Henrik Berglund

Publications

• Berglund, H. (2011). Early stage VC investing: Comparing California and Scandinavia. Venture Capital: An International Journal of Entrepreneurial Finance. Vol. 13. (2): 119-145.
  

  While venture capital has become a global phenomenon, our knowledge about regional differences in VC behavior is quite poor. Most cross-regional comparisons have been quantitative replications of US based studies, which has made it difficult to discern qualitative differences. To help remedy this situation, we conducted semi-structured open interviews with altogether twelve early stage VCs in California and Scandinavia. The results, which are presented in some detail, reveal substantial differences in VC activities and priorities during deal flow generation, investment, post investment involvement, and exit. Taking a cue from these specific findings, we conclude by suggesting that VCs can be conceived of as fulfilling three ideal typical roles as Investors, Coaches and Partners. Since they imply quite different modes of engaging with portfolio companies, it is also suggested that these roles — while based on a limited sample — may be useful for discriminating between VCs also in other settings.

  
  
• Berglund, H. (2011). (Re)lectures des opportunités, fragmentation du champ et fondements empiriques de l'entrepreneuriat - William B. Gartner Interview du 26 février 2011. Revue de l'Entrepreneuriat. Vol. 10. (1).
  

  Question 1) As a highly influential entrepreneurship scholar with more than 25 years of experience, you have helped launch large-scale empirical research programmes (e.g. PSED), pioneered new theoretical perspectives (e.g. the focus on behaviors rather than character traits), and also -- perhaps as a consequence of this -- actively engaged in debates and discussions of a more paradigmatic nature. In light of this wide-ranging experience, what is your own personal view of the history and current state of entrepreneurship as a field of research? Question 2) Let's focus more narrowly on how to understand and study entrepreneurial action or behavior. As I see it, much of this research can be roughly organized under three headings that reflect broad research programmes in entrepreneurship studies, and also correspond to generic views of human action, viz.: the empiricism of behavioral approaches, the rationalism of cognitive approaches, and the interpretivism of discursive approaches (Berglund 2005). Again accord- ing to my interpretation, behavioral approaches tend to downplay the subjective meanings that actions have to individuals in favor of objective examinations of specific behaviors. Cognitive approaches seek to address intentionality and meaning by showing how different thought styles and knowledge structures, e.g. heuristics and biases, cause different behaviors. Discursive approaches explicitly probe the subjective meanings actions have to individuals by investigating how entrepreneurial actions and decisions are affected by more or less public narratives and discourses. ...

  
  
• Berglund, H. and Sarasvathy, S. (2010). On the Relevance of Decision Making in Entrepreneurial Decision Making. In Landström, H. and Lohrke,L. (Eds.). The Historical Foundations of Entrepreneurship Research, pp. 75-93. Edward Elgar, Aldershott, UK.
  

  In Chapter 8, Saras Sarasvathy and Henrik Berglund provide a detailed review of the theory related to entrepreneurial decision making. They argue that research into entrepreneurial decision making has accomplished only a thin slice of what is possible, because, to date, little effort has been made to relate findings from entrepreneurship research back to scholarship in decision making. Sarasvathy and Berglund conclude that it is time to move from modeling entrepreneurial activity solely as 'decision' occurring within the individual-opportunity nexus to include the 'design' of opportunities, in which opportunities are not exogenous to the entrepreneurial process, but can also be its outcome or residual.

  
  
• Yar Hamidi, D., Wennberg, K. and Berglund, H. (2008). Creativity in Entrepreneurship Education, Journal of Small Business and Enterprise Development (Special Issue on Entrepreneurship Education). 15(2): 304-320.
  

  The purpose of this paper is to use social cognitive theory to investigate entrepreneurial intent among participants in graduate entrepreneurship programs. Specifically, the authors test whether students' creative potential is related to their intention to engage in entrepreneurship

  
  
• Berglund, H. (2008). Entreprenörskap och fenomenologi: att studera entreprenörskap som levd erfarenhet, FSF-NUTEK Prize Award Essay. Published by Entreprenörskapsforum. (In Swedish).

  Entreprenörskap ses ofta som avgörande för att förstå ekonomisk utveckling. Författare som Joseph Schumpeter, Paul Romer och David Birch pekar i olika sammanhang ut tekniska innovationer och entreprenörskap som avgörande för industriell dynamik, ekonomisk tillväxt och jobbskapande. Majoriteten av nya företag överlever dock inte de första åren. Detta faktum har fått flera forskare att fråga sig varför folk väljer att starta företag, och hur man bäst kan förstå beteendet hos de människor som från utsidan framstår som en grupp "optimistiska martyrer" som offrar sig för det gemensammas bästa.

  
  
• Berglund, H. (2007). Opportunities as Existing and Created: A Study of Entrepreneurs in the Swedish Mobile Internet Industry, Journal of Enterprising Culture. 15(3): 243-273.
  

  The notion of opportunities is fast becoming a central theme in the field of entrepreneurship research. As part of this growing interest, the ontological status of opportunities has been scrutinized with researchers tending to view them as either objectively existing or socially created. In the present treatment, this ontological debate is partly avoided in favor of a phenomenological examination of Mobile Internet entrepreneurs, which naturally bridges these distinctions. The empirical findings are used to propose a framework in which opportunities are seen as both existing and created in the evolving set of perceptions and projections, sometimes fixed and sometimes mutable, that provide the cognitive and practical drivers needed to guide entrepreneurial action.

