**6. Alternative Approaches**

We have argued that the two dominant approaches to entrepreneurial decision-making should fade; but what should replace them? Scientific progress demands suggestions for new alternative approaches, approaches that can address the weaknesses exposed or explore new ground. These alternatives should also build on strengths. To that end, we outline three such alternative approaches below. We briefly describe the managerial, policy, and theoretical implications for each after their respective outlining.

<sup>12</sup> Neuroscience-based experiments prove that effectuation's core premise is wrong. It is wrong to assert that the brain works without predicting the future regardless of uncertainties. It is wrong to assert that the brain makes decisions without goals, including immediate ones. Non-predictive control does not exist. Ignoring threats like competition does not happen. The brain is a 'real-world simulation' machine (e.g., Barrett 2017) that continuously predicts, in order to fulfill goals, considering available means, losses, risks, contingencies, and interactions with others.

<sup>13</sup> Each currently dominant approach enjoyed good timing, offering something different from the rational, planned, computed, search-optimizing, probability-based world of micro-economics that dominated previously. Effectuation and the creativity school promised a shift to divergent thinking as a contrast to the previous focus on analytical convergen<sup>t</sup> thinking. However, neither substantively fulfilled that promise, and that is not surprising. If creativity could be boiled down to a repeatable and trainable process, it would not be creativity any more. Nowhere does effectuation actually explain how to be more creative; it is just supposed to occur at the right time and within the right budget. That promise of solving creativity is the core of the creation school, as well as many of its predecessors, like bricolage (e.g., Baker and Nelson 2005). These approaches push the idea that ex nihilo invention is possible. However, to be absolutely clear, at any metaphysical level, only nothing arises from nothing, period (Brecht 1978). Physical inventions are created from existing physical objects (by discovering new properties and uses). New beliefs are based on existing beliefs (even admitted to in the definition of subjective objectivity above). In other words, there is no way to generate something from nothing, regardless of one's metaphysical stance. Each dominant approach also appeared to promise something like a full theory would emerge. In neither case has it. For example, effectuation remains a logic, or a process description, or some pragmatic advice, and does not rise to what it has proposed to be—a theory. Effectuation simply fails to meet the common standards for explanatory models, as has been explained in detail elsewhere (Arend et al. 2015, 2016). Despite references to ontology and epistemology, the creativity school is also not a theory, but instead simply an inconsistent and incomplete story involving social construction. In the end, neither provides a complete theory, nor new prescriptions for entrepreneurs. New prescriptions simply do not arise from only being descriptive of how real entrepreneurs were already not acting in accordance to the dominant models prior.

The first alternative approach we describe accepts the idea that the ultimate origins of heterogeneous resources are not identifiable and instead moves forward by analyzing them as windfalls that occur at different stages of the process to different possible effects. That acceptance addresses a weakness in both dominant approaches. This provides a role for entrepreneur-managers to identify those resources and then use them appropriately. This builds on the strong underlying logics for very actively leveraging such endowed heterogeneity recognized in the currently dominant approaches. Our second alternative approach also treats the heterogeneous factors as windfalls, but explicitly recognizes that other firms are also endowed with them, and that that should lead to progress through co-evolutionary action. This alternative provides more outward-facing roles for managers and more meaning for institutional-policy effects to support entrepreneurial decision-making. It addresses weaknesses in the dominant approaches related to what creativity is (i.e., it is luck- and learning-based in this alternative) and in social influencing (i.e., it is more co-evolving than unilateral in this alternative). Our third alternative takes a different starting point. It is aimed at the premises of the formal theories (e.g., the RBV) that underlie the currently dominant approaches. Two formal theories are analyzed to explore what occurs when their assumptions are broken in order to identify new entrepreneurial paths to economic value-creation, often based on viewing the venture not as one firm but instead as one part of a system of firms.

