Getting more from many—A framework of community resourcefulness in new venture creation

In this study, we move beyond the predominant focus entrepreneurship researchers have put on the acquisition of financial capital from professional investors by exploring how, and with what effects, entrepreneurs can mobilize all required resources—financial, human, physical, and social—from local communities. Our temporal analysis of the resource mobilization processes of seven cases of community-based enterprises (CBEs) reveals four sets of activities with distinct goals and effects, which explain how entrepreneurs can meet or even exceed their resource mobilization goals by mobilizing a greater variety of resources from a broader base of resource providers. Importantly, the findings show how entrepreneurs can achieve a multiplier effect meaning that they can perpetuate the inflow of significant amounts of unsolicited resources by continuously engaging in activities targeted at creating a sense of identification and ownership, which require comparatively little extra effort and resource inputs. We synthesize our findings in a framework of community resourcefulness in new venture creation. This framework adds a new perspective of resourcefulness as “getting more from many,” and demonstrates that resourceful behavior is not necessarily about individuals' ability to respond to situational constraints but also about their ability to recognize and seize situational resource potentials. Our findings have important implications for our understanding of resourcefulness in entrepreneurship and the nascent body of literature on community-based enterprises.