Knowledge Based Entrepreneurship in the Czech Republicand Hungary: Results from 4 case studies

This paper describes knowledge based entrepreneurship in the Czech Republicand Hungary, in particular the growth and development process of 4 firms are studied:Dekonta, an environmental services firm, Et netera, an IT services firm, bothoperating in Czech Republic, along with a data recovery firm, Kűrt, and abiopharmaceutical firm, Solvo, both operating in Hungary. The objectives of the casestudies are to illustrate experiences of knowledge based entrepreneurship within atransition environment in terms of their different growth and development paths.By carrying out in depth case studies using semi structured interviews with thefounders, top management teams, core employees and key stakeholders in industrialassociations I am able to explain the growth process of entrepreneurial knowledgebased ventures. I assume an ecological view of the firm and examine the role ofinternal, strategic, network and external factors in this development process. I proposethat the relative importance of these factors evolve over time from start up tomaturity. Moreover, I anticipate that there will be complementarities between thesefactors in the spirit of Milgrom and Roberts (1995) and Von Tunzelmann (2003).This approach should help us better understand the complex nature ofentrepreneurship.The key contributions of these case studies are the application of an ecologicalconceptual framework to the development of knowledge based firms in Central andEastern Europe, and so the viability of this model is tested within the transitionenvironment. I follow the recommendations by Ireland et al. (2005) and introduce atemporal element in order to analyse the shift in importance of the factors impactingon firm development and growth, thus hoping to deal with some of the criticisms onexisting entrepreneurial research.....