The entrepreneurial conglomerate: a case study of serial entrepreneurship in a single firm

Rather than the traditional study of the serial entrepreneur who starts sequential ventures with their second and other ventures as the previous one matures or is sold, this paper presents a case study of a series of entrepreneurial ventures that have been started from discovered opportunities arising from the progressing initial venture. Through the use of shared resources and the learning accrued from earlier ventures, the firm created six discrete entrepreneurial firms within the parent firm. This paper builds on earlier papers presented at the 1st and 2nd Research Exchanges. A comparative model for entrepreneurial expansion decision making with a firm is proposed that is compared to the Cambridge Technopole cases.