administrative

sciences

Article
Why Were Innovators Motivated to Be Entrepreneurs? An
Empirical Study of Taiwanese Start-Ups
Chia-Liang Hung

Department of Information Management, College of Management, National Chi Nan University,

Puli 54516, Taiwan; clhung@ncnu.edu.tw

Abstract: Background: According to the lead user theory, lead users at the front of a market, bene-
fiting significantly from new products, usually have more innovation intension than general users.
However, little research depicts the entrepreneurship motivations that drive innovators to become
businesspeople. Hence, this study investigates Taiwanese entrepreneurs to fill this gap in the research.
Method: This study examines motivations for becoming an entrepreneur from small- and medium-
sized enterprises in Taiwan. A multiple regression analysis is used to examine the relationship
between lead user inclination and entrepreneurial motivations as well as to test the moderating effect
of community involvement. Results: The research results summarise entrepreneurial motivations
into five categories: product knowledge advantage, industry expertise, inducements to innovation,
career expectations, and benchmarking and indicate the positive moderating effect of community
involvement on the association between innovators and entrepreneurs. Conclusions: Additional
research is suggested to catalyse motivations to aspire lead users to pursue business success as
well as to enhance entrepreneurship education policy. This study contributes to understanding the
inclination of lead users towards becoming entrepreneurs and, especially, to emphasise the role of
community involvement, which increases the likelihood of innovators to be entrepreneurs.

Keywords: entrepreneurship; lead user; motivation; user community; user entrepreneur

Citation: Hung, Chia-Liang. 2022.

Why Were Innovators Motivated to
Be Entrepreneurs? An Empirical
1. Introduction
Study of Taiwanese Start-Ups.
Administrative Sciences 12: 97.
Entrepreneurship means to aspire to create a new corporation or an innovative busi-
https://doi.org/10.3390/ ness (Amit and Zott 2001). Drucker (1985) argues that changes generated by social trans-
admsci12030097 formation are sources of creativity that allow people to provide new values to customers.
Such people become innovators, obtain high returns, and can even change society. Thus,
Received: 1 June 2022
entrepreneurship is crucial to lead to increased economic efficiency, bring innovation to
Accepted: 1 August 2022
the market, create new jobs, and raise employment levels (Shane and Venkataraman 2000).
Published: 6 August 2022
Entrepreneurship has become a vital economic and social topic as well as the focus of
Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral innovation research (Fayolle et al. 2007).
with regard to jurisdictional claims in Von Hippel (1986) finds that some people are more insightful in searching for valuable
published maps and institutional affil- innovation than others are; these people are lead users who typically anticipate significant
iations. benefits if they can obtain innovative solutions fitting their personal requirements. This
characteristic means that such users are more likely to innovate, and they represent a
key source of innovation for manufacturers. Evidence indicates that venture capitalists
prefer targets of 5-year-old start-ups established by experienced users to those built by
Copyright: © 2022 by the author.
technology-oriented manufacturers (Shah and Tripsas 2016). Moreover, Shah and Tripsas
Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.
(2007) note that experienced users are inclined to be entrepreneurs with a high success
This article is an open access article
distributed under the terms and
rate even if this is through accidental or unexpected means. User entrepreneurs usually
conditions of the Creative Commons
possess knowledge of perceived usefulness, innovativeness, and efficient configuration of
Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// complementary assets for creating new products, such that they calculate a lower break-
creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ even threshold for entering the market more successfully than manufacturers (Von Hippel
4.0/). 1986). Baldwin et al. (2006); Baldwin and Von Hippel (2011), Franke and Shah (2003),

Adm. Sci. 2022, 12, 97. https://doi.org/10.3390/admsci12030097 https://www.mdpi.com/journal/admsci