### **7. Alternative Approach No. 1—Focusing on Di**ff**erent Relevant Windfalls**

Neither of the two dominant approaches identifies the ultimate origins of the SFs. In this alternative, that unidentifiability is explicitly acknowledged and such origins are simply taken as lucky windfalls. However, these windfall endowments can differ in ways that provide new insight. Here, we differentiate them by when they occur in the entrepreneurial process, and what they signify at those times, and that provides new implications for managers and researchers.

To proceed, it is worth revisiting the RBV as the current standard story of how heterogeneous factors (SFs) translate into possible SCA (Dyer and Singh 1998) given that story underlies each currently dominant approach. In the RBV, the SF is either given at the product market stage or it is obtained through factor markets just prior to the product market stage (e.g., Barney 1986; Peteraf 1993). There is a further heterogeneity assumption over whether the firm can efficiently and effectively leverage the SF in order to realize CA. This question over an execution endowment provides one explanation for why some firms with a product market SF can fail nonetheless, which allows the RBV to survive non-significant empirical results in testing. To those possible endowments of resources and capabilities, we add the one more possible windfall—that of a new opportunity.

Table 2 details the six cases of interest for entrepreneurial decision-making, comprised of the combinations of the four types of factor heterogeneity endowments identified above. An endowed pre-SF (e.g., a windfall of private information about a future technological breakthrough), occurring in the factor market, gives the firm the ability to identify a new opportunity, which then provides the value for the SF in that opportunity's product market. An endowed opportunity (e.g., as a windfall of being in the right place at the right time to spot a market failure, as in Airbnb's story of realizing a disconnected supply and demand for couch-surfing) gives the firm the ability to buy temporarily underpriced SFs prior to revealing the opportunity to the product market. An endowed SF in the product market (e.g., discovered in the firm's inventory as a dormant patent or managerial skill or social network connection that has unexploited value in a given product market, like for the rights for a particular piece of code or design feature or access to a newly important politician) gives the firm the ability to be more profitable in its current market. Additionally, an endowment of execution competence (e.g., emerging from a set of trusted employees based on a unique and fortunate path dependence) gives the firm the ability to realize any potential sources of value as SCA. We depict this entrepreneurial process as linear, proceeding naturally from a possible pre-SF to opportunity identification (where the value of the SF is defined) to a readily-exploitable product market SF to

execution on that to the attainment of CA. We leave for future work any feedback loops, as in where a product market SF creates a new opportunity for a di fferent SF, and so forth.

New insights that can be gleaned from this alternative approach include the identification of the managerial skills needed to complement the di fferent windfall types, and the meaning of what each windfall type has to entrepreneurship and RBV theories (e.g., in terms of what empirical support is expected for their logics). The skills the entrepreneur requires to be profitable under the endowment possibilities have some commonalities and di fferences. The main commonality is the necessity for SF exploitation skills in the product markets (e.g., e fficient supply chain operations). The main di fferences arise from the type of endowment. With a pre-SF endowment, the focal skill concerns fully exploiting that advantage through identifying a new opportunity that adds new value to the product market SF (built on that pre-SF). Search skills (e.g., on where to apply the advantage), invention skills (e.g., on how the advantage can be combined with other factors), and sales skills (e.g., on getting partners to back investments in applications of the advantage) would all be important. With an opportunity endowment, the focal skill concerns arbitraging that knowledge to buy up then-underpriced to-be-SFs in the eventual associated product markets, especially those at bottlenecks and with the main technological complementarities (Teece 1986). Search skills, negotiation skills, signal-control/ informational-management skills, and prediction skills would all be important. With a product market SF endowment, the focal skill is about exploiting that advantage in the primary market and extending it through possible related diversification, tie-ins, and long-term supply-chain contracting.



