Lu, S and Sexton, M G (2009) The establishment and growth of a high technology firm: Interim results from an exploratory longitudinal case study. In: Dainty, A R J (ed.) Proceedings of 25th Annual ARCOM Conference, 7-9 September 2009, Nottingham, UK.
Abstract
Entrepreneurs create companies, employment and are often in the vanguard of new technology developments and applications they are the Schumpeterian agents of creative destruction. This is a widely recognised reality which underpins national and regional policies to create the conditions necessary to encourage and sustain entrepreneurial start-up companies. It is therefore surprising that there is a dearth of research into entrepreneurship within a construction industry context given the high company formation rate in most national construction sectors. This deficiency is further accentuated by the lack of understanding of entrepreneurship in high technology domains in an era when we seek new technologies to improve the environmental and whole lifecycle performance of buildings. This paper reports on an ongoing Construction Knowledge Exchange funded project which is tracking, real time, the start-up and growth of a company which is developing and introducing a range of leading edge light emitting diode technologies. Interim results will be presented on the interplay between business environment conditions and the complex emergence of the company: from the original motivation of the founders of the firm, to its growth strategy and organisational design and its business development and marketing strategy.
| Item Type: | Conference Paper (Paper) |
|---|---|
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | entrepreneurship; high technology; light emitting diode |
| Index terms: | employment, strategy, motivation, organizational design, case study, new technology, construction industry, agent, construction sector, emergence, business development, knowledge exchange, real time, marketing, entrepreneurship, lifecycle |
| Subjects: | systems engineering, industry analysis, project controls, management, project delivery, knowledge management, innovation and technology management, psychology, practitioner, business, data collection methods |
| Topics: | Time Control, Organizational Design, Human Resources, Roles and Professions, Business Strategy, Engineering Principles, Information Management, Research Practice, Project Management |
| Descriptive scope: | 4 PCTE |
N.B. Descriptive scope is a count of how many of the five facets of empirical research are indicated by the words used in title, abstract and keywords. It is not intended as a judgement on the research; merely a count of the kind of word we would expect to indicate Phenomenon, Concepts, Theoretical framing, Empirical techniques, Analytical techniques. If all five are present, then a code of “5 PCTEA” will indicate this. If you feel the coding for this record is questionable, we welcome discussion around the terms we matched or the way we categorized them. The facet you would expect may not be coded, or a facet may be coded inappropriately. This can also bear on a larger question, of which facets should be treated as defining in construction management research. Please get in touch, and we will look at it. More details here