Expanding the Entrepreneurial Cultural Toolkit: The Temporal Interplay of the Substantive and the Symbolic

Much research shows how entrepreneurs leverage symbolic toolkits via storytelling and narratives to convince resource providers of their venture’s legitimacy. Although investors’ legitimacy concerns may be initially met with symbolic actions, it is unclear whether these actions help entrepreneurs acquire commitments from a different audience—new customers. Resource providers and customers do not share the same interests—while resource providers profit from early investment in innovations, customers seek to purchase and use proven innovations. How do entrepreneurs convince customers to introduce novel digital innovations into their organizations? We explore how 28 digital health ventures tried to acquire new customers over fifteen months. While all ventures used symbolic actions early in the sales cycle to establish venture legitimacy, these actions did little to prove their innovations could integrate with customer operating environments. Only ventures that supplemented symbolic actions with substantive practices, adapting their innovations and creating new artifacts, acquired customer commitment. While cultural entrepreneurship theories emphasize how symbolic actions build venture legitimacy, our research reveals its limits when seeking customer commitment. We expand existing conceptions of the entrepreneurial cultural toolkit by explaining how the temporal interplay of symbolic and substantive practices help garner customer commitments.