Accelerating Venture Milestone Achievement: Examining the Impact of Resource Acquisition Timing

• Published in: IEEE transactions on engineering management 2018-11, Vol.65 (4), p.557-573
• Main Authors: Bailey, Jennifer, Tatikonda, Mohan V.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Business; Decisions; Entrepreneurship; first sale; Human resources; lean start-up; profitability; Resource management; resources; scale-up; Timing; Timing issues; Venture capital; venture lifecycle
• ISSN: 0018-9391; 1558-0040
• DOI: 10.1109/TEM.2018.2859753

This study examines how resource acquisition timing affects a venture's ability to accelerate milestone achievement. We examine acquisition timing decisions for three types of resources: material resources, facilities and equipment resources, and human resources. Two venture milestones are examined: accomplishment of the first sale and achievement of positive cash flows. We theorize that resource acquisition timing can impact the degree of resource availability delays and the rate of resource-driven cash outflows/inflows, which, in turn, determine the time to first sale and the time to positive cash flows, respectively. Our results demonstrate that decisions concerning resource acquisition timing could have contradictory effects vis-à-vis shortening the time to first sale versus shortening the time to positive cash flows. These findings highlight the difficult tradeoffs that ventures have to navigate when making resource acquisition decisions, which have implications for multiple milestones across a venture's lifecycle. Finally, the paper demonstrates how technological novelty moderates, and, in fact, radically alters, the relationship between the timing of resource acquisitions and the time to venture milestone achievement.