Adm. Sci. 2022, 12, 97 2 of 14

and Hienerth (2006) find that user community, where collaborative innovation sparks and
diffuses, plays a critical role in commercialising users’ innovation. Community involvement
facilitates the transformation of users into entrepreneurs. In addition, according to the
findings of Cope and Watts (2000), mentor support as a higher-level learning increases the
power of entrepreneurial learning outcomes. Thus, the involvement of community is vital
in entrepreneurial development, which is usually facilitated by entrepreneurship education
and industry policy through introducing and promoting at many institutions of tertiary
education, capstone projects, and incubation centres in numerous countries (Jones and
English 2004).
The purpose of this paper is to examine the effects of motivations that drive Asian
people, that is, Taiwanese, to become entrepreneurs. The author adopted the factor analysis
approach to extract the motivation dimensions for an innovator to become an entrepreneur.
Thereby, the regression analysis follows to verify the influence of user community on
elevating the innovator’s motivations to become an entrepreneur. This study not only links
the arguments of Von Hippel (1986)—which state that lead users are sources of innovation
that manufacturers should be eager to search for and cooperate with—but also adopts user
entrepreneurs by Shah and Tripsas (2007) with the moderation effect of social communities.
Finally, the results could help policy makers reconsider how to enhance motivations and
circumstances to inspire users to enter markets earlier, thereby increasing the diffusion
speed of effective innovations.

2. Literature Review
2.1. Characteristics of User Innovators
The concept of lead users is especially prevalent in the literature on user innovation.
Two characteristics are central to defining lead users: they have increased needs and they
are positioned to benefit when their needs are solved (Von Hippel 1986). Furthermore,
Urban and Von Hippel (1988) identify three proxy characteristics of lead users related to
‘the high expected benefit from solving a need’. The first is users who have ‘developed’
or ‘modified’ their own products; the second is users who are ‘dissatisfied’ with existing
products; and the third is users with a high ‘adoption speed’ for new technologies. Studies
have further explored these indicators of innovative users. As several authors suggest
(Faullant et al. 2012; Schuhmacher and Kuester 2012; Lüthje 2004), usage experience is
indeed associated with user innovators positively. As shown in the survey by Prause
and Thurner (2014), user involvement in the economy of open innovation is positively
related to product and process innovation. Moreover, the literature in the last two decades
has seen growing evidence of successful user-driven innovation from industrial products
(such as the PC-CAD software in the semiconductor industry studied by Urban and Von
Hippel (1988), consumer products (such as the sport-related products studied by Lüthje
(2004), and new service development (such as the financial services studied by Alam
(2006). Recently, user innovation also occurred in the sustainable development and green
economies. Borowski (2021) asserted that the bamboo microenterprises, composed of one
employee on average, conducted all the innovative activities of entrepreneur, CEO, R&D
developer, worker, and user simultaneously. Dai and Hwang (2021) articulated there were
emerging youth-led brand microenterprises established on the bamboo material and design
industry in Taiwan.

2.2. Characteristics of User Entrepreneurship

Shah and Tripsas (2007) state that user entrepreneurs are usually unsatisfied with the
products that they use, thereby trying to innovate and propose solutions for the market. They
may be lead users, especially, some of whom further share their innovative solutions with
the community after benefiting from personal innovation. Ex post feedback, as a process
of collectively creative generation, circulates in the community through sharing ideas of
lead users with community members, follow-up discussions, and continuous improvement,
thereby revealing the market potential to motivate commercialisation because of perceiving
Adm. Sci. 2022, 12, 97 3 of 14