The cases depicted range from providing expectedly strong to relatively weak to non-existent support of this RBV-based entrepreneurship process story. In the best cases, there is a consistent story moving from pre-SF endowment through to rent realization execution. However, in many cases, the profitability is not guaranteed, and the likely observations are not very supportive (nor may be the related policy recommendations very clear). That said, the cases indicate some new possibilities for which entrepreneurial decision-making skills to teach when.

From an academic perspective, this alternative highlights a challenge for the RBV and its e ffects on entrepreneurial activity. Market failures bracket the RBV (Peteraf 1993). That bracketing implies a cycling through an extended sequence of opportunity-to-exploitation-to-new-opportunity. The RBV begins with an ex ante failure in the factor market, and we newly propose that that market imperfection can be the opportunity that potentially establishes the focal SF's value14. The RBV ends with an ex post failure in the product market that guarantees the potential appropriability of the SF's value because it ensures that its supply is restrict-able at a level below that of demand (Peteraf 1993). But, such a market failure also then identifies an opportunity for other firms to address via some form of activity (e.g., a dynamic activity—Teece et al. 1997; an entrepreneurial activity—Venkataraman 1997; a political activity—Arnold and Lange 2004; or, a disruptive activity—Christensen and Bower 1996).

This raises the question of whether those market failures arising from the RBV process di ffer from other competitive-market-imperfections-as-opportunities. If so, it is likely that each type of market failure should to be addressed di fferently (e.g., as some will likely be defended by current-SF-endowed firms and some will not). However, the creation school does not explicitly account for such issues like the attack and defense of those imperfections. That further weakness provides another reason to move on from it and consider alternatives that do address such issues. Furthermore, given the now-explicit daisy-chaining of the last market failure of the RBV process as being a source of opportunity for entrepreneurial activity (as implied by the definition used by Alvarez and Barney themselves Alvarez and Barney 2007), the RBV should no longer be considered as a finished theory. It is no longer a separable package, but instead only defines a waystation along a self-sustaining process that very much more puts into question the defendability of any realized competitive advantage theorized in the RBV15.

### **8. Alternative Approach No. 2—A Co-Evolutionary Story**

In this alternative, we also assume that the ultimate origins of SFs are unidentifiable and so model them simply as lucky endowments. The di fference here is that we explicitly consider more types of such windfalls as well as more recipients of them. Instead of focusing solely inward at one specific firm, in this alternative we focus on the path to CA outwardly, arising through learning-based co-evolution (e.g., Abatecola et al. 2020; Breslin and Jones 2012).

This alternative shifts from the common RBV-based story of lucky endowments + super-rational decision-making + idealized supporting markets = competitive advantage for one firm to a new story of endowed variation + selection + retention = expected improvements in profitability and continuous new opportunity identification in an industry. Our new story is based on the assumption that firms can not only be endowed with SFs but also with other important heterogeneous factors and characteristics like a greater motivation-to-act (or more optimistic priors for acting), or a greater ability to observe the actions to other firms, or with a greater ability to learn from observations, and so on. Together, these items can generate a Darwinian evolution-like process (e.g., Breslin 2008) where the diversity of endowed (heterogeneous) 'stu ff'—including motivations-to-act—are distributed in the population so as to ge<sup>t</sup> a (non-empty) subset of actors who do try to exploit their given factors in business ventures

<sup>14</sup> We newly propose a connection of the RBV's definitional VRIO characteristics to the opportunity's definitional market failure by having the opportunity define the SF's value (i.e., the SF is valuable because it can be used to exploit a current competitive market imperfection). Therefore, a SF's value is no longer tautologically defined as being 'in demand' (Priem and Butler 2001), but instead arises from the potential of the SF to address an existing market failure (a condition that differs from simple demand).

