Entrepreneurs make decisions that influence subsequent decisions and future performance.
The dissertation studies such sequences of decisions by using dynamic programming. This approach
allows one to describe the decision process over time and, in some cases, it prescribes how business
performance can be improved. An analytical approach helps to contribute a new dimension to
entrepreneurship research and it encourages multidisciplinary work by allowing existing
methodologies from various (analytical) disciplines to be applied to entrepreneurial problems.
The dissertation focuses on research questions that invoke effort allocation in sequential
decision-making at early development stages of a new venture creation. The dissertation is composed
of three separate research studies.
What dominates the entrepreneur's decision process initially is the effort allocation problem
in sharing time between an existing job and committing to the new venture. The first study describes
how this time-sharing is done and characterizes when is the best time to leave the wage job and
become a full-time entrepreneur. I also show that the optimal time-allocation policy is driven by the
entrepreneur's tolerance for work and by how returns behave with respect to time allocation in the
venture.
It is important to understand resource allocations to internal activities such as product
development and customer recruitment. The second study focuses on new product development and
it investigates how the flow of a new venture's funding affects the development of a new product. I
prescribe the optimal release time for the new product and describe how this strategy is affected by
the expected amount of funding and its uncertainty. I also identify industrial and entrepreneurial
characteristics that generate various behaviors for the rate of change in the return on product quality
as investment in the product is increased.
The newly developed product must be bought to make the business start-up successful. The
third study investigates how an entrepreneur makes decisions over time in allocating effort to
building and exploiting a customer base so as to maximize profit. I study what a rational
entrepreneur will do when faced with the allocation of effort to different customer categories. I also
provide guidelines for improving the performance of an entrepreneur who may not be acting
optimally.
In these three investigations a dynamic programming approach is utilized to study various
sequential decision processes of an entrepreneur during the development process of new venture
creation.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:BVAU.2429/9526 |
| Date | 11 1900 |
| Creators | Lévesque, Moren |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Relation | UBC Retrospective Theses Digitization Project [http://www.library.ubc.ca/archives/retro_theses/] |
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