the numerous interested users with common, concrete, and unsatisfactory demands (Franke
and Shah 2003). Moreover, along with the common interest group surrounding lead users,
an effective calculation among market opportunity, costs, confidence, and empathic under-
standing gradually pushes innovation into the mass market (Kuckertz et al. 2017). This is
why lead users usually recognise the feasibility of market entry more accurately than others.
Haefliger et al. (2010) note that common interest groups often comprise people from diver-
sified backgrounds that merge to become entrepreneurial teams. The resulting diversified
combination of entrepreneurship skills effectively supports necessary complementary assets
that streamline the configuration of a product. This also facilitates the efficient diffusion of
innovation (Füller et al. 2013).
Beyond the continual innovation sparked by interactions with diverse interest groups
in the user community, Shah (2005) and Shah and Tripsas (2007) assert that innovative users
are possibly motivated to become entrepreneurs. It is because they usually have asymmetric
information that allows them to gain a market advantage in contrast to manufacturers.
User entrepreneurs often have intensive user experiences of certain products, thereby
recognising the product-related and technological domain knowledge that is necessary to
improve products. Consequently, they are likely to become product innovators in order
to satisfy their perceived needs. Shah and Tripsas (2016) argue that user entrepreneurs
usually possess expertise in interpreting available information because most of them
have experienced industries that were similar or relevant to their innovation. Therefore,
the perceived costs for configuring supply chains, production, and marketing might be
lower than for other new entrants. Moreover, user entrepreneurs usually perceive lower
opportunity costs than incumbents who often possess sunk costs because of previous
investments; therefore, they can maintain a high strategic mobility to pursue changes in
case of new emerging market requirements.

2.3. Motivations of Entrepreneurship

Consumers have various motivations that are linked to important contingencies in the
context of open innovation, such as user characteristics and different levels of ‘emotional
property’ (Bogers et al. 2017). Amit and Muller (1995) differentiate entrepreneurship into
pull and push orientations. ‘Push’ entrepreneurs push themselves to start a venture because
of dissatisfaction with their current position without reasons related to their entrepreneurial
characteristics. ‘Pull’ entrepreneurs are those who are lured by a new venture idea and
initiate venture activity because of the attractiveness of the idea as well as its personal
implications. ‘Pull’ entrepreneurs are usually more successful than ‘push’ ones. Dawson
and Henley (2012) state that independence is the most commonly cited motivation even
though men are mostly inclined to be pull oriented, whereas women usually combine both
push and pull orientations. In fact, specific circumstances usually lead to push or pull user
innovators—especially lead users—becoming entrepreneurs, as mentioned above, long
experience or heavy usage of a product, personal dissatisfaction with the market, and high
demand for innovation, the perceived usefulness caused by users’ product-related, and
technological domain knowledge increase their willingness to innovate, which eventually
pulls them to be entrepreneurs. Moreover, some motivations come from a background of
related industrial networking knowledge, which is inherited from the same or relevant
industry to help recognise business opportunities (Kuckertz et al. 2017).
In addition to economic motivations, some psychological and emotional factors should
be considered. Dubini (1989) proposes seven pull- and push-oriented entrepreneurial
motivations: freedom, monetary returns, escape, philanthropy, status, achievement, and
role models. Becoming the head of your own company gains the freedom to choose
partners, resources, and locations, as well as flexibility in when and how you work. A high
desire for freedom is therefore likely to attract people to become entrepreneurs. Escape
refers to the aspiration to change career paths, moving from the status quo to a desired
state, especially, and decreasing control by powerful superiors (Littunen 2000). Expected
monetary returns often attract people to entrepreneurship. Philanthropy pushes people
Adm. Sci. 2022, 12, 97 4 of 14

to assume the responsibility of being entrepreneurs in order to provide for their family,
community, and society. Status ambitions often push people to try and enhance their social
position and reputation, and entrepreneurship is one avenue through which they may do
so. Achievement drives people to reach the pinnacle of their career, thereby achieving
personal realisation and esteem, and clearly increasing personal relations to show mastery
of destiny (Littunen 2000). The final motivation, role models, refers to people who want to
pursue what role models in the family, community, and society have achieved. Their idols
often pull them towards becoming entrepreneurs.
Other motivations result conditionally from interactive and accumulated relationships
in the community that user innovators are involved in before entering the market. Such
innovators are gradually pulled by the experience of sharing innovation and improvement,
perceived market potential, availability of diversified and complementary assets, and
building an entrepreneurial team within the user community (Kuckertz et al. 2017).

