Entrants heterogeneity, pre-entry knowledge, and the target industry context: a taxonomy and a framework

This paper advances a general and unified framework to explain the patterns of entry in an industry. The specificity of a type of entrant is examined based on the match between the entrant’s prior experience, in terms of knowledge endowment, and the target industry context. The knowledge endowment is analyzed by focusing on its content—market, technological, organizational, and scientific—and its generic and specific nature. The target industry context is examined by looking at four basic dimensions: the stage of development of the target industry (the time dimension); the specific technological regime and related innovation patterns (the technological dimension); the demand regime (the demand dimension); and the institutional regime (the institutional dimension). These dimensions moderate the matching between the knowledge endowment of the type of entrants and the features of the industrial contexts. Our newly proposed taxonomy offers a more systematic and nuanced explanation of how the complex relationship between pre-entry experience and knowledge, entrants and the chosen target industry evolves over time.