<sup>15</sup> We believe that the future of the RBV-related decision-making research lies along several paths: One path separates out cases of certainty versus risk versus (forms of) uncertainty in specific, relevant decisions involving any firm factor-related path to competitive advantage. Another path separates out cases involving standard operating procedures versus tacit knowledge versus luck in specific, relevant process steps. Yet another path separates out ways to address asymmetric information for specific cases of arbitrage versus of legitimization versus of market creation. By focusing on understanding the constituent pieces of the RBV in terms of their separate possibilities, it will be easier to connect the SF-identification-exploitation-defense process backwards (e.g., to opportunities and new venture creation), forwards (e.g., to dynamic failure or reconstruction of past factor-based advantages), and sideways (e.g., to relation- or knowledge-based issues (Dyer and Singh 1998)). These connections can then be explained more clearly in what are likely to be behavior-focused, specific variants of an entrepreneurial RBV process.

(whether those turn out to actually be ex post SFs or not). When that occurs, even under the expectation that some firms will succeed and others will fail, as long as a su fficient number of others see those actions and outcomes and learn from them, then progress should be made towards new value creation by firms in an industry as a whole.

This alternative's story provides a more realistic way of getting from one state of business to a better state. In this story, the industry has firms that have been distributed with windfalls that may be initially hidden (or may involve su fficient uncertainty in their ultimate value) so as to stop an average firm manager's action to exploit it. However, that barrier can be broken when that average decision-maker can update her understanding of what the value of her endowment is and what the process to exploit it is, so as to gain the confidence to try acting on it; and that updating is made possible by other entrepreneurs acting first. Therefore, when the endowments also include di fferences in beliefs and motivations, others will indeed act first, and the rest will learn (e.g., updating their priors and their capabilities) so that the next set of firms then also act (with greater information), and so on towards better and better use of their endowments (e.g., Abatecola 2014; Abatecola et al. 2018; Cristofaro 2020).

As with the other alternative approaches, there are new implications for entrepreneurial decision-making, in terms of skills recommended, in terms of supporting policies and in terms of possible follow-on work. This alternative highlights the benefit of managerial skills in observation, in learning, in updating of beliefs, in increasing absorptive capacity (Cohen and Levinthal 1990), as well as in partnering to combine windfalls and shared alertness (Kirzner 1973, 1979). This alternative implies policies should be strengthened to increase diversity (e.g., policies that incentivize people to gain unique experiences, and to build on their varied endowments), to increase awareness of their inventories, and to increase action (e.g., policies that provide supporting micro-bets to make actions that are visible) in order to prime the relevant evolutionary machine's pump for entrepreneurial progress. The ideas in this alternative can be fleshed out in follow-on work, such as in computer simulations that test di fferent model conditions (e.g., learning rates; visibility of success and failure), in human-subjects lab experiments (with di fferent treatments of endowments and learning conditions), and in case studies of the co-evolution that occurred or is occurring in specific industries.

### **9. Alternative Approach No. 3—Breaking Theoretical Assumptions**

The third alternative approach we outline takes a step back from entrepreneurial decision-making details (e.g., about endowment types and the mechanisms for their exploitation) to focus on the core assumptions underlying the theories in the currently dominant approaches in entrepreneurship and strategic management. In this alternative, we explore what occurs when the assumptions of a theory are broken, often because new technologies allow it, in order to discover new ways for ventures, often acting as a part of a system, to perform better in specific contexts.

Here we focus on two core theories—the RBV and transaction costs economics (TCE—Coase 1937; Williamson 1975, 1979, 1985). The di fference in the premises of these two theories provides a way to break either one's assumptions in reasonable ways—we simply look to the other theory for alternative assumptions and for mechanisms that can break existing assumptions. Then we explore what occurs (for entrepreneurs) when we break each theory's assumptions. This approach provides new challenges for entrepreneurial decision-making, including the possibility for off-the-books (i.e., non-taxed) value to be leveraged among system partners (e.g., through bartering information, identity, contacts, and so on).