2.4. Community Involvement

User innovations from a community of users are increasingly important models of
innovation (Baldwin and Von Hippel 2011). Franke and Shah (2003) note a common interest
association in which users are involved and some of them are dissatisfied with current
equipment. As Baldwin and Von Hippel (2011) argue, a community of user innovators
supports the free exchange of information in real time, which means that designers could
learn of other designs in time. As per the definition of user community by Füller et al. (2013)
on the case of Apache software development, a user community is a user group centred
around the common interest of product. Von Hippel (2005) argued that users democratised
the innovation activities and organised cooperation in the development, testing, and
diffusion of user-initiated innovations, which are indeed created as costless by-products of
community member interactions. In other words, users within a community rarely compete
with each other, with a willingness to freely reveal follow-up performance-enhancing
innovations (Franke and Shah 2003). When users are involved in a community of user
innovators, they often share modularised designs and create toolkits to facilitate innovation
(Baldwin et al. 2006; Faraj et al. 2011). Therefore, the costs of design and communication
decrease because of trial-and-error learning. Many open-source software projects have these
characteristics (Baldwin and Von Hippel 2011). Moreover, each innovation opportunity
occurring in the community also reveals low production and transaction costs. Production
costs, which are the costs of carrying out design instructions to produce a specified goods or
service, are comparatively low because of a useable form of design with a clear and specific
dissatisfaction analysis. Transaction costs, which are the cost of establishing property
rights and engaging in compensated exchanges of property, are relatively low because of
the nonrivalry of co-creative designs and controllable opportunistic behaviour (Baldwin
and Von Hippel 2011). Communities increasingly represent a critical external source of
knowledge, practical experience, and innovation. Considerable attention has been devoted
to understanding how to interact with these organisational forms most effectively in order
to foster innovation and entrepreneurship (Füller et al. 2013). Therefore, the involvement
of the user community is critical for user innovators to sharpen and reshape the usefulness
of their innovations and encourage the commercialisation process to continue until market
launch (Shah 2005).

2.5. Research Hypotheses

The literature indicates a positive association between user innovators and user en-
trepreneurs. Motivations to become a user entrepreneur are increasing because of the relative
advantages endowed by users, especially lead users who possess useful innovations (Shah
2005; Shah and Tripsas 2007; Shah and Tripsas 2016). Furthermore, the community facilitating
user innovators supports the pathway from users to entrepreneurs (Baldwin et al. 2006; Bald-
win and Von Hippel 2011; Franke and Shah 2003). Figure 1 presents the research framework.
There are three constructs within the dot-line square, indicating the innovators with the lead
 relative advantages endowed by users, especially lead users who possess useful innova-
tions (Shah 2005; Shah and Tripsas 2007; Shah and Tripsas 2016). Furthermore, the com-
munity facilitating user innovators supports the pathway from users to entrepreneurs
(Baldwin et al. 2006; Baldwin and Von Hippel 2011; Franke and Shah 2003). Figure 1 pre-
sents the research framework. There are three constructs within the dot-line square, indi-
Adm. Sci. 2022, 12, 97 5 of 14
cating the innovators with the lead user orientation are likely to produce the motivations
to be entrepreneurs. Based on the aforementioned literature review, the following hypoth-
eses are proposed:
user orientation are likely to produce the motivations to be entrepreneurs. Based on the
aforementioned
H1. literature of
The higher magnitude review, the following
lead user orientationhypotheses arethe
of innovators, proposed:
higher their motivation to
become
H1. Theentrepreneurs.
higher magnitude of lead user orientation of innovators, the higher their motivation to
become entrepreneurs.
H2. High community involvement positively affects innovators’ motivation in becoming an entre-
H2. High community involvement positively affects innovators’ motivation in becoming an entrepreneur.
preneur.