  
  
• Berglund, H. (2007). Risk Conception and Risk Management in Corporate Innovation: Lessons from two Swedish Cases, International Journal of Innovation Management. 11(4): 497-513.
  

  Risk is central to innovation but in order to be theoretically interesting and of practical use the relation between risk and innovation needs to be investigated in more specific situations. This paper explores the risk conceptions of innovators in two large corporations and identifies three themes that illuminate the relationship between risk and innovation in the corporate setting. The first relates risk to the issues of boundaries and control over parts of the innovation process, the second how risk is primarily related to innovation as process and not as output, and the third on how a flexible view of business models can be used to manage risk in corporate innovation.

  
  
• Berglund, H., Hellström, T. Sjölander, S. (2007) Entrepreneurial Learning and the Role of Venture Capitalists, Venture Capital: An International Journal of Entrepreneurial Finance, 9(3): 165-181.
  

  This paper develops a model of entrepreneurial learning in order to explain how VCs support the process of entrepreneurial learning and thereby add value to their ventures. We draw on two generic approaches to learning, termed the hypothesis-testing mode and the hermeneutic mode, which turn out to be closely interrelated in such learning processes. The resulting model comprises four categories, which focus on what entrepreneurs learn and how it is learnt: experimentation, evaluation, unreflective action and unverified assumptions. We then use these analytical categories to illustrate how VCs apply their different forms of expertise to increase a venture's value once an investment has been made.

  
  
• Berglund, H. (2007). Researching Entrepreneurship as Lived Experience, In Neergaard, H. and Ulhøi, J. (Eds). Handbook of Qualitative Research Methods in Entrepreneurship, pp. 75-93. Edward Elgar, Cheltenham, UK.
  

  Berglund in Chapter 3, "Researching entrepreneurship as lived experience", presents aspects of philosophical phenomenology that are relevant to entrepreneurship and exemplifies how phenomenology can be used to capture and communicate the meanings of different entrepreneurial experiences, allowing for a more detailed understanding of how theoretical concepts and empirical events are understood and translated into action by entrepreneurs. (from the book editors' introduction)

  
  
• Wennberg, K. and Berglund, H. (2006). Social Networking and the Development of New Ventures. In Beyerlein, M. (Ed). Innovation through Collaboration. Advances in Interdisciplinary Studies of Work, Vol.12, pp. 203-225. JAI Press.
  

  This chapter takes a closer look at how social networks can affect the early development of new ventures. The dynamic role of social networks is discussed and exemplified by two longitudinal cases that illustrate the radically different ways in which social networks can influence venture development. These differences relate to social or individual ownership of the innovation process, to risks or opportunities as the focus of attention, and to the creative relationship between networking and financial bootstrapping techniques.

  
  
• Berglund, H. and Wennberg, K. (2006). Creativity Among Entrepreneurship Students: Comparing Engineering and Business Education, International Journal of Continuing Engineering Education and Lifelong Learning. (Special Issue on Enterprise), 16(5): 366-379.
  

  As creativity is increasingly recognised as a vital component of entrepreneurship, researchers and educators struggle to reform enterprise pedagogy. To help in this effort, we use a personality test and open-ended interviews to explore creativity between two groups of entrepreneurship masters' students: one at a business school and one at an engineering school. The findings indicate that both groups had high creative potential, but that engineering students channelled this into practical and incremental efforts whereas the business students were more speculative and had a clearer market focus. The findings are drawn on to make some suggestions for entrepreneurship education.

  
  
• Berglund, H. and Hellström, T. (2002). Enacting Risk in Independent Technological Innovation, International Journal of Risk Assessment and Management. 3(2/3/4): 205-221.
  

  The present study aims at investigating the role of risk in the activity of independent technological venturing. Altogether 12 deep-interviews were conducted with technological entrepreneurs, who had taken part in the inventive, developmental and the commercialisation phases of a technologybased innovation process. The interviews revealed a number of enactment approaches through which these innovators encountered and affected (dealt with or transformed) risk within the innovation process. Factors thus developed from the empirical material included: human capital, pace and priority, the world moves, activating social networks, risk learning, risk incrementalism, maintaining venture agility, and creating and sustaining autonomy. The paper presents a theoretical contextualisation as to the significance of these factors, and finally suggests a number of ways in which these may be interpreted for the benefit of innovation management.

  
  
• Hellström, T., Hellström, C. and Berglund, H. (2002). The Innovating Self: Exploring Self Among a Group of Technological Innovators, Journal of Managerial Psychology, 17(4): 267-286.
  

  This paper explores the relevance of the concept of self in the process of independent technological innovation. In-depth interviews were conducted with technological innovators from start-up firms in IT, biotech and advanced services concerning the subjective and social forms of engagement in the innovation process. Emerging factors in the interview data revealed aspects pertaining to the innovator's reflexive self-conception, innovator ego-involvement in the venture, forms of commitment and control, personal and social stakes, and various self-oriented cognitive strategies. It is argued that the self-concept allows the innovator to come into view as a social and subjective being who is involved in reflexive activities such as dynamic role-taking, "is" vs "ought" reflections and social negotiations.

Dissertation

• Berglund, H. (2005). Toward a Theory of Entrepreneurial Action - Exploring Risk, Opportunity and Self in Technology Entrepreneurship, Dissertation at Chalmers University of Technology, ISSN 0346-718X: No 7728, ISBN 91-7291-697-4 (for the thesis in html: thesis index).

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