Ambitious Entrepreneurship: A Review of Growth Aspirations, Intentions, and Expectations

Expectations and achievements in new firms

“…Since the dependent variables are different from traditional measures of relative or absolute growth, we refer to them as business outcomes or achievements rather than growth. Hermans et al (2015) encourage scholars to distinguish between three different concepts that concern growth willingness and ambitious entrepreneurs: (1) Growth aspiration, what the entrepreneurs ideally wants to achieve. (2) Growth intentions, what the entrepreneurs intend to achieve, combined with the efforts they are prepared to make.…”

“…In their recent review of the literature, Hermans et al (2015) found 28 The present study attempts to address all the calls for future research mentioned by Hermans et al (2015). We include relevant variables at the individual as well the organizational level in the analysis.…”

Entrepreneurial Growth Ambitions: The Case of Finnish Technology Startups

“…A growing body of knowledge emphasizes that some entrepreneurs have higher ambitions than others, and that these entrepreneurial ambitions are an important antecedent of actual firm outcomes (Hermans et al, 2015). Again, as in the entrepreneurship literature in general, one of the explaining factors for growth ambitions of entrepreneurs is related to the types of people that become startup entrepreneurs in the first place.…”

“…A recent attempt to bring structure to addressing growth ambitions is the framework of ambitious entrepreneurship, with its three major concepts: i) growth aspiration (what the entrepreneur ideally wants to achieve), ii) growth intention (what the entrepreneur intends to achieve, combined with the effort they intend to make), and iii) growth expectation (what the entrepreneur wants to achieve, combined with the opportunities and constraints they perceive) (Hermans et al, 2015). It should be noted that all sample questions used to obtain answers for each of these concepts included the number of jobs as a measure of growth.…”

A journey into the entrepreneurial society

“…The content of this reemergence would correspond at least to two underlying phenomena: development of solo self-employment, which is important for societal and flexibility reasons (Bögenhold and Fachinger, 2008;Chapters 17 and 19, this volume), and the ambitious and/or innovative entrepreneurs (van Stel and Carree, 2004;Audretsch, 2007;Hermans et al, 2015). It is then stimulating-though also highly reductive-to conceptualize the entrepreneurial choice to start a new venture with the well-known refugee/entrepreneurial or Schumpeter effects (Thurik et al, 2008;Abdesselam et al, 2014).…”