Involvement of
Community

+
Lead User + Motivations to be
Entrepreneurs
Orientation Entrepreneurs

Figure
Figure 1.
1. Research
Research framework.
framework.

3. Research
Research Method
Method
This study targeted start-ups from International Entrepreneur Initiatives of the Small
and Medium Enterprise Administration of the Taiwan Ministry of Economic Affairs and
members of of the
theTaiwanese
Taiwanesegovernment-based
government-based Youth
YouthCareer
CareerDevelopment
Development Association
Associationand
the watchlist
and of AppWorks,
the watchlist of AppWorks,a leading accelerator
a leading of Internet
accelerator start-ups.
of Internet Totally, we
start-ups. obtained
Totally, we
228 founders
obtained 228 of start-upsofasstart-ups
founders a sampling as apool. Because
sampling all ofBecause
pool. them are allthe
of exact
thementrepreneurs,
are the exact
this study only this
entrepreneurs, focuses
studyon only
the constructs
focuses onwithin the dot-line
the constructs square
within theindot-line
Figure square
1. in Fig-
ure 1.This study elaborated on the associated question items to measure the concerned
constructs. Thereelaborated
This study were sevenon question items proposed
the associated questionbyitemsFranketo and Shah (2003)
measure for mea-
the concerned
suring the lead
constructs. There user orientation.
were The other
seven question 20 items
items were by
proposed adopted
Franketoandmeasure
Shahinnovators’
(2003) for
motivationsthe
measuring to lead
be entrepreneurs,
user orientation.including
The other 13 user entrepreneurial
20 items were adopted driving forces by
to measure Shah
innova-
tors’ motivations to be entrepreneurs, including 13 user entrepreneurial driving forcesThe
and Tripsas (2016) and 7 entrepreneurship motivations articulated by Dubini (1989). by
last item
Shah andwas given
Tripsas to respondents
(2016) to evaluate the
and 7 entrepreneurship intensiveness
motivations of innovator
articulated involvement
by Dubini (1989).
in the
The community.
last item was givenTableto 1 describes
respondents the to
constructs
evaluateand question items.
the intensiveness ofEven though
innovator all the
involve-
question items were shown as affirmative sentences, the respondents
ment in the community. Table 1 describes the constructs and question items. Even though were asked to answer
thethe
all questions
question with the were
items 5-point Likert
shown asscale to specify
affirmative their level
sentences, thetorespondents
a statement.were asked
to answer the questions with the 5-point Likert scale to specify their level to a statement.
Table 1. The constructs and related question items of lead user orientation and entrepreneurial motivation.
The next research processes are to extract key factors of lead user orientation and
entrepreneurial motivations, respectively, by the exploratory factor analysis. Then, the
Constructs Properties Question Items Literature Sources
multiple regression was applied to evaluate the association between the degree of lead
I usually find out about new products and solutions earlier than others.
user orientation and entrepreneurial motivations accounting for the moderation effect of
the intensiveness of significantly
I have benefited communityby the early adoption and use of new
involvement.
Lead user orientation

products.
Being ahead of the Before conducting the survey, a pre-test and pilot test were performed to validate
Franke and Shahthe
trend instrument. This study
I have tested pretested
prototype versions the
of questionnaire
new products forbymanufacturers.
asking three practitioners who were
(2003)
entrepreneurs in the software, e-commerce, and cultural
I am regarded as being on the cutting edge in my field. creativity industries to assess its
logical consistency, ease of understanding, sequence of items, and contextual relevance.
I improved and developed new techniques for the product that I used.
I have new needs which are not satisfied by the existing product and
High benefit from am looking forward to solutions. Franke and Shah
innovation I am not satisfied with the existing equipment until the new version (2003)
improved by myself or others.
Adm. Sci. 2022, 12, 97 6 of 14

Table 1. Cont.

