Industry Knowledge Characteristics, Founders’ Prior Experience and New Venture Survival

Recent research suggests that new ventures can overcome threats to their survival by gaining access to technological knowledge from other firms in their industry, even without directly transacting with them or joining their networks. This happens through vicarious learning that allows new ventures to abduct industry knowledge spillovers made public through patents. We propose that the effects of such industry public knowledge on new venture survival are likely to depend on the breadth and newness of that knowledge, and its interaction with a venture’s founding team’s prior experience in the industry. We test and find support for these predictions in a sample of Swedish 2150 independent new ventures. The study contributes to the literatures in organizational learning and new venture survival