Prof. Andy Wu (Harvard Business School)

Program

Date: May 31st, 2017

Time: 17.00 - 18.30 hrs

Place: Ludwigstr. 28, VG, Room 211

Title: Entrepreneurial Access to Market and Non-Market Resources: Chinese Venture Capital and High-Speed Rail

Abstract

A new venture must leverage market and nonmarket resources external to its firm boundary either directly or indirectly through a partner intermediary. Indirect resource access through a venture capital intermediary is superior to direct resource access for an entrepreneur facing the “liability of newness.” The venture capitalist’s greater credibility and track record equips it to better leverage market resources and even more so for nonmarket resources, which involve greater uncertainty and imperfect information. We test our theory in the setting of the Chinese technology and venture capital industry. In a differences-in-differences model, we exploit the phased introduction of the Chinese High Speed Railway system in the 2000s as an exogenous shock to resource accessibility that differentially reduced travel time to economic or political hubs.