Constructs Properties Question Items Literature Sources

I ever experienced using the relevant products that made me
understand the exact functioning and obtaining the insights of Shah and Tripsas
Use experience requirements. (2007); Schuurman
et al. (2011)
I ever experienced using the relevant products that stimulated me to
innovate and become an entrepreneur consequentially.
I ever experienced the relevant products to what I used, so as to Shah and Tripsas
Product-related
explore the state-of-the-art solutions and then justify the unsatisfactory (2007); Schuurman
knowledge
demands. et al. (2011)
Shah and Tripsas
Domain I have the related technological expertise to solve the problems when
(2007); Schuurman
knowledge using the products.
et al. (2011)
Shah and Tripsas
Innovation I am usually eager to solve the problems by myself when using the
(2007); Schuurman
aspiration products.
et al. (2011)
I usually have additional demands, which are not supported by the
Shah and Tripsas
available market products presently.
New demands (2007); Schuurman
I ever met some people having similar demands to me when searching et al. (2011)
for the available products.
Entrepreneurial motivations

I can clearly specify the points that cause users’ dissatisfaction. Shah and Tripsas
Dissatisfaction (2007); Schuurman
I can clearly suggest the possible solutions to release the dissatisfaction
et al. (2011)
of existing products.
Industry I ever engaged in or worked for the product that I used before being an Shah and Tripsas
experience entrepreneur. (2016)
I ever experienced the upstream or downstream industrial knowledge
Relevant industrial of product that I used, such that I can understand thoroughly the Shah and Tripsas
experience related skills from manufacturing to marketing before being an (2016)
entrepreneur.
Franke and Shah
Experienced I liked to share what I innovated with others in the community where I (2003); Shah and
interaction of was usually involved and experience the communication of Tripsas (2007);
community improvement about my innovative stuffs. Haefliger et al.
(2010)
Franke and Shah
(2003); Shah and
I usually obtained the insights of market potential and possibility of
Perceived market Tripsas (2007);
commercialisation through sharing what I innovated with other in the
potential Haefliger et al.
community.
(2010); Kuckertz
et al. (2017)
Franke and Shah
(2003); Shah and
I can obtain support from the community, where I have ever shared my
Entrepreneurial Tripsas (2007);
innovative stuffs with others, and organise an effective entrepreneurial
team Haefliger et al.
team beyond myself.
(2010); Shah and
Tripsas (2016)
I can obtain the necessary assets from my personal networks of Franke and Shah
Complementary community, such as manufacturing, channeling, and other related (2003); Haefliger
Assets intellectual properties, which usually increase the odds of et al. (2010); Shah
commercialisation. and Tripsas (2016)
I never thinks that I will have a high burden on opportunity costs when Shah and Tripsas
Opportunity costs
deciding to be an entrepreneur. (2016)
Adm. Sci. 2022, 12, 97 7 of 14

Table 1. Cont.

Constructs Properties Question Items Literature Sources

Being an entrepreneur brings me high flexibility on organising tasks,
Freedom Dubini (1989)
arranging working time, and selecting coworkers and location.
Being an entrepreneur gives me an expectation of higher returns than
Monetary returns Dubini (1989)
employment by others.
Being an entrepreneur lets me remove the fear of unemployment and
Escape Dubini (1989)
control my own destiny.
Being an entrepreneur can increase welfare for family, community, and
Philanthropy Dubini (1989)
society.
Being an entrepreneur can enhance my social position, leadership, and
Status Dubini (1989)
reputation.
Being an entrepreneur can challenge myself to pursue the summit of
Achievement Dubini (1989)
career and earn personal esteem.
Being an entrepreneur usually results from benchmarking the models
Role models Dubini (1989)
of seniors or masters in the family or community.