There are three main possibilities for 'assumption breaking' here. The first possibility involves TCE mechanisms breaking RBV premises. For example, the Relational View of the firm (Dyer and Singh 1998) proposes a hybrid transactional form that creates a unique joint capability that partners deploy to generate CA. A transaction creates a new resource across partners as with the VISA network, e ffectively breaking the assumption in the RBV that the focal factor is owned by only one firm. The second possibility involves RBV mechanisms breaking the TCE premises. For example, a firm's unique IT capability provides a new way to transact with customers (e.g., Priceline's patented reverse auction method). The third possibility involves the possible co-evolution of mechanisms and assumption-breaking

in the RBV and TCE, where each break affects the other's premise over time (e.g., where resources influence transaction options that influence new resource acquisitions, and so on).

The TCE and the RBV each provide a unique explanation for CA. TCE advantages involve governance choice and are efficiency-based, whereas RBV advantages involve scarce factor leveraging and are Ricardian-based. Figure 1 depicts how the theories and concepts fit together, with the TCE focused on the transactions, the RBV on the resources, and the relational view focused on the simplest system of resources–transactions–partners. Because choices over organizational forms, over partners, and over factor investments and uses are often interdependent, it is worthwhile to consider how CA can emerge through these choices collectively (as depicted in figure as a system-of-firms approach).

**Figure 1.** Domains of the relevant concepts and theories.

Resource- and Transactional-View Interdependence—As described above, this third alternative approach involves phenomena where the assumptions of one theory (RBV or TCE) are broken through the other theory's mechanisms. For example, the capabilities held by a firm can influence the availability or costs of the transactions it confronts. In this alternative, the effects of the two views are non-separable (i.e., the effects of some set of one theory's factors are interdependent on some set of the other theory's factors). For example, unique capabilities are created by an alliance, or a unique transaction form is created by one or more firm capabilities, or the capability and transaction forms co-evolve. This integration of the two theories assumes that the choice of organizational form that mitigates opportunism and economizes on incomplete contracting does influence the process of creating and exploiting capabilities, and that the capabilities that can generate competitive advantage do affect the choice of transactional forms (e.g., through the co-specialization of such capabilities with the factors made available through the transaction options).

In this alternative approach, the interdependence between the two theories involves TCE influencing RBV and RBV influencing TCE, sequentially or simultaneously. The first (TCE→RBV) has been addressed in the relational view (Dyer and Singh 1998). That view parallels the RBV, but focuses on factors as not being unique to a focal firm but instead being unique to a *set* of transacting firms. In the relational view, there exist unique strategic capabilities that are only created by the combination of otherwise separate organizations. These capabilities then provide sustained competitive advantage to the organizations involved. In other words, the multi-firm organizational form directly a ffects the creation and exploitation of capabilities influencing each firm's performance; capabilities that would *not* otherwise be available in such valuable, rare and appropriable form to the partner firms independently. The other interdependencies (e.g., RBV →TCE) have not enjoyed such formal analyses. Such possible interdependencies involve new value creation with combinations of shared resources across often-novel transactional structures.

Therefore, what are the assumptions that can be broken by the factors in each view? In TCE, such assumptions include: the homogeneity of the firms involved (e.g., along their production mixes, and bargaining power over contracts); the homogeneity of the transaction options available; those options' costs and benefits and risks; and, that such governance choices are separable (both at a point in time, and across time). In the RBV, such assumptions include: that all firms choose optimal transaction forms for exploiting each resource; that firms know the value of all resources; that each firm needs to defend against the erosion of the value, rarity, inimitability (and non-substitutability); and the appropriability of its special resource base. Additionally, both the TCE and RBV assume optimization choices are separable. Table 3 depicts the assumptions of each theory that can be broken by the characteristics of the other theory.



