Daniel Leunbach

• Rapp, David J. & Leunbach, Daniel (2025). Too good to be true? Toward an exploration of the ‘Triple Ds’ of effectuation. Journal of Business Venturing Insights. ISSN 2352-6734. 24. doi: 10.1016/j.jbvi.2025.e00576. Full text in Research Archive
• Leunbach, Daniel (2025). A Relational View of Uncertainty. Strategic Change. ISSN 1086-1718. doi: 10.1002/jsc.70015. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  ABSTRACT There is significant confusion and debate in entrepreneurship and strategy research about the nature and locus of uncertainty. Does uncertainty reside internally in the agent or externally in the environment? This article introduces a relational view of uncertainty (RVU) to help reframe this issue. In this framework, uncertainty is understood neither as purely subjective nor objective but as a relational phenomenon that depends on the agent's ability to navigate the challenges posed by their context. One advantage of RVU is that it enables scholars to explore new questions about the benefits and drawbacks for agents of acknowledging uncertainty—questions that a subjectivist framework, which treats uncertainty as purely perceptual, cannot address. Unlike the objective view, moreover, which sees uncertainty as an external and untreatable, RVU suggests that agents can sometimes mitigate uncertainty by strengthening their capabilities or drawing on the expertise of others.

• Leunbach, Daniel; Kristiansen, Glenn Roger & Erikson, Truls (2025). Understanding entrepreneurial imagination through poetry: lessons from John Keats’ ‘Ode to a Nightingale’. Entrepreneurship and Regional Development. ISSN 0898-5626. 37(7-8), p. 906–932. doi: 10.1080/08985626.2025.2463594. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Previous entrepreneurship research, particularly within effectuation theory, has been built upon a foundational set of assumptions regarding how entrepreneurs use their powers of imagination to generate novelty. These assumptions include the belief that self-focused attention is the proper starting point of the creative process, that imagination operates as an expressive process from within to without, and that humans, more broadly, are best understood as disembodied wills who find meaning by giving expression to their inner psychological cores. In this paper, we explore the historical origin and contemporary implications of these assumptions, juxtaposing them with alternative viewpoints found in the poetry and philosophy of John Keats (1795–1821). Drawing inspiration from Keats’ deep insights into both the human condition and the creative process, as articulated in his canonical poem ‘Ode to a Nightingale’, we illuminate several promising avenues for research that transcend the conventional disembodied inside-out conception of entrepreneurial imagination.

• Erikson, Truls; Leunbach, Daniel & Zhao, Yangyang (2024). Making the leap: Negotiating resource acquisition. Journal of Business Venturing Design (JBVD). doi: 10.1016/j.jbvd.2024.100021. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  To suspend uncertainty, we can simply just choose to believe. A leap of faith - or the suspension of uncertainty - is the essence of trust, yet it remains a relatively unexplored phenomenon within the entrepreneurship literature. Trust reflects a willingness to bear risks, and as such, it is an underappreciated risk-bearing mechanism. Choosing to trust not only translates into the way entrepreneurs negotiate, but as we will see, also into the negotiated outcome. In the current study, we show that trust relates positively to negotiations, but we find that positional negotiations relate negatively to accomplishments, whereas collaborative negotiations relate positively. We study entrepreneurs who act as if those whom they are negotiating with are trustworthy, and we explore the effects of such leaps of faith on not only collaborative, but also positional negotiations, and their interaction effects. Using abductive reasoning, we unpack three related design principles.

• Leunbach, Daniel (2024). On the Limitations of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Anti-Intellectualist Philosophy. Academy of Management Review. ISSN 0363-7425. 49(2), p. 457–462. doi: 10.5465/amr.2022.0491. Full text in Research Archive
• Leunbach, Daniel (2021). Entrepreneurship as a family resemblance concept: A Wittgensteinian approach to the problem of defining entrepreneurship. Scandinavian Journal of Management. ISSN 0956-5221. doi: 10.1016/j.scaman.2021.101141. Full text in Research Archive
• Leunbach, Daniel; Erikson, Truls & Bjørnåli, Ekaterina S. (2020). A subjectivist approach to team entrepreneurship. The Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics. ISSN 1098-3708. 23(3-4), p. 542–567. doi: 10.35297/qjae.010079. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Many scholars have pointed to Austrian subjectivism as an appropriate framework for understanding and studying entrepreneurship. Yet very few empirical studies in the field of entrepreneurship have applied a subjectivist lens. This research article responds to calls for more subjectivist entrepreneurship research by theoretically refining and empirically extending the subjectivist approach to team entrepreneurship. The findings presented in this study, which are based on data from 124 high-tech start-ups founded in Norway, suggest that positive internal and external team dynamics contribute to team effectiveness, as measured by the lead entrepreneur’s subjective assessment of his or her team. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.