The next research processes are to extract key factors of lead user orientation and
entrepreneurial motivations, respectively, by the exploratory factor analysis. Then, the
multiple regression was applied to evaluate the association between the degree of lead user
orientation and entrepreneurial motivations accounting for the moderation effect of the
intensiveness of community involvement.
Before conducting the survey, a pre-test and pilot test were performed to validate the
instrument. This study pretested the questionnaire by asking three practitioners who were
entrepreneurs in the software, e-commerce, and cultural creativity industries to assess its
logical consistency, ease of understanding, sequence of items, and contextual relevance.
Based on the comments, the author made minor modifications to the wording. Then,
overall, 25 students studying for master’s degrees in information systems participated
in the pilot study. The results of the pilot test were evaluated using Cronbach’s α and
factor analysis to assess the initial reliability of the scales. The standard lower bound for
Cronbach’s α was 0.7 (Hair et al. 2006). Item-to-total correlation was used to improve
Cronbach’s α level, with a minimum value of 0.5. All items in the pilot test indicated
instrument reliability. Some modifications to refine the instrument were made based on
the respondents’ suggestions. The final measures obtained from the pilot test were used as
indicator variables for the study.
Through an online questionnaire invited by the emails or phones from 1 April 2016 to
10 June 2016, 75 valid respondents out of a pool of 228 entrepreneurs answered all of the
questions after several follow-up requests and removing invalid or incomplete responses.
The response rate was approximately 33%.

4. Research Results
4.1. Descriptive Statistics
The investigated companies are summarised in Table 2. The results reveal that most
entrepreneurs were well-educated and possessed experience in industrial training. More-
over, the majority were married but paid below the average wage in Taiwan (USD 1650 per
month), and they started their businesses with a low level of capital.
Adm. Sci. 2022, 12, 97 8 of 14

Table 2. Descriptive Profile of respondent entrepreneurs.

Variables Distribution
Education Below college (41.4%); above college (58.6%)
Below 25 years old (12%); between 25 to 40
Age at entrepreneurship
years old (73.4%); above 40 years old (15.6%)
Matrimony Single (30.7%); married (69.3%);
Gender Male (60%); female (40%)
Below USD 1650/month (50.7%); above USD
Salary before entrepreneurship
1650/month (49.3%)
Industrial age before entrepreneurship Below 7 years (46.7%); above 7 years (53.3%)
Below USD 33,000 (53.4%); above USD 33,000
Venturing capitals
(46.6%)

4.2. Factor Analysis for Motivations of User Entrepreneurship

Exploratory factor analysis was conducted using SPSS version 22.0 to extract the main
common factors from 20 entrepreneurial motivations. First, using the Kaiser–Meyer–Olkin
(KMO) goodness-of-fit criteria, if the KMO value is closer to 1 then it means that our data is
suited to factor analysis. Values of KMO above 0.5 are generally accepted as indicating the
adequacy of the sample for factor analysis while values below 0.5 mean that the sample is
inadequate (Hair et al. 2006). The surveyed data revealed a KMO value near to 1 (0.743),
indicating that the factor analysis approach was modestly plausible for this dataset. Next,
the common factor extraction process was followed. By repeating the principal component
model of factor analysis and varimax orthogonal rotations, eliminating the factors by the
criteria of commonalities lower than 0.5 gradually increased the total variance explained
by five extracted components up to 70% until the sixth analysis (Hair et al. 2006). As
Table 3 shows, each extracted component had an eigenvalue greater than 1, indicating
that all components could adequately represent the original data. Moreover, the factor
loadings associated with all question items grouped in the same component were greater
than 0.5, indicating enough construct validity that question items converged effectively
on the extracted component (Hair et al. 2006). Table 3 shows the reduced, concise five
motivations which are underlying components (causes) capturing much information of the
16 entrepreneurial properties reflected by the founders of Taiwan startups.
The five common components were named by the representative items in each group.
The first component was called ‘product knowledge advantage’ because the grouping
items were mostly related to product functionality, configuration, and market, which Shah
and Tripsas (2007) and Schuurman et al. (2011) emphasised. The second component was
called ‘industry expertise’ because of its high relatedness to entrepreneurs’ past industry
experience, which Shah and Tripsas (2016) mentioned. The third component was called ‘in-
ducements to innovation’, consisting of unsatisfactory needs, high desire for improvement,
and benefits from new innovations, which Von Hippel (1986) argued as the driving force of
being lead users. The fourth component was ‘career expectations’, which was concerned
with the enhancement of family welfare and social position, which were asserted by Dubini
(1989). The final component was ‘benchmarking’, which was externally driven by escaping
the status quo, following role models, and controlling personal destiny, which Dubini (1989)
pointed out.
According to the extracted five components of Table 3, the factor scores of each compo-
nent, indicating the magnitude of each motivation, were derived from the corresponding
original entrepreneurial properties. Table 4 shows the Cronbach’s α reliability analysis for
the factor score of each component. Most of Cronbach’s α values were greater than 0.7,
indicating satisfactory reliability (Hair et al. 2006).
Adm. Sci. 2022, 12, 97 9 of 14

