Abstract Entrepreneurs face the challenge of having to conform to gain legitimacy, while at the same time differentiating themselves to gain competitive advantage. We show how entrepreneurs can craft an entrepreneurial narrative to succeed in this task among the user audiences empowered to evaluate their products. Building on theories of categorization, optimal distinctiveness, and cultural entrepreneurship, we propose that entrepreneurs should utilize the narrative's semantic relations with cultural meanings of established products and categories. We measure these semantic relations using machine learning methods for natural language, applied to data on 2901 independent video game proposals compared to 11,651 established games. Our findings reveal that semantically anchoring a product's narrative in the cultural meaning of claimed categories can help to leverage the benefits of differentiation, especially when spanning multiple, atypical categories. When a product focuses on few categories, semantically enriching a narrative with unclaimed categories' cultural meaning makes them more favorable to additional, possibly fragmented audiences that would not have considered them otherwise. Our results point to a key theoretical role of cultural entrepreneurship in shaping audience evaluation of categorization and differentiation by entrepreneurial ventures. It provides guidelines for entrepreneurs for managing the trade-off between differentiation and adherence to established cultural norms.

中文翻译：

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千言万语！叙事锚定和丰富如何帮助平衡创业产品的差异化和整合

摘要 企业家面临着必须遵守以获取合法性，同时使自己与众不同以获得竞争优势的挑战。我们展示了企业家如何在有权评估其产品的用户受众中制作创业叙事以成功完成这项任务。基于分类理论、最优独特性理论和文化创业理论，我们建议企业家应该利用叙事的语义关系与既定产品和类别的文化含义。我们使用自然语言的机器学习方法测量这些语义关系，与 11,651 个已建立的游戏相比，应用于 2901 个独立视频游戏提案的数据。我们的研究结果表明，在语义上锚定产品 声称类别的文化意义中的叙述有助于利用差异化的好处，尤其是在跨越多个非典型类别时。当产品专注于少数类别时，用无人认领的类别的文化意义在语义上丰富叙事，使它们更受其他可能不会考虑它们的可能分散的受众的欢迎。我们的研究结果表明，文化创业在塑造受众对创业企业分类和差异化的评价方面发挥着关键的理论作用。它为企业家管理差异化和遵守既定文化规范之间的权衡提供了指导。当产品专注于少数类别时，用无人认领的类别的文化意义在语义上丰富叙事，使它们更受其他可能不会考虑它们的可能分散的受众的欢迎。我们的研究结果表明，文化创业在塑造受众对创业企业分类和差异化的评价方面发挥着关键的理论作用。它为企业家管理差异化和遵守既定文化规范之间的权衡提供了指导。当产品专注于少数类别时，用无人认领的类别的文化意义在语义上丰富叙事，使它们更受其他可能不会考虑它们的可能分散的受众的欢迎。我们的研究结果表明，文化创业在塑造受众对创业企业分类和差异化的评价方面发挥着关键的理论作用。它为企业家管理差异化和遵守既定文化规范之间的权衡提供了指导。我们的研究结果表明，文化创业在塑造受众对创业企业分类和差异化的评价方面发挥着关键的理论作用。它为企业家管理差异化和遵守既定文化规范之间的权衡提供了指导。我们的研究结果表明，文化创业在塑造受众对创业企业分类和差异化的评价方面发挥着关键的理论作用。它为企业家管理差异化和遵守既定文化规范之间的权衡提供了指导。