential to analyze a process. (Flick, 2014) At the start of every interview, the entrepreneur filled in the Proactive Personality Scale according to Bateman &
Crant (1993). The qualitative data was obtained through 12 semi-structured interviews with the guidelines of Boeije (2009). Semi-structured interviews are more practical and flexible to use, as questions can be changed and an explanation can be given. Certain questions can be omitted if it seemed to be less appropriate with a particular participant, or additional ones can be included (Robson, 2002). However Flick (2014) argues that one needs to take caution in doing longitudinal research; adapting interviews carefully, as it may produce artificial data when the same questions are asked over and over in each interview. In the method that was used in this research, this was taken in mind. The interview schemas were drawn to explore all the thoughts and activities of the entrepreneurs in the period discussed. An inductive approach was used during the interviews; in order explore the overall experience that entrepreneurs had during the incubation process, without questions being based on concepts in the literature.
Figure 6. Conceptual model of proactivity of entrepreneurs in the ‘Get started’ program
Basically, all question questions were designed to explore activities the entrepreneurs did; with whom, why, where, when and what it gotten them (result). The proactive behaviour would be identified and explored later in the analysis phase, thus a more deductive approach is used there; using literature to be preeminent in the analysis. Further was the directory during data collection if entrepreneurs talked about specific themes repeatedly, probe questions would have been asked accordingly. This occurred during interviews, but also after transcribing the interviews for the first time and the appearance of certain themes came up; this would be hegemonic for next interview schemas. The only stirring element of the literature during the interviews was the concept of personal initiative of Frese & Fay (2001); that proactivity is self-starting, requires a long-term focus – therefore repeatedly discussed themes were the emphasis during the interview and for the next – and persistency to reach a goal. After permission of the participants, the interviews were recorded. Later, these recorded data were
transcribed and systematically analyzed and coded to identify patterns (Strauss & Corbin, 1990).
4.3 Data analysis
The aim of the data analysis is to investigate the collected data (Yin, 1994). A thematic analysis is appropriate to uncover patterns as Fereday & Muir-Cochrane (2006) argues ‘’thematic analysis is a search for themes that emerge as being important to the description of the phenomenon’’ (p. 82) Furthermore does thematic coding allow the researcher to find themes through careful reading of the data (Fereday & Muir-Cochrane, 2006) The coding procedure that is used in this paper is open coding,
Proactive behavior Activities of the
entrepreneur Result
In which context, why, where, when and with whom
which involves ‘’the process of breaking down, examining, comparing, conceptualizing, and categorizing data’’ (Straus & Corbin, 1990: 61) and as it is an inductive approach, open coding starts without a list of codes; thus pronouncements of participants are leading. In this type of approach, analyzing the data starts during data collection. (Saunders, et al., 2011) Every time an interview was conducted, it was transcribed and long statements were abbreviated into main statements. The summarizing had a both structural and selective component. Some interviews had a somewhat chaotic structure; therefore by structuring statements into themes, the interview was better suited for further analysis. The selective component was that some expressions the entrepreneurs made were repeated several times – even in a few interviews – therefore only one or two statements were used. The reason to do this summarizing, as a researcher, was to understand the interview data better. As Saunders et al., (2001) argue that through summarizing a researcher can become familiar with principle themes that emerge from interviews and give insight how to explore these further. The data analysis is done per entrepreneur; describing and explaining 3 individual case studies. This enabled to make preliminary statements after every phase, studying the ‘path’ these entrepreneurs followed and how their pro-activity developed. Eventually, the software program Nvivo is used for open coding. After the process of open coding, the analysis was continued with axial coding. The concept of axial coding can be explained as comparing parts of the data with the same code to explore differences and similarities. (Boeije, 2009) During axial coding some codes were erased – covering detailed versions of a more overarching theme - in turn the part of the data that was released or ‘uncoded’ so the say, was ‘recoded’ in a theme that appeared be a more overarching theme that was better suited to get an overview of what was talked about during the interviews. Consequently the approach that was used during axial coding was constantly comparing in order to form categories and relations between those. (Boeije, 2009) Axial coding was done after all the interviews with the 3 entrepreneurs were conducted and coded through open coding. Then it became obvious that when they talked about for instance an aspect on how to test their system, this could be coded in the overarching theme ‘test system’. Besides differences between the data, by the phase of axial coding also similarities between codes were confirmed and therefore these codes were not changed. The next step in the analysis was selective coding; this process is intended to explore which themes repeatedly emerge in the data and how these relate to each other in order to answer the research question. Boeije (2009) Selecting important themes during this research occurred initially when they were identified as proactive behaviour; according to the concept of personal initiative (Frese & Fay, 2001) most of the time. Along with proactivity as discussed by Bateman & Crant (1993) if it was an activity better suited to this definition, together with the definition of Crant (2000) to identify proactive behaviour when a status quo was challenged and the definition of van Dyne & LePine (1998) that describe proactivity as non-required behaviour that stresses a challenge intended to improve a situation. This step was aimed to structure data when proactive behaviour occurred. After that the most important themes for proactive behaviour were identified. In deciding the importance of themes with proactive behaviour 4 criteria were used: (1) if the entrepreneurs stated the importance themselves, (2) if the entrepreneurs repeatedly discussed the theme in one interview, (3) if the theme was discussed several times by the entrepreneur during the whole incubation process and (4) if it was discussed by the other entrepreneurs as well. By using these criteria the opportunity arose to
uncover pertinent themes with proactive behaviours during the incubation process. In turn, the role of the ‘Get started’ program was discussed as well within these themes as well. Besides the most
important themes, also other activities that were identified as proactive behaviour are visible during the analysis to gain more insight into the overall incubation process; rendering a context. For instance, there was one session without the coaches that was discussed by all the entrepreneurs. According to proposition 1 the GSP stimulates proactive behaviour; therefore if the coaches challenged the entrepreneurs during prior sessions to be proactive, it was expected that the entrepreneurs showed proactive behaviour or self-initiative during a session without the coaches.
