IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hal/journl/hal-05521430.html

Playing as a team or solo?

Author

Listed:
  • Anna Gerke

    (Audencia Business School)

  • André Haas

    (Elf Aquitaine)

  • Hagen Wäsche

Abstract

Purpose The purpose of this article is to investigate two alternative theories to explain a firm's innovativeness. The resource-based view is compared with network theory to study the innovativeness of sport business startups. From a practical perspective, this research sheds light on the under-researched phenomenon of entrepreneurial support organisations (ESOs) (e.g. business incubators) for sport businesses. Design/methodology/approach We employ a survey method with three cohorts of 16–18 startup firms, amounting to a total sample of 50. We surveyed each cohort consecutively one year after entering the incubator. We used descriptive analysis, regression analysis, and social network analysis. Findings Our findings demonstrate that the role and influence of networking within incubators for startups' innovativeness is not prominent. However, the firm characteristics of size and cohesiveness of strategy positively influence the innovativeness of startups. Originality/value We consolidate research on networking and innovation in finding that network activity within an ESO has no specific impact on the innovativeness of startups, that mature firms are more innovative than new firms, and that firms with a comprehensive strategy score in process innovation. This research is a unique contribution to sport entrepreneurship research in sport management literature, exploring a sport business incubator as an ESO.

Suggested Citation

  • Anna Gerke & André Haas & Hagen Wäsche, 2026. "Playing as a team or solo?," Post-Print hal-05521430, HAL.
    • Handle: RePEc:hal:journl:hal-05521430
    DOI: 10.1108/SBM-01-2025-0016
    Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://hal.science/hal-05521430v1
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a
    for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:hal:journl:hal-05521430. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: CCSD (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.