Swimming with Sharks in Europe : When are They Dangerous and What Can New Ventures Do to Defend Themselves?

This study replicates Dushnitsky and Shaver (2009) in an institutional setting different from the U.S., i.e. the European venture capital market. We highlight the role played by this switch of boundary condition in influencing how legal defenses protect new ventures' knowledge from misappropriation and encourage the formation of ties between these ventures and same-industry corporate venture capitalists. Furthermore, we consider timing and social defenses and their interactions with legal defenses in Europe. Our results indicate that the use of legal and other defenses by new ventures does vary depending on the characteristics of the institutional context