In this paper, we analyzed 217 Japanese startups that have gone public since 2016 and find that companies that failed to meet their revenue forecasts presented to investors at IPO(initial public offering), or are considered “optimistic management forecasts,” have significantly worse stock price performance 500 days after the IPO. This suggests that investors do not consider the accuracy of their earnings forecasts. Post-IPO corporate growth requires raising the stock price and raising money through the stock market, so the quality of forecasts presented before the IPO is important. The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the discussion of IPO market development by presenting evidence that the quality of forecasts of domestic startups affects their stock prices after IPO.

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Accelerators have attracted increasing attention in recent years in startup ecosystems. Existing research has clarified which aspects of accelerators improve the performance of companies participating in acceleration programs, but it is unclear whether the effect of accelerators is due to their support or selection. In addition, very few studies have examined the Japanese startup ecosystem. This study performs a quantitative analysis of the support effect of accelerators with no control and quasi-experimental methods using data of Japanese accelerators and startups. As a result, we find a significant difference between accelerator program participating and non-participating companies when using no control method, but no significant difference between them when using the quasi-experimental method. This suggests that the effect of accelerators is due to the selection effect rather than the support effect.

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This study examines the impact caused by investors up to the IPO on the growth rate of sales of listed companies. We focused on two investing entities, the first is an operating company who is not the expert for investing but have chances to invest to startups directly and the second is a venture capital (hereinafter referred to as VC), who is the expert for investing startups. Although VCs have been examined in many precedent studies, operating companies have not examined even though they might directly invest. We conducted a quantitative study of the impact for Japanese startups caused by operating companies’ and VCs’ investment. The results show that the investment ratio by the operating company has a long-term positive effect on the sales growth rate of listed startups, and although it is partial, we also confirmed that the impact on startups after IPO changes depending on each investment ratio when both operating companies and VCs invest in the same startups. The contribution of this research is to confirm a long-term impact on growth rate of startups after IPO caused by the institutional logic and logic multiplicity of operating companies and VCs.

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This study examined the process of recognition of entrepreneurial stress and meaning of entrepreneurial stress coping, based on the multiple case studies about two founders in seed phase. As a result, two things were found. The first finding was that entrepreneurial stress was perceived as they think it important their outcomes and responsibilities. In addition, the stress was reinforced by entrepreneurial self-reflection and peer pressure. The second finding was stress coping occurred through three patterns. They were utilization, acceptance, and adjustment of factors. The above presents a new set of factors that are considered important in the recognition of stress by entrepreneurs. This study also suggests that entrepreneurial activities take place in a way that stress is not approached to zero but held to a certain degree. In the future, it is necessary to examine the relationship between stress and specific entrepreneurial activities, and the consistency of changes in entrepreneurial cognitions.

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We aim to clarify how individual organizations, including venture companies, respond to institutional complexity in university-industry collaboration projects. Responding to institutional complexity is a universal and important issue for venture companies because they are forced to deal with institutional complexity to gain resources. However, prior research on coping with institutional complexity has not sufficiently considered interorganizational collaboration that involves multiple organizations. We examine the case of a university-industry collaboration project and analyze how a venture company responds to institutional complexity and acquires resources. The case study argues that establishing the “different dreams in the same bed” situation, in which individual actors create a collaboration scheme, is an institutional complexity response.

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Entrepreneurship education, currently practiced around the world, is one effective means of promoting individual entrepreneurship. However, in conventional entrepreneurship education research, the main effectiveness indicator is the students' entrepreneurial intention, which is difficult to apply to Japanese society, where employment is common. In addition, research has mainly focused on programs implemented in higher education, and the effects of implementation in secondary education, which is expected in the future, have not yet been elucidated. Based on this awareness of these issues, this study aims to elucidate the effects of entrepreneurship education programs in secondary education on the abilities and behaviors of students who have entered the workforce and their long-term processes. This study takes the entrepreneurship education program at Shinagawa Joshi Gakuin as an advanced case study of entrepreneurship education in secondary education in Japan. using questionnaire data from 246 graduates in 2020, we conducted a structural analysis of covariance and found that (1) entrepreneurship education in middle and high school promotes self-determined behavior in middle and high school, and (2) self-determined behavior in middle and high school influences leadership in and out of college, and (3) leadership in and out of college influences career purpose and entrepreneurship after entering the workforce, long-term processes were extracted.

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With the growing interest in ESG and SDGs, the number of B Corps, a certification system to support ESG management for unlisted companies originating in the United States, now exceeds 5,300 companies worldwide. However, only a few companies in Japan have yet to obtain B Corp certification. While empirical studies on B Corps are also increasing around the world, there are very few empirical studies on B Corps in Japan, partly due to the small number of certified companies. In this study, we interviewed six Japanese companies that have acquired B Corp, an international ESG certification for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and asked them to describe their experiences with B Corp certification. We then conducted a qualitative study of the results of these interviews to develop a model of corporate management activities toward certification. Specifically, we used a grounded theory approach to analyze the motivations and results of B Corp acquisition, as well as the evaluation of its effects and burdens on management, etc. We believe that this study provides a rare and original insight into the B Corp certification process in Japan by presenting an exploratory hypothetical model from a corporate management perspective.

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