Research On The Relation Among Entrepreneurial Network, Business Model Innovation And Legitimacy Of Start-ups

With the background of double-venture era,start-ups sprang up like mushrooms after a spring rain.China is experiencing the greatest upsurge of entrepreneurship ever.The number of failed enterprises has increased significantly while the continuous emergence of start-ups.The reason could be that most of the enterprises can not embedded in the business environment,that is,the legitimacy is generally weak.It requires start-ups to integrate into the entrepreneurial networks and innovate business models that are different from their competitors,so as to enhance legitimacy in the process of entrepreneurship.In this regard,this paper will introduce "business model innovation" as a new intermediary variable to study the relationship among entrepreneurial network,business model innovation and legitimacy.This paper chooses Jiangsu Honesty Air Conditioning Equipment Co.,Ltd.and Nanjing Gubai Rubber and Plastic Products Co.,Ltd.as the research objects,based on the literature,combined with grounded theory,extracts the three variables of entrepreneurial network,business model innovation and legitimacy.Entrepreneurial network can be devided into political network,business network and personal network;legitimacy can be divided into regulatory legitimacy,normative legitimacy and cognitive legitimacy.Furthermore,based on the literature and grounded theoretical results,theoretical hypotheses and models of research are built,and a measurement scale with good reliability and validity is developed.Finally,in the view of 209 pieces of large sample data,reliability and validity test and hypothesis test is carried out by Structural Equation Modeling(SEM).The main questions of this study are:(1)Does entrepreneurship network have a positive effect on legitimacy;(2)Does entrepreneurship network have a positive effect on business model innovation;(3)Does business model innovation have a positive effect on legitimacy;(4)Does business model innovation mediate the relationship between entrepreneurial network and legitimacy.The results show that:(1)Political network have significant positive effects on regulatory legitimacy,normative legitimacy and cognitive legitimacy;businessnetwork have significant positive effects on normative legitimacy and cognitive legitimacy;and personal network have significant positive effects on cognitive legitimacy;(2)Political network,business network and personal network have positive effects on business model innovation;(3)Business model innovation has a positive effect on regulatory legitimacy,normative legitimacy and cognitive legitimacy;(4)Business model innovation has intermediary effect in political network and regulatory legitimacy,normative legitimacy and cognitive legitimacy;business model innovation has intermediary effect in business network and cognitive legitimacy;business model innovation has intermediary effect in personal network and cognitive legitimacy.