Exploring Tensions of Early-Stage Ventu...

How to deal with tensions in corporate sustainability is an issue of high relevance for both, scholars, and practitioners. So far, however, research has focused mainly on tensions faced by large established firms in their transition from currently unsustainable to more sustainable business practices.

Since early-stage ventures that strive for sustainability have distinctly different characteristics, they cannot rely on any “ready-to-wear” strategy. In addition, sustainability-oriented ventures have extremely limited resources and often only one opportunity to establish themselves on the market. This puts them under enormous pressure and hampers the much-needed sustainable solutions that result from their entrepreneurial efforts.

In the current literature, there is far less attention dedicated to tensions sustainability-oriented ventures face in their early stages when developing their first viable business models. In particular, our understanding of the content and levels of tensions is limited.

To close this gap, the present study examines tensions faced by sustainability-oriented ventures during their (pre-) seed and seed phase. We put special emphasis on the tactical business model choices.

We sampled eight sustainability-oriented ventures tracing their business model development, the occurring related tensions longitudinally applying content analysis. We followed a four-step process consisting of material collection, descriptive analysis, category selection and material evaluation.

With this study, we want to deepen our understanding about the occurrence and changes of tensions, sustainability-oriented ventures face in their early stages.