Patents and innovation: an empirical study
Management Science
Timid choices and bold forecasts: a cognitive perspective on risk taking
Management Science
Mental leaps: analogy in creative thought
Mental leaps: analogy in creative thought
Network Ties, Reputation, and the Financing of New Ventures
Management Science
Organizational Endowments and the Performance of University Start-ups
Management Science
Entrepreneurial Optimism in the Market for Technological Inventions
Organization Science
WSEAS Transactions on Information Science and Applications
Entrepreneurial Success and Failure: Confidence and Fallible Judgment
Organization Science
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This paper develops a hubris theory of entrepreneurship to explain why so many new ventures are created in the shadow of high venture failure rates: More confident actors are moved to start ventures, and then act on such confidence when deciding how to allocate resources in their ventures. Building on theory and evidence from the behavioral decision-making literature, we describe how founders socially constructed confidence affects the manner in which they interpret information about their prior and current ventures. We then link founders propensity to be overconfident to their decisions to allocate, use, and attain resources. In our model, founders with greater socially constructed confidence tend to deprive their ventures of resources and resourcefulness and, therefore, increase the likelihood that their ventures will fail.