Entrepreneurial technology firms in China’s emerging economy: How technological and institutional regimes shape entrepreneurial conditions

In order to explain the success of entrepreneurial firms, it is necessary to identify the conditions that generate new business opportunities. Emerging economies such as China are perceived as high risk environments due to fundamental institutional transformations. Yet, there’s no conclusive evidence how the contextual nature of emerging economies impact the conditions for entrepreneurial firms. This paper proposes that the opportunities for entrepreneurial firms in emerging economies are shaped by technological and institutional regimes. Whereas there has been a lack of attention to the concept of technological regime in the entrepreneurship literature, the concept of institutional regime has recently gained ground, yet, remained relatively disconnected and under-conceptualized in connection to entrepreneurial opportunities and constraints. In our empirical study we explore how technological and institutional regimes impact on the opportunities and strategic decision of