Greening Goliaths versus emerging Davids -- Theorizing about the role of incumbents and new entrants in sustainable entrepreneurship

Kai Hockerts and Rolf Wüstenhagen

Journal of Business Venturing, 2010, vol. 25, issue 5, pages 481-492

Abstract: This paper proposes a model of how incumbents and new entrants engage in sustainable entrepreneurship. We suggest that in the early stages of an industry's sustainability transformation, new entrants ('Emerging Davids') are more likely than incumbents to pursue sustainability-related opportunities. Incumbents react to the activities of new entrants by engaging in corporate sustainable entrepreneurship activities. While these 'Greening Goliaths' are often less ambitious in their environmental and social goals, they may have a broader reach due to their established market presence. This paper analyses the interplay between 'Greening Goliaths' and 'Emerging Davids' and theorizes about how it is their compounded impact that promotes the sustainable transformation of industries.

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Corporate; sustainability; Incumbents; Start-ups (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2010
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations View citations in EconPapers (2) Track citations by RSS feed

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/B6VDH ... b1c7d7d90e542518e5de
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jbvent:v:25:y:2010:i:5:p:481-492

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Business Venturing is edited by S. Venkataraman

More articles in Journal of Business Venturing from Elsevier
Series data maintained by Wendy Shamier ().