Heuristics are mental shortcuts applied, consciously, subconsciously or both, to save time and efforts at the expense of risking the accuracy of the outcome. Therefore, one might argue that it is just an accuracy-effort trade-off. Nonetheless, we ought to recognize the distinction between the circumstances of risk, where all choices, outcomes, and probabilities might be generally known, and the circumstances of uncertainty, where, at least some, are not. Traditional models like the Subjective Expected Utility (SEU) work best for decisions under risk but not under uncertainty, which portrays most situations people need to tackle. Uncertainty requires simple heuristics that are sufficient instead of perfect. In this dissertation, the notion of heuristics was researched through a comprehensive historical review that unfolded the heuristics-linked ideas of significant scholars. An explicit distinction between the deliberate and the automatic heuristics was stated with chronological categories of pre and post-introduction of the SEU theory; providing a new perspective and opening a discussion for future research to consider. Additionally, qualitative and quantitative studies were applied that produced an unsophisticated heuristic set that was used by entrepreneurs in the Middle East and Germany. Perhaps entrepreneurs, and people in general, do not always know or acknowledge their use of heuristics. But still, they use it extensively and may exchange heuristics among others. That may lead us to think that in a world where uncertainty prevails, the Homo heuristicus might become a real threat to the Homo economicus.

While extant research on entrepreneurial ecosystems has focused on macro-level factors influencing the ecosystem's development, the role and impact of entrepreneurial practices have been neglected. The objective of this study is to address this research gap and to shed light on the micro-level practices of entrepreneurs who support sustainability transitions in entrepreneurial ecosystems. Our inductive study looks at these micro-level practices from the perspective of sustainable ventures situated in the sharing economy. We conducted 31 in-depth interviews with the founders and senior managers of sustainable ventures to investigate how they advocate the sustainability cause in their ecosystem. Our findings show that sustainable entrepreneurs rely on three distinct sets of micro-level practices: building a supportive environment, disrupting normative standards, and reframing the sustainability paradigm. Also, sustainable entrepreneurs engage in political work to strengthen their position and credibility in the sharing economy, which is being increasingly dominated by profit-oriented players and business practices. By substantiating the central role and micro-level practices that sustainable entrepreneurs enact to advocate sustainability, our study contributes to theorizing the sharing economy. Furthermore, our resultant framework provides a detailed overview of the distinct micro-level practices that help ventures to support the sustainability transition in entrepreneurial ecosystems.

The sharing economy is attracting increasing research attention. However, scholarly knowledge lacks understanding about the individuals who are the key players in this emerging phenomenon. This study uses an explorative approach to investigate the individual-level characteristics of sharing economy users and providers. We analyze a sample of 1170 respondents and reveal that socio-demographics (gender, age, and education), personality traits (Extraversion, Neuroticism, and Conscientiousness), and attitudes (interdependent self, materialism, sharing economy support, and perceived public value contributions) are significantly associated with people's activities in the sharing economy. Our results shed new lights into the academic debate about individual drivers of the sharing economy.

Employee innovative behavior has been recognized as a key enabler for competitiveness in China. As more and more foreign multinational companies (MNCs) are setting up innovation activities in China, fostering employee innovative behavior is playing an increasingly central role in their development strategies. However, while there is an abundance of literature on contextual success factors to foster employee innovative behavior set in Western contexts, there has been little attention on the impact of culture-specifics in China. Also, there has been limited effort to determine the relative importance of the factors and define which ones are key. We address these gaps by conducting a Delphi study set in a foreign manufacturing subsidiary in China. Among a list of 24 success factors identified in extant literature, our results reveal reward and pay, cross-functional cooperation, and company innovation strategy as the three most important factors to foster employee innovative behavior in China. We discuss these factors as to why they play a vital role for Chinese employees and finally we provide practical suggestions for implementing them. These include the set up of transparent guidelines for rewards, enhancing cross-functional cooperation and setting aligned goals among different functions.

Despite the importance of managerial reasoning in designing business models to handle exogenous change, little is known about its cognitive foundations. We address this gap with a comparative analysis of how managers rethink business model configurations to provide value in the emerging collaborative consumption economy. As customer behaviors shift from owning to sharing possessions, they challenge firms’ established business model logics. Using data from in‐depth interviews with managers from 22 sharing ventures, we find six cognitive processes to influence reasoning in new business model design. Furthermore, we find that these processes fall into distinctive dimensions of dominant and emerging logics. Ultimately, they combine into a design logic that explains how managerial reasoning results in conceptually different value creation and value capture configurations. Overall, our findings provide insights for theorizing business model design, and they enhance understanding of the foundations of managerial cognition in innovation contexts.

