Resource Endowment Study: Based On The View Of Entrepreneurial Experience

Resource has always been much concerned in the area of entrepreneurship research. Timmons (1999), in his famous "New Venture Creation", referred to an entrepreneurship model composed of three factors—entrepreneurs, resources and opportunities. He believed that, to deal with the complexity of the competitive environment and market, successful entrepreneurs must be able to adjust the key conduct to get relative balance between business opportunities and resources as the business grows.Resources are a vital part of the entrepreneurial process (Morris, 1998), and also the base of the new venture creation, survival and growth. Indeed, entrepreneurial process is the process of opportunities identification and exploitation based on resources (Brush, Greene and Hart, 2001), and the key role of the entrepreneur is to determine, access and employ the necessary and appropriate resources (Morris, 1998). Entrepreneurial resource endowments can affect the start-ups opportunities selection and resources integration.One design specification—levels of analysis—should be considered in the entrepreneurial resource research (Low & MacMillan, 1988). In general, levels of analysis can be divided into five contexts of individual, group, organization, industry and society. From different research purposes, many scholars put forward different resources classifications, and conduct their own in-depth study based on this. The classifications of Brush and Dollinger are the two most comprehensive definitions among these. Brush (2001) sorted resources into six types: human, social, financial, physical, technology, and organizational, each resource type has different tangible and intangible dimensions. Similar to this, Dollinger (2008) recognized six types of resources (called PROFIT): physical, reputational, organizational, financial, intellectual/human, and technological. Although there is no uniform standard yet, the classifications mentioned above are cited by many scholars.In Timmons'model, entrepreneurs are the main body in the process of resources identification, evaluation and configuration, as well as the core decision-maker in the entrepreneurial activities, so the study of resources could not leave the entrepreneurs alone inevitably. And experience is an important standard to distinguish entrepreneurs. What influence resource endowments will cause upon the opportunities recognition? And what influence the stock of experience will cause upon resource endowments? These are two significant questions on entrepreneur resource endowments based on the view of entrepreneurial experience.Most existing resources researches focused on the organization (enterprise) level, and few centered on resources endowments on the entrepreneur level. From MacMillan & Center (1986), many scholars began to pay attention to entrepreneurial experience, but few of them considered its impact on resource endowments. And by identifying resources and needs of different types of entrepreneurs, policy maker could adjust better to provide support plan and development stimulation (Westhead, Ucbasaran and Wright, 2005); entrepreneur could recognize their experience and resources more clearly, and cover the shortage more consciously. Thus this research has important theoretical and practical significance. This paper is structured as follows. In the following section, the impact of resource endowment upon opportunity recognition is explored. This is followed by discussing the impact of entrepreneurial experience upon resource endowments, several propositions are derived, a conceptual model is then presented. In the final section, conclusions and discussion are highlighted.This study enriches the theoretical research on entrepreneurial resources and opportunity recognition based on the perspective of entrepreneurial experience.First, the research explored entrepreneur resource endowments affect the opportunity recognition process. Concretely, financial resources provide flexible instrument necessarily in opportunity exploitation; human resources provide useful information in opportunity identification, and provide entrepreneurial capacity and potential in opportunity exploitation; social resources provide useful information and suggestions in opportunity identification, and provide a resource platform in opportunity exploitation; Furthermore, we argued the impact of entrepreneurial experience upon resource endowments. We suggested that entrepreneurial experience will enrich financial resources, improve human resources, and strengthen social resources.Brush et al. (2001) put forward two resource development pathways: resource-driven pathway and opportunity-driven pathway, which imply that when considering different entrepreneur resource endowments characteristics, we should study the interaction between resource and opportunity more deeply, in particular the launching point of interaction. This would affect the entrepreneurial process directly. At the same time, the internal mutual influence of resources should also be studied more detailed.Through reviewing relative literature, I find that many debates exist in the entrepreneurship, such as the impact of resources on performance, experience on entrepreneurs. These make us can't help doubting the scientificity, practicality and preciseness of the entrepreneurship. We should rethink it is a question of scholars'research, or philosophy. Dialectic thinks much of law of contradiction, object to view a problem one-sidedly, and object to across the board. Chinese classical philosophy thinks of "going too far is as bad as not going far enough", advocates "moderation". Maybe a lot of questions in the entrepreneurship have to be solved along the way like Westhead et al. (2009) solution, i.e., the use of inverted "U" model, but it would be too complex, lack of operability and authority. This worth the reader has more reflection.