Timely Creation of New Organizations: The Imprinting Effects of Entrepreneurs' Initial Founding Decisions

Abstract

In an attempt to explain why some new organizations are established faster than others, we have adopted the perspective that the timely emergence of an organization can be understood and predicted if it is viewed as being conditioned by the initial decisions of its entrepreneurs regarding their opportunities. Using a large dataset of individuals who are in the process of building their ventures in the United States, and who have been followed up on an annual basis as they go through this process, we have found empirical evidence to conclude that the characteristics of an initial opportunity have an effect on the time taken to create new organizations. Given the novelty of the relationships investigated in this study, coupled with the empirical support for some of our hypotheses, we believe our findings can shed new light on the understanding of imprinting forces for timely organization creation.