The cognitive perspective in entrepreneurship research has predominantly evolved around the static conceptions of cognition at the level of individual reasoning. Recently, the emerging stream of situated entrepreneurial cognition asserts that the eironment substantially influences the inherent knowledge structures of entrepreneurial reasoning. It claims that the context indoctrinates the perceptions and beliefs underlying decision making, thus authoring entrepreneurial cognition to derive from the recursive interaction between the mind and the respective eironment. Drawing on this perspective, this article follows a narrative approach iestigating the unfolding dynamics between the entrepreneurial cognition and contextual factors in a business model design. Using textual accounts from 34 episodic interviews with entrepreneurs from corporate entrepreneurship initiatives, we applied a constant comparative method identifying main themes in the data. Our findings show that entrepreneurial cognition is embedded, grounded, and distributed. We provide evidence that the situated entrepreneurial cognition results from the recursive interplay of material objects, bodily interactions, and agents spanning a social system. Our findings suggest that the unilateral consideration of authored cognitive systems falls short in capturing the holistic nature of entrepreneurial cognition. Thus, our findings further empirically ground situated entrepreneurial cognition by placing the entrepreneur at the nexus of individual and context. Finally, this article reveals the business model as a central boundary object connecting and focalizing a variety of influences on the situated entrepreneurial cognition in its social context.

This paper seeks to expand our understanding of sustainable entrepreneurial ecosystems by investigating the interrelation between contextual factors and sustainable entrepreneurial activities of sharing ventures. While the sharing economy is considered as a potential pathway to a more sustainable society,; ambiguous activities of some sharing ventures call the credibility of sharing as a sustainable concept into question. In order to shed light on the underlying cause of the ambiguity, we conducted 37 in-depth interviews with founders and senior managers of sharing ventures. Our comparative analysis identifies two distinct sets of contextual factors, which influence their sustainable activities. The first set of contextual factors enhances sustainable activities by enforcing the adaptation of behavioral rules and by enabling the development of organizational capabilities. The second set of contextual factors restricts sustainable activities by impeding market penetration and by suppressing growth. We contribute to theorizing about sustainable entrepreneurial ecosystems by delineating the conjoint effect of contextual factors on sustainable activities. Furthermore, our results add insights into the controversial academic debate about the sustainability dimension in the sharing economy.

This cumulative dissertation captures the sharing economy’s sustainability dynamics by applying a macro-, meso-, and micro-level analysis to investigate the actors and elements involved in constituting the field. On a macro-level, the first study examines the social, political, and economic context that shapes (non-)sustainable sharing entrepreneurs’ behavior. The second study's meso-level analysis investigates how sharing entrepreneurs affect other organizations and communities to act more sustainable. Lastly, the third study adopts a micro-level analysis that focuses on entrepreneurs’ identity formation in the contested sharing economy. Overall, this dissertation contributes to a more fine-grained understanding of sustainability in the sharing economy and the various actors and elements involved in constituting the field. Moreover, the dissertation highlights the actions and interventions necessary for the sharing economy’s sustainability path.

Growing technological complexity continues to drive firms to interact with the external innovation eironment to achieve firm success. However, industries’ complexities and the business model concept’s underlying ontology have limited research on modeling the key factors that enable this interface. In this study, results of an empirical analysis of a unique dataset of 102 biopharmaceutical companies broadly support the EC-LQO five-factor framework as a useful tool to guide business model innovation for highly knowledge-intensive eironments.

The proliferation of innovation contests has fostered community-based idea evaluation as an alternative to expert juries to filter and select new product concepts at the fuzzy front end of corporate innovation. We refer to this phenomenon as open evaluation, as all registered participants can engage in jury activities like voting, rating, and commenting. While previous research on innovation contests and user engagement includes participant-based evaluation, the iestigative focus so far has not been on this phenomenon. Access to jury activities in open evaluation practice contradicts innovation theory, which recommends careful selection procedures to establish expert juries for assessing new product concepts. Additionally, little is known about contingency factors that influence the performance and acceptance of open evaluation's results. To address these two questions on the objectives and contingency factors for open evaluation of new product concepts, this study applies exploratory multiple-case research of open evaluation in nine innovation contests. Data collection encompassed expert interviews and complementary sources of evidence. Results indicate that firms pursue six distinct objectives to support participant-based generation and selection of new concepts. In addition, eight contingency factors influence the performance of open evaluation and the acceptance of its results. Finally, results showed open evaluation output to efficiently complement jury decisions in filtering and selecting ideas for new product development.