| While scholars continue to call for research on the creation of organizational communities, very little empirical research has examined this phenomenon and no cohesive theory exists. To address this gap in our knowledge, my dissertation is exploratory study examining the process of community creation. Three research questions guide this study: (1) What are the factors that facilitate the creation of a new organizational community? (2) What are the factors that influence the first firms founded in a nascent organizational community? and (3) How do new firms coalesce into industries in an emerging community? Grounded in the community ecology perspective, institutional theory, and industry emergence literatures, I examine these questions using data from the emergence of the nanotechnology community. Origins of the community are traced from the original scientific conceptualization of nanoscience in 1959 through 2006. The research design is exploratory and inductive; however it combines both qualitative and quantitative data. Sources include over four decades of archival data from over 30 sources and 29 interviews with professors of nanotechnology, founders, CEO's, and employees of nanotechnology firms, current and former government employees directly involved in nanotechnology policy, and consultants specializing in nanotechnology application and commercialization. Data are analyzed using historical, content, and exploratory factor analyses of the events during the creation of the community. Additionally, statistical analyses test the interdependence of the community's industries.;Findings indicate that technological innovation in universities and incumbent firms generate the foundation for the community. Institutions and infrastructure are built next, supporting the further development of the technology and the community. It is only after the "infrastructure of entrepreneurship" (Van de Ven, 1993) is built that new firms are founded in the community. The first industries of new ventures to emerge are those that provide goods and services that enable the further development of the foundational technology in other industries. The dissertation contributes to the community ecology and entrepreneurship literatures by proposing a detailed model of organizational community creation induced from a grounding of existing research and empirical data from the emergence of the nanotechnology community. |
