Author Description

The innovation performance of entrepreneurial ventures critically depends upon their management of internal and external relationships. Within organizational boundaries, how cofounders collectively contribute resources and efforts can significantly impact the process of technological ideation and commercialization. Beyond organizational boundaries, how entrepreneurial ventures manage their external relationships with partners, such as product users, is also vital for innovation and overall performance. Across three inter-linked papers, this dissertation investigates collaborative innovation both within and beyond the organizational boundary of entrepreneurial ventures, focusing on the antecedents, consequences, as well as valuation of technological resource contributions. Using a quasi-natural experiment, the first paper examines how innovation-driven collaborations between ventures and their product users can be undermined by legitimacy concerns stemming from another domain within the multiplex relationship between the two parties. The second paper analyzes the organizational consequences of venture-user collaborations and suggests heterogeneous effects on different types of successes (initial public offering vs. acquisitions). Finally, the third paper explores how the type of resources contributed (technological vs. non-technological) shapes initial equity share division among cofounders as well as equity dilution over time. Together, this dissertation contributes to the literature on interorganizational relationships, innovation, and entrepreneurship and provides policy implications.