• Leunbach, Daniel; Erikson, Truls & Rapp-Ricciardi, Max (2019). Muddling through Akerlofian and Knightian uncertainty: The role of sociobehavioral integration, positive affective tone, and polychronicity. Journal of International Entrepreneurship. ISSN 1570-7385. p. 1–20. doi: 10.1007/s10843-019-00255-2. Full text in Research Archive
• Leunbach, Daniel; Mathisen, Marius Tuft; Johnson, Alan Richard & Knockaert, Mirjam (2017). Signaling Through Insider Ownership: Interaction and Time Effects in Technology Acquisitions. Academy of Management Proceedings. 2017(1). doi: 10.5465/AMBPP.2017.203. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Many authors have pointed to the strength of insider ownership as a signal in environments with high information asymmetries. Despite the assumed potential of insider ownership, studies in several contexts have provided inconclusive results. As we contend in this paper, the lack of agreement on this signal is caused by contingency and time effects which have largely been neglected in the signaling literature. By consequence, we study the impact of insider ownership in a context characterized by high levels of uncertainty, namely that of academic spin-offs. Particularly, building on signaling theory, we study the relationship between insider ownership and likelihood of acquisition, hereby taking into consideration that the impact of the signal is affected by ownership-related contingency factors and time effects. We pursue our research objectives using the total population of 370 Norwegian spin-offs founded between 1999 and 2011, of which 32 were acquired. Applying discrete event history analysis, our findings show that the relationship between insider ownership and acquisition likelihood is reinforced by the presence of professional investors as shareholders. Furthermore, this interaction effect is strengthened over time, with professional investor ownership particularly enforcing insider ownership effects as the venture matures. We discuss implications for theory and practice.

• Bjørnåli, Ekaterina S.; Knockaert, Mirjam; Foss, Nicolai; Leunbach, Daniel & Erikson, Truls (2017). Unraveling the Black Box of New Venture Team Processes, The Wiley Handbook of Entrepreneurship. Wiley-Blackwell. ISSN 9781118970836. p. 313–348. doi: 10.1002/9781118970812.ch15. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  This chapter argues that new venture team (NVT) processes are relatively ill-understood in the entrepreneurship literature, and describes various theoretical and empirical research avenues that may be pursued in order to improve our understanding of these processes. It then focuses on the widely established input-processes-outcome (IPO) framework. This framework has long been used within the field of organizational behavior as it seeks to understand group performance and other group-level outcomes as the consequence of the inputs and processes that precede them. Building upon the foundations of Entrepreneurial Theorizing, the chapter argues how and when specific theories such as faultline theory, creativity and imagination, and organizational and team justice may be instructive in studying NVT processes at the prefounding phase, and particularly the (self)-selection of individuals into (out of) the NVT through social interaction. Faultlines hold great potential for understanding NVT processes both in the prefounding and postfounding phases.

• Erikson, Truls; Svalastog, Mari Saua & Leunbach, Daniel (2014). Global start-up internships as a source of experiential learning. In Fayolle, Alain & Redford, Dana T. (Ed.), Handbook on the Entrepreneurial University. Edward Elgar Publishing. ISSN 9781781007013. p. 301–320. doi: 10.4337/9781781007020.00020. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  To prepare students for the realities of today’s ever-changing, hypercompetitive and global marketplace, new forms of academic–industry collaborations need to be explored and developed. In fact, EU and national policies are gradually becoming more focused on the role of universities in job creation. This has led to increased focus on academic–industry collaborations (Etzkowitz, 1998), and not least, entrepreneurship education. During the 1980s, the atmosphere for academic institutions changed as new disciplines such as biotechnology and ICT developed remarkably quickly (Iversen et al. 2007). The Bayh-Dole Act in the USA created debates in many Western countries, including Norway, and a comparable law was introduced in 2003. This law extended the societal role of Norwegian universities to include the ‘Third Mission’. In practice, the law abolished professors’ long-held privilege regarding ownership of his or her inventions (ibid., p. 398), and it smoothed the progress of the Technology Transfer Offices. It was during these formative days that Gründerskolen emerged, and the programme’s emergence can be seen in light of these Third Mission debates. As such, we consider Gründerskolen as a response to these wider societal changes. The emphasis of Gründerskolen is on international technology entrepreneurship, and the curriculum reflects the workload of a full semester. The programme, which is carefully designed around experiential learning, is, of course, experience-based as students work on real projects, not only as part of their course assignments, but also as part of a 12-week start-up internship abroad. As such, it is one way of facilitating academic–industry collaborations.

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• Leunbach, Daniel (2026). Åpen innovasjon - Muligheter og utfordringer. Full text in Research Archive
• Leunbach, Daniel (2024). Entrepreneurship seminar. Full text in Research Archive
• Leunbach, Daniel (2024). Why and how do we teach organizational theory and organizational research in Norway? Full text in Research Archive
• Leunbach, Daniel (2020). Om verdien av å forvirre egne studenter. Full text in Research Archive
• Pershina, Raissa; Leunbach, Daniel & Erikson, Truls (2018). The Role of Generalized Trust and Aristotle’s Rhetoric in Crowdfunding. Full text in Research Archive

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