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PurposeThis paper investigates how early-stage founders use the 60-s nascent pitch to attract co-founders, by applying the narrative paradigm.Design/methodology/approachVideos of supported and non-supported pitches from Startup Weekend were analysed using the Grounded Theory Method.FindingsThe findings were used to develop a framework for a successful nascent pitch. It shows that founders who can engage the audience, convey credibility and use symbols effectively are more likely to attract co-founders. Bringing these three elements together through personalisation, that is, making the startup concept tangible and personally relevant for co-founders to visualise, enables the founder to talk a venture into existence.Practical implicationsThis paper holds implications for founders and entrepreneurship mentors to craft a powerful, persuasive pitch by drawing on the framework.Originality/valueThe framework brings a holistic understanding to the nascent pitch and explains how nascent founders acquire human resources at one of the earliest stages of venture formation. In this way, concerns of prior fragmented approaches focussed only on narrative elements of investment pitches are addressed.

The social distancing and state mandated shutdowns of 2020 brought challenges to spring semester for colleges use to in person instruction. For the most part, these challenges were met with innovation and readily accepted, or accepted as sufficient given the challenges, or outright rejected. This led to research into to the teaching methodologies and desired educational outcomes of Elevator Pitches. This paper looks at the desired educational outcome and how participants feel the outcome was met via the educational tools employed, such as a student elevator pitch competition. This paper also identifies outcomes that can be achieved when students’ employee certain marketing concepts in the design of their elevator pitch.

Although coopetition studies often focus on innovations and knowledge creation, these studies often ignore three perspectives: coopetitive micro-activities, short-term coopetitive activities and short-term coopetitive micro-activities, especially as sources of innovations. This study takes the initiative to fill this gap using a case study example of the first (elevator) pitch event held in Finnish Lapland. The outcomes imply that management and innovation studies should also consider the importance of short-term innovation events and micro-activities in the coopetition and knowledge creation processes. These types of short-term collaborative and coopetitive micro-activities and practices might have long-term effects in the innovation paths of business.

[...]IADC membership is not inexpensive, and members must justify their involvement to their law firms, companies, and colleagues. The responses were virtually unanimous: increase business referrals Armed with that input, the Board of Directors announced two \"wildly important goals\" for the coming year: (1) increase member satisfaction with business referrals and (2) increase member engagement. Join Substantive Law Committees that fit your practice areas, volunteer to speak and write (Including for this great publication), participate In virtual offerings, and when safe and authorized to do so, attend In-person meetings.

Accredited investors finance more than 75,000 U.S. startups annually. We explain how training aspiring entrepreneurs to pitch their new business ideas to these investors affects their odds of continued funding discussions. We model accredited investors’ decision to continue investigation as a real option whose value is a function of their experience and the information contained in the entrepreneurs’ pitches. We derive four hypotheses from the model, which we test through a field experiment that randomly assigns pitch training at four elevator pitch competitions. The data support all four hypotheses and are inconsistent with alternative explanations. The online appendix is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2017.2882 . This paper was accepted by Ashish Arora, entrepreneurship and innovation.

Summary This research aimed at producing malleable, breathable and water impermeable bacterial cellulose‐based nanocomposites, by impregnating bacterial cellulose (BC) membranes with two commercial hydrophobic polymers used in textile finishing, Persoftal MS (polydimethylsiloxane) and Baygard EFN (perfluorocarbon), by an exhaustion process. These hydrophobic products penetrated the BC membranes and adsorbed tightly onto the surface of the nanofibres, across the entire depth of the material, as demonstrated by Scanning Electron Microscopy and Fourier Transform Infrared spectroscopy studies. The water static contact angles, drop absorption over time and vapour permeability values showed that the composites were impermeable to liquid water but permeable to water vapour. The mechanical properties of the BC‐nanocomposites were improved after incorporation of the hydrophobic products, in some of the formulations tested, overall presenting a satisfactory performance. Thus, through a simple and cost‐effective process, hydrophobized, robust, malleable and breathable nanocomposites based on BC were obtained, featuring promising properties for application in the textile and shoe industries. This research aimed at producing malleable, breathable and water impermeable bacterial cellulose‐based nanocomposites, by impregnating bacterial cellulose (BC) membranes with two commercial hydrophobic polymers used in textile finishing by an exhaustion process. The water static contact angles, drop absorption over time and vapor permeability values showed that the composites were impermeable to liquid water but permeable to water vapor. The mechanical properties of the BC‐nanocomposites were improved after incorporation of the hydrophobic products, in some of the formulations tested, overall presenting a satisfactory performance. Thus, through a simple and cost‐effective process, hydrophobized, robust, malleable and breathable nanocomposites based on BC were obtained, featuring promising properties for application in the textile and shoe industries.

PurposeThis study focuses on extra-curricular start-up programs for students at higher educational institutions. It explores the social and situated learning experiences of students who participate in start-up programs, as well as how the processes and outcomes of entrepreneurial learning are potentially shaped by this context.Design/methodology/approachThe study follows multiple cohorts of students who have participated in an extra-curricular start-up program managed by three collaborating universities in Greater Copenhagen. The data have been inductively analyzed using semi-structured interviews with students and project managers during and after the start-up program, complemented with project progress reports, observation notes and survey data.FindingsThe analysis generates a grounded, theoretically informed process model of entrepreneurial learning situated in extra-curricular start-up programs. The model depicts how the immersion, comprehension and co-participation in entrepreneurship as social practice subsequently enables students to expand knowledge structures and develop greater self-confidence in performing entrepreneurship. The model identifies three interconnected components that trigger entrepreneurial learning among students, which allow them to acquire two set of competencies: venture creation competencies and enterprising competencies.Originality/valueThe findings offer unique insights into how the social and relational environment influence and shape the learning experience of students, hence filling the research void on entrepreneurial learning in the situated context of extra-curricular enterprise activities. The findings also elucidate how individual learning experiences of students are potentially shaped by the immersion, comprehension and co-participation in entrepreneurship as social practice.

Despite its inherent brevity, the elevator pitch is a complex concept, often hard to master for both scholars and entrepreneurs. Being able to effectively convey an entrepreneurial idea while simultaneously keeping the investors’ attention and trust high requires meticulous planning and a strong execution. Entrepreneurship scholars have investigated the elevator pitch at length in recent years, yet the field remains scattered due to conflicting results and the overall predominance of case study-based empirical research. Consequently, our study presents a systematic literature review of the quickly growing scientific literature on the elevator pitch, focusing on articles published from 2014 to 2024, in an attempt to both critically analyze what has already been established in current literature and derive a structured research agenda based on critical gaps found in the analysis. By combining bibliometric analyses and qualitative coding, we extracted three emerging themes characterizing the field, namely the use of the elevator pitch in entrepreneurship research, the attempts to derive elevator pitch best practices in terms of content and delivery, and how the use of technology is reshaping the concept of the elevator pitch. The research provides both theoretical and practical insights. From a theoretical perspective, it serves as a guide for researchers to link current research areas to future trends. For practitioners and entrepreneurs, the study serves as a multidisciplinary reference for the current state of the art of elevator pitch knowledge. Highlights Scientific production on the elevator pitch has drastically increased over recent years. The elevator pitch has proven to be an effective tool in boosting self-efficacy among entrepreneurship students. Results are conflicting when it comes to determining whether rationality or emotionality is dominant in pitch delivery. Several lines of future research can be drawn to further develop the field and deepen the collective understanding of the elevator pitch.