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  • June 2020
  • Article
  • Administrative Science Quarterly

Start-up Inertia versus Flexibility: The Role of Founder Identity in a Nascent Industry

By: Tiona Zuzul and Mary Tripsas
  • Format:Print
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Abstract

Through an inductive, comparative study of four early entrants in the nascent air taxi market, we examine why start-ups, generally characterized as flexible, malleable entities, might instead exhibit inertial behavior. While two of the firms engaged in ongoing experimentation and adaptation, two firms actively reinforced their original venture concepts, even in the face of environmental shifts and declining firm performance. Comparisons of the firms revealed the importance of founders’ identities. Two founders saw themselves as ‘‘revolutionaries’’ building novel ventures to drive radical change. In contrast, two sets of founders saw themselves as ‘‘discoverers’’ identifying new opportunities and exploiting them to build successful businesses. We propose that these identities contributed to the firms’ inertia and flexibility primarily through the mechanism of identity affirmation. Acting in a manner consistent with their self-views, revolutionary founders committed to and actively reinvested in radical venture concepts, rejecting potentially adaptive changes that they felt compromised novelty. In contrast, discoverer founders prioritized experimentation and change in reaction to shifting conditions. We propose an emergent framework exploring how, in a nascent industry, a founder’s identity can set off self-reinforcing cycles of firm inertia or flexibility.

Keywords

Founder Identity; Nascent Industries; Entrepreneurship; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Identity

Citation

Zuzul, Tiona, and Mary Tripsas. "Start-up Inertia versus Flexibility: The Role of Founder Identity in a Nascent Industry." Administrative Science Quarterly 65, no. 2 (June 2020): 395–433.
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About The Author

Tiona W. Zuzul

Strategy
→More Publications

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More from the Authors
  • How Do You Keep Winning? Strategy Across Technological and Industry Lifecycles By: Tiona Zuzul
  • The Globalization of Manchester City Football Group By: Maria P. Roche, Tiona Zuzul, Exequiel Hernandez and Amy Klopfenstein
  • Dynamic Silos: Increased Modularity in Intra-organizational Communication Networks during the Covid-19 Pandemic By: Tiona Zuzul, Emily Cox Pahnke, Jonathan Larson, Patrick Bourke, Nicholas Caurvina, Neha Parikh Shah, Youngser Park, Joshua Vogelstein, Christopher White and Carey E. Priebe
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