Firm-environment alignment of entrepreneurial opportunity exploitation in technology-based ventures: A configurational approach

This study explores configurations for firm-environment alignment of entrepreneurial opportunity exploitation in technology-based ventures to explain firm performance. Classifying entrepreneurial opportunities by their source and location as technology driven and market driven, we develop a framework to investigate a multitude of factors in the firm and in the environment that influence firm performance only when aligned with each other. The study examines technology-based ventures using fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis. Our results highlight the presence of complete firm-environment alignment of technological and market opportunity exploitation in cases with very high organizational growth rates. High-growth cases are driven by market opportunity exploitation. Firm-environment misalignment characterizes low-growth cases. Our results extend entrepreneurial opportunity exploitation literature to encompass a configurational setting from a quality perspective and provides entrepreneurs, managers, and policy-makers with informed choices of alternative growth strategies when focusing on organizational and policy priorities.