While the story of how the TCE can a ffect the RBV has been formally described in the relational view, the story of how the RBV can a ffect the TCE has not. Consider some of the ways it can involve managerial design capabilities that can generate new value for ventures. For example, such capabilities could provide: cost-saving innovations in property rights (Alchian 1977); cost-saving innovation networking (Hagedoorn et al. 2006); reformulated property rights that generate new value (Barzel 1997; Foss and Foss 2005); a set of transactions that mutually reinforce each other (rather than where each transaction is handled separately—Nickerson 1997); a basis for a relationship strategy (Fuller and Lewis 2002); or simply a means to more e ffectively align production with supply (Brown and Cousins 2004).

It is not just that the RBV can break the TCE assumptions in theory, but it is that those assumptions are breakable in reality, as evidenced by the creation of new transaction forms (e.g., in hybrid governance forms, like virtual firms). New transaction form options can emerge from lobbying capabilities that result in the legislation for such new options to legally exist (e.g., through deregulation or changes to the anti-trust code). For example, the focal firm may then be able to access alternative suppliers in a newly opened market, or be able to consider options of alliances with newly available larger partner firms. New transactions may also emerge from new technological capabilities that allow new hybrid forms to become economically feasible (e.g., models based on web 2.0+ social-network knowledge transfers). For example, the focal firm may be able to use new internet community-based open-sourcing and crowd-sourcing transaction models. Or, the firm may exploit models that are based on users' content generation, or on free customer access subsidized through third-party advertising support, or on reverse auction mechanisms that leveraging real-time data, or on free brokerage across first and second parties but subsidized by third-party access to their information, and so on.

More specifically, RBV factors can break TCE assumptions related to the information asymmetries among transacting parties, the un-observability of agen<sup>t</sup> actions, the risk aversion by agents, the externalities, the under-defined property rights, the vested interests, the bounded rationality, the uncertainty, the asset specificity, and the contracting costs involved in transactions. Asset specificity can be reduced by applying capabilities in asset construction (Jacobides et al. 2006). Information asymmetries can be reduced by applying capabilities in measuring and monitoring that are aimed at specific uncertainties and risks (e.g., capabilities like the managerial expertise for understanding hazards in complex environments described by Barney and Hansen 1994). Property rights and externalities of existing assets can be a ffected by applying capabilities in creating new goods from the by-products of assets being currently used. The bounded rationality in decision-making can be made less bounded by applying enhanced computing capabilities. Opportunism can be reduced by applying capabilities in human resource monitoring and incentivizing, or by applying capabilities that increase trust for supporting relational governance over formal contracting (e.g., Gulati 1995). The frequency of contracting can be reduced by applying capabilities that a ffect the length of transactions. Contracting costs may be decreased by applying capabilities that reduce hazards (e.g., the hazard-mitigating capabilities for market contracting of Delios and Henisz 2000). Risks for agents may be better insured and spread by applying capabilities in pooling and option-making. For example, Reuer, Zollo, and Singh's (Reuer et al. 2002) experience-based contracting capabilities may even alter the costs of transacting enough to open up new strategic transaction possibilities for the firms wielding them.

In this third alternative, the level of analysis switches to the unique set of resource-transaction combinations that create new value (e.g., through risk reduction; through the creation of new property rights for assets, and the associated discovery of their new uses; through product di fferentiation due to the uniqueness in the transaction; and so on). The mechanisms that preserve any value-creation advantages are drawn from the RBV and include: inherent heterogeneity, causal ambiguity (due to the complexity of, and art in, the combinations involved), time compression diseconomies, partner scarcity, resource indivisibility, resource scarcity, property rights, and asset stock interconnectedness.

In this third alternative, the entrepreneur's venture is part of a system of firms. The design of each system not only involves structuring each transaction, but also the portfolio of them, which involves choices of the partners and of the factors exchanged and their timing. Transactions are not just vertical (e.g., in the supply-chain) or horizontal (e.g., in lobbying alliances), but even oblique (e.g., with advertisers in a broadcast model, with complementors, and so on). The outcome is a unique system of partners–transactions–resources that may be based on one or more of the market, hierarchical, alliance, or hybrid governance forms allowing the flow and use of shared synergistic resources from which the partners can gain value over others.

