An Empirical Research Of The Relationship Between Entrepreneurial Intellectual Capital And Venture Growth In Small And Medium Hi-tech Enterprises

The problem of new venture growth is becoming a focus in entrepreneurship theory field and in practical. The relevant research conducted before failed to announce the difference of the growth process between Hi-tech enterprises and traditional ones, or to tell us the reason why Hi-tech enterprises had more chance to grow into high performance firms. The knowledge-based view of firm and the theory of intellectual capital served as theoretical foundation for the research on technology-based new venture growth from a new viewpoint. Technological entrepreneurship was known as a process of cognizing market, finding market, pursuing market, and creating heterogeneous outputs including product or service through integrating knowledge resources. The success of technological entrepreneurship depended on the heterogeneous knowledge owed by technology entrepreneurs or entrepreneurial team. When the heterogeneous knowledge being integrated with entrepreneurial cognition, knowledge resources would set up newly, then unique value would be created, and as a result entrepreneurial profits be gained. Based on the knowledge-based view of firm and the theory of intellectual capital, the research put forward a theoretical construct model about the growth of Hi-tech enterprises motivated by entrepreneurial intellectual capital, and had launched a series of research that was correlated with. The whole research tried to focus on some important organizational variables, such as entrepreneurial intellectual capital, technology strategy, human resources behavior, technology entrepreneurial environment, and new venture performance.In study I, 24 small and medium Hi-tech enterprises were investigated as samples via semi-structured interviews and behavioral event interviews. The study summarized the growth modes of such enterprises, and identified three key elements that had made impaction on venture growth. Through studied a series of cases, the three key elements were announced as entrepreneurial intellectual capital, entrepreneurial strategy and technology entrepreneurial environment. The analysis of the interviews and cases revealed that the interaction of the above-mentioned three elements was the effective growth modes for Hi-tech enterprises. The result of this study established a preliminary construct framework for follow-up studies.The study II was divided into two sub-studies. The sub-study I investigated 105 small and medium Hi-tech enterprises and their stuff via multilevel behavioral questionnaires. It tried to validate the structural dimensions of entrepreneurial intellectual capital, the relationship of entrepreneurial intellectual capital and venture growth, and verify the dynamic change of entrepreneurial intellectual capital in different entrepreneurial stage. Through exploratory factor analysis and confirmatoryfactor analysis, the study contrasted the two-dimensional model, three-dimensional model as well as four-dimensional model of entrepreneurial intellectual capital in technology new firms, which result proved the model of entrepreneurial intellectual capital structured by four dimensions of human capital, structural capital, customer capital and innovation capital. The multidimensional structural model had acceptable convergent validity and discriminant validity. This sub-study I revealed that entrepreneurial structural capital, combined with innovation capital, had a prominent positive effect on competitive performance and potential performance, while human capital had a certain effect on potential performance, and customer capital had a little positive effect on competitive performance. Furthermore, the study also pointed out that the structural dimensions of entrepreneurial intellectual capital would change dynamically according to different entrepreneurial stage and organizational background. The sub-study II also tried to validate the relationship among entrepreneurial intellectual capital, market value and financial performance through analyzing on open data of small and medium technology-based listed companies. The...