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HYBRID VENTURES

Perspectives & Approaches to Blended Value Entrepreneurship

Volume 19 of Advances in Entrepreneurship, Firm Emergence and Growth

Manuscripts Due: September 30, 2016

Editors: Andrew C. Corbett, Babson College and Jerome A. Katz, Saint Louis University

Hybrid entrepreneurs – those who simultaneously emphasize social and environmental value creation along with economic value creation (Battilana & Lee 2014) – have garnered increased attention from both entrepreneurship scholars and practitioners in recent years.  After over a decade of thoughtful scholarship on social entrepreneurship, researchers have begun to examine organizations that imbue social and environmental dimensions of value creation alongside financial returns at the inception of the venture (Grimes et al. 2013).   With the recently released Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) special report on social entrepreneurship showing that approximately 7% of the worldwide population is involved in some form of social business creation, the question of how entrepreneurs simultaneously employ social, environmental, and economic business models to drive their ventures is of increasing importance. 

In the current scholarship, the questions and perspectives around hybrid ventures appear as varied as the multitude of business models that entrepreneurs can enact in this space. Some proclaim that entrepreneurs create dysfunctional effects for the rest of us when they do not pursue a hybrid approach that seeks blended value (Beaver and Jennings, 2005 Khan, Munir and Willmott, 2007; Wright & Zahra, 2016).  Others state that the three forms of values are not distinct, cannot be separated, and that all enterprises have some form of each (Emerson 2003). Some have questioned whether social entrepreneurship has become the norm for businesses (Corbett 2016) or whether all new ventures should be required to be a hybrid organization (McMullen & Warnick 2016).

Given this current conversation, Volume 19 of Advances in Entrepreneurship, Firm Emergence and Growth will examine all matters and questions involving hybrid ventures and blended value creation. Both theoretical and empirical manuscripts that consider all aspects of the concomitance of social, environmental, and economic new venture creation will be considered.  

For nearly two decades, the Advances in Entrepreneurship, Firm Emergence and Growth series has provided an annual examination of the major current research, theoretical, and methodological efforts in the field of entrepreneurship, and its related disciplines, including firm emergence and growth research. The Advances series also publishes papers from other fields, such as strategy, organizational behavior, psychology, or sociology that use entrepreneurial samples or make a contribution to entrepreneurial theory or research.

With this year's focus on hybrid ventures and blended value, some broad, relevant questions include:

Ø  Are blended value models the new norm?

Ø  Should all new ventures develop hybrid model to survive?

Ø  How do hybrid models relate to, expand or prescribe for corporate social responsibility?

Ø  Should entrepreneurs incorporate hybrid models at the start of their venture?

Ø  What role, if any, should government play in the development of hybrid business models?

A representative, but by no means exhaustive, listing of relevant topics include:

Ø  Assessments or conceptualizations of the applicability of hybrid models in different contexts

Ø  Conceptual or empirical assessments of the hybrid vs. non-hybrid line of thinking

Ø  How to properly measure the impact of hybrid ventures

Ø  Comparisons of various approaches to balancing social, environmental, and economic business models

Ø  Conceptual approaches to develop new theories about blended value or hybrid business models

Ø  What makes different hybrid models attractive to particular types of entrepreneurs

Ø  Hybrid models in underdeveloped economies

Ø  The role of public policy for hybrid venture development and blended value

Ø  Hybrid venture development based upon certification such as LEED or Fair Trade

Ø  Do entrepreneurs find more opportunities by searching for hybrid models

Ø  Conversely, might entrepreneurs miss opportunities by focusing on hybrid models

Ø  How might technology assist in hybrid model development

Ø  The social networking and information impacts of entrepreneurs in hybrid venture development

Ø  Theoretical development that explains and explores the linkages between hybrid venture models and existing theories

The papers in Advances reflect many state-of-the-art topics and approaches, and are written by leading researches in the field, making each volume an important source of information for virtually all entrepreneurship researchers. One of the distinctive competences of research volumes such as Advances is that the chapters can be published without page restrictions allowing for greater detail in the background, development, and implementation of ideas than is possible in journal articles. This provides authors with the opportunity to fully express their key ideas, provide much more complete support, and include relevant multi-page appendices. In effect, the Advances series provides authors the opportunity to publish an "article of record" of their major theoretical or empirical ideas, and see it disseminated to a wide audience.

Today, the series is in the libraries of virtually all of the schools with active Ph.D. programs in entrepreneurship, as well as the majority of AACSB accredited schools with MBA concentrations in entrepreneurship and related fields.

We welcome the opportunity to discuss paper ideas with interested researchers.  Please contact the editors:  Andrew Corbett, acorbett@babson.edu or Jerome Katz, katzja@slu.edu.