Entrepreneurship Theories

What is hybrid entrepreneurship? Most entrepreneurs work for organizations before or while they start their businesses. There is macho entrepreneurship dogma that says you have to go all in, experience "the fear" and dedicate yourself for 80 hours a week to your venture. Implicit in this is the notion that an entrepreneur cannot succeed if they hedge their bets by keeping one foot in employment. Why go all in to a startup if startups are probabilistic events, not givens. Many employers and regulators allow employees the freedom to pursue new ventures on the side, especially those that do not directly compete with their employers (and therefore not breaching a duty of loyalty).  Hybrid entrepreneurship refers to entrepreneurship whereby an employee starts a business on the side and keeps their day job until the startup reaches a certain size. Once the business is large enough to command the founder's full attention, then the employee makes their exit. However, it i

What is the Lean Launchpad? The Lean Launchpad was developed by Steve Blank (serial entrepreneurs and adjunct professor at Stanford) and colleagues as a repeatable process to create a startup. It is probably the most popular methodology today, featuring in a great number of entrepreneurship programs for students and mature students. It is also the method used at Y-Combinator and other top incubator programs. Despite its popularity, there is little empirical research examining the method. Assumptions behind the Lean Launchpad The theory behind the Lean Launchpad can be described as a discovery theory. The entrepreneurship literature is divided about the nature of entrepreneurial opportunities. At one end of the spectrum is the creationist school that views entrepreneurship as a process of opportunity creation led by teams and individuals (McMullen and Dimov, 2013). At the opposite end of the spectrum, the discovery school defends an objective view of entrepreneurship where oppo