臺大管理論叢 NTU Management Review VOL.30 NO.1

Entrepreneurial Networking Actions and Innovativeness of Opportunities: The Moderator Role of Venture Stage 42 Network deepening refers to “the extent to which an entrepreneur strengthens ties to existing personal network contacts by time pacing interactions with them, overlaying friendships over purely business relations, and preserving existing ties” (Vissa, 2012). Entrepreneurs practicing network deepening typically depend on the benefits provided by referrals. These entrepreneurs generally interact with their existing ties (e.g., family, friends, and colleagues), leading to the establishment of fewer new economic exchange activities (Vissa, 2012). Moreover, these entrepreneurs tend to favor time-based pacing and network preserving activities to develop deep and long-term relationships with their existing ties, and expand their networks by using existing ties based on the relational embedding approach. 2.3 Networking Actions and the Innovativeness of Opportunities Recent opportunity studies treat social networks and information as critical antecedents to opportunities. Singh, Hills, Hybels, and Lumpkin (1999) observe that large social networks facilitate the identification of opportunities for entrepreneurs. Shane (2000) suggests that opportunity recognition develops from social information. These assertions are consistent with the hypothesis that not all people can identify opportunities (Kirzner, 1997), indicating the relevance of information to opportunity recognition. Network broadening actions comply with a type of social networking strategy where entrepreneurs interact with people other than their current ties (e.g., participating in industry forums and business-related networking events), actively meet new friends, and establish business relationships (Vissa, 2012). When executing network broadening actions, entrepreneurs contact a wider collection of relevant new people. These new people are particularly relevant because they share social similarities and task complementarities (Vissa, 2011). Grossman, Yli-Renko, and Janakiraman (2012) assert that entrepreneurs seek network contacts who are perceived to offer potential access to the widest variety of resources. In summary, network broadening actions increase exposure to new people and create heterogeneous ties which enable access to various resources. Entrepreneurs can obtain diverse, novel, and cross-field business information and resources, increasing the level of innovativeness of opportunities by undertaking actions such as creating new means–end frameworks in new markets. In accordance to this, this study proposes Hypothesis 1. H1: Entrepreneurs who engage in more interpersonal network broadening actions are associated with greater innovativeness of opportunities.