Prior research highlights storytelling as a means for entrepreneurs to establish venture legitimacy and gain stakeholder support. We extend this line of research by examining the role that projective stories play in setting expectations and the dynamics that ensue. Such attention highlights a paradox—the very expectations that are set through projective stories to gain venture legitimacy can also serve as the source of future disappointments. Because of inherent uncertainties that projective stories mask, ventures will likely deviate from their early projections, thereby disappointing stakeholders. This, in turn, can result in a loss of legitimacy. Recognizing that entrepreneurship is an ongoing process, we examine the constraints and possibilities of maintaining or regaining legitimacy through revised storytelling. We conclude the paper with implications for research on entrepreneurial storytelling as an ongoing process.

493This study examines the antecedents of explorative and exploitative learning of technological knowledge from external corporate ventures. We compare different forms of external corporate venturing, namely corporate venture capital investments, alliances, joint ventures, and acquisitions, as alternative avenues for interorganizational learning. Furthermore, we test the effects of multiple relational characteristics on the type of learning outcomes. Our empirical analysis is based on citations in patents filed by a sample of 110 largest U.S. public information and communications technology companies during the years 1992-2000. We find that corporate venturing mode and technological relatedness have significant effects on the likelihood of explorative learning.

This study examines how different governance modes for external business development activities and venture relatedness affect a firm's innovative performance. Building on research suggesting that interorganizational relationships enhance the innovative performance of firms, we propose that governance modes and venture relatedness interact in their effect on innovative performance. Analyzing a panel of the largest firms in four information and communication technology sectors, we find that degree of relatedness for corporate venture capital investments, alliances, joint ventures, and acquisitions influences their impact on innovative performance.

A debate persists about the distinctiveness of entrepreneurship research. Entrepreneurship research is seen as fragmented and its results are considered noncumulative, handicapping the evolution of the field as a respected scholarly discipline. In this article we conduct a bibliometric analysis to shed light on these issues. We analyze co-citation patterns of entrepreneurship-related articles published in the years 2000 to 2004 and identify the 25 most central research streams in entrepreneurship. We describe these groups and investigate their mutual relationships. Although the United States represents by far the greatest source of entrepreneurship articles, other countries represent significant sources of research in specific streams.

When planned change is cancelled, managers may be tempted to reverse their organization's strategy. Our longitudinal case study documents a cancelled merger effort and a failed attempt to return to the organization's widely accepted pre-merger strategy. We trace the failure to contradictions in symbolic change management. The phenomenon of change reversal draws attention to the historical continuity of sensemaking and raises caution about the popular view that managers need to destroy organizational meaning in order to facilitate the realization of strategic change. 1 We are indebted to Professor Michael Pratt and three anonymous reviewers for their critical and constructive contributions to the development of the paper. This paper is a tribute to their passionate and insightful guidance.