This alternative approach matters for two main reasons: (i) because it forms the basis of a theory of a system-of-firms; and, (ii) because it involves significant differences as a structure for doing business. In the TCE, the firm is a viable alternative structure to the spot market for transacting. In the RBV, the firm is a viable alternative structure for generating rents. In the relational view, the alliance is also a viable alternative structure to both the spot market and the firm for some transactions—transactions that are trust-based, more-than-temporary, and involve incomplete contracts (e.g., where parties exchange more than one item). Continuing such logic through combination and further extension to a system of firms, we argue that the system is a viable alternative structure for transactions and for rent generation for specific opportunities.

A system exists when it outperforms alternative forms of doing business. This system defines a structure entailing three differentiated characteristics. The first is the advantage from holistic optimization in the system. The second is the advantage from an ability to open up new markets by using the system and its shared capabilities in order to solve previously failed markets that were closed to alternative structures. The third is the advantage from an ability to exploit underregulated opportunities, where the system is ahead of policy-makers who have not ye<sup>t</sup> addressed the complexities of system structures transacting in novel ways (e.g., Uber, Airbnb, and other brokers). Optimizing the whole system likely involves different decisions than optimizing each of its underlying pieces and connections. Such an approach builds upon the systemic and holistic thinking espoused by Zott and Amit (2010) and others. Such an approach also entails dealing with greater complexity, which may lead to new capabilities and new barriers to imitation, as well as new value. The new value emerges from the system's economies of scope (and variety), cross-synergies, cross-fertilization of ideas, added insights from the wider experiences across partners and from the holistic exposure itself. The system also entails an increase in complexity because it involves a network of more than one type of firm, exchange of more than one type resource, and the use of more than one type of role of the partner (e.g., where customer is also the supplier, in a community system like eBay or eHarmony). It is a shift to influencing the game that is played through interdependent choices. Such a challenge necessitates the use of a meta-level capability—where it is not just the firm's operations that need to managed, but also the system's, and further, doing that over time by knowing how to change how those are managed. Even further, the capability has to extend to using non-traditional influences (e.g., soft pressures) and to exchanging items of value (e.g., information; access to others) through barter, all under evolving issues of security and privacy.

This system approach is also unique in its potential to solve market failures that have closed markets to less-complex entities in the past, because such a system can represent more parties, can access more diverse resources and information, and can leverage an internal market that deals in non-monetary goods. Such a system is more likely to be able to alter regulations (e.g., to open up protected markets, or to open up new partner access), to be able to bring new types of partners together (e.g., casual, sporadic suppliers like Uber drivers), to be able to remove cost-prohibitive barriers in monitoring and enforcement through shared information, and so on. Once a new market is opened up, there emerges an unusual challenge to sustain the system's place in it, and even the system itself. That type of durability is required to compensate for the large up-front investment in making the right choices and piecing together carefully the right synergistic resources, across the right partners, with the right transactions, over time.

The goal is to create new value across the system in order to retain the (vertical, horizontal, and oblique) partners, pay the resource-holders at a rate above their opportunity costs, and minimize governance costs, all while protecting the system, and providing sufficient appropriation across stakeholders (in the paymen<sup>t</sup> forms that each values), while others are trying to do the same. Additionally, there is a need to do so while accounting for the type of value created (e.g., with value less embodied in physical and more in informational goods) and how that affects speed, feedback, scope, globalization, data availability, and potential for leveraging those process characteristics. As such, entrepreneur-managers will need to be taught not just how to put themselves in their rival's shoes, but to be in several other shoes at the same time, the owners of which may take on conditionally competitive and cooperative roles as co-creators of new value-spaces16. Such an approach opens up several distinct paths of follow-on research that the dominant approaches have not while retaining the underlying logic they share in new value creation through the best use of available means, including those accessible from others.
