Zusammenfassung
The emergence of cleantech industry offers a unique context to explore and developentrepreneurship theories. Cleantech ventures are important agents of environmental innovation,they exploit technological knowledge contribute to an increased use of energy from renewablesources or to a more environmentally friendly handling of waste. They represent an extreme case oftechnology entrepreneurship: combining a strong focus on capital-intensive technologies withcomplex industrial markets.Cleantech ventures face greater firm and industry-level legitimacy challenges while accessingexternal resources, compared to high-tech ventures operating in more established (legitimized)industries. Zimmermann and Zeitz (2002) suggested that achieving a legitimacy threshold is relatedto the emergence of a new venture. However, from the stage-based theory perspective, gaininglegitimacy is associated with overcoming critical junctures (Vohora et al. 2004). Instead of a uniquethreshold, cleantech ventures might have to build and sustain legitimacy across different stages,overcoming legitimacy thresholds (Fisher et al. 2016). Our study examines how cleantech venturespursue the process of signaling towards external parties to reach important entrepreneurialmilestones in different development stages. We address the following research questions: • Whyand how do the cleantech ventures signal to gain legitimacy, and • What signals do they send in thestart-up and growth (late) stages?MethodologyWe use a multiple case-study of five cleantech firms. The selected companies started in Norway,but operate internationally, as evidence of the global nature of this emerging industry. We havecarried out personal in-depth interviews with the CEOs of the five ventures (signal senders) using asemi-structured interview guide in the spring 2016, and collected secondary data on the firms.Results and ImplicationsOur findings describe the motivations and distinctive characteristics of the signaling actions.Cleantech ventures pursue several parallel signaling strategies, shifting from resources to customers’acquisition. Furthermore, as cleantech ventures issue multiple signals to external partiessimultaneously, consistency and complementarity between the signals amplifies the positive effecton the firm’s legitimacy. We identify direct signals that reveal qualities of the firm, and derivativesignals that help to conceal perceived weaknesses. For cleantech entrepreneurs, having a focus ondirect signaling on how the technology performs and its market potential seems to be a more fruitfulstrategy than signaling the environmental impact of technology in the early stage. While having anexperienced board helps to issue derivative signals to conceal the limited reputation of the foundingteam.
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