Nelson Phillips, Imperial College London: "NEW VENTURE CREATION AND THE TRANSLATION OF ORGANIZATIONAL FORMS: THE CASE OF H-FARM"

Location: TC.3.10

Time and Date: Tuesday, March 15, 2016, 16.00

The institutional theory literature on translation has developed important insights into how existing organizations transfer and embed established practices from other cultural contexts and how these practices are altered in the translation process. However, despite its common occurrence, the translation of an organizational form between cultural contexts with the aim of establishing a new venture has not received systematic attention. To address this important shortcoming in the literature, we conducted a qualitative, in-depth case study of H-Farm, an Italian business incubator with a focus on digital technology. Our findings show that the creation of a new venture through the translation of an organizational form from a different cultural context involves five core processes: template appropriation, fit problematization, practical experimentation, local authentication, and template authentication. They also show that entrepreneurs emphasize different processes at different points in time, depending on their understanding of the resource environments. This kind of translation is particularly challenging given that the form being translated evolves over time. As a result, entrepreneurs must seek to emulate an entity that is itself in flux. We discuss the implications of these findings for the growing institutional literature on translation and new venture creation, as well as for entrepreneurship and cluster emergence.

Nelson Phillips is Abu Dhabi Chamber Professor of Strategy and Innovation at Imperial College London. His research interests include various aspects of organization theory, technology strategy, innovation, and entrepreneurship, often studied from an institutional theory perspective. He has published four books: Discourse Analysis with Cynthia Hardy published in 2002, Power and Organizations with Stewart Clegg and David Courpasson published in 2006, Technology and Organization with Graham Sewell and Dorothy Griffiths published in 2010, and the Oxford Handbook of Innovation Management with David Gann and Mark Dodgson published in 2014. He is also the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Management Inquiry and the Division Chair of the Organization and Management Theory Division of the Academy of Management.