Table 3. Factor analysis for motivations of user entrepreneurs after Varimax rotation.

Component
Entrepreneurial Properties Commonality
1 2 3 4 5
1. Product-related knowledge 0.853 0.032 0.168 −0.016 0.034 0.758
2. Use experience–stimulation to innovation 0.797 0.166 0.298 −0.042 −0.069 0.759
3. Use experience–obtaining insights of requirement 0.776 0.115 0.318 −0.132 −0.008 0.735
4. Perceived market potential 0.701 0.098 0.249 0.201 0.017 0.604
5. Experienced interactions of community 0.668 0.285 −0.021 0.268 −0.01 0.600
6. Complementary assets 0.508 0.443 0.063 −0.119 0.22 0.520
7. Relevant industrial experience 0.256 0.868 0.093 −0.077 0.061 0.837
8. Achievement −0.052 0.742 0.03 0.236 0.032 0.611
9. Industry experience 0.4 0.731 0.096 0.047 −0.05 0.708
10. New demands–market unavailability 0.272 −0.005 0.791 0.097 −0.042 0.711
11. Innovation aspiration 0.254 −0.011 0.783 −0.093 0.106 0.698
12. Dissatisfaction–the solution suggestion 0.152 0.26 0.744 0.142 0.157 0.689
13. Philanthropy 0.054 0.138 0.078 0.869 −0.016 0.783
14. Status 0.038 −0.01 0.02 0.863 0.243 0.805
15. Role models 0.09 −0.052 0.046 0.004 0.870 0.770
16. Escape −0.094 0.153 0.121 0.229 0.818 0.768
Eigenvalue 5.148 2.112 1.700 1.316 1.081
Explained variation (%) 32.175 13.198 10.624 8.224 6.754
Total variation explained (%) 32.175 45.373 55.997 64.221 70.974

Table 4. Reliability analysis of key user entrepreneurial motivations.

Entrepreneurial Motivations Cronbach’s Alpha Associated Property Items

Product knowledge advantage 0.855 1–6
Industry expertise 0.759 7–9
Inducement to innovation 0.752 10–12
Career expectation 0.766 13–14
Benchmarking motivation 0.670 15–16

4.3. Factor Analysis of Lead User Orientation

According to the measurement constructs of lead user characteristics suggested by
Franke and Shah (2003), the empirical test of Taiwanese entrepreneurs shown in Table 5
reveals measurement validity with high factor loadings as well as measurement variability
with an acceptable Cronbach’s α.

Table 5. Validity and Reliability analysis for measuring characteristics of leader user.

Common Components
Question Items of Lead User Orientation
Being Ahead of the Trend High Benefit from Innovation
Develop new techniques. 0.815 0.358
Being on the cutting edge in my field. 0.785 0.274
Test prototype versions. 0.764 −0.116
Benefit significantly from early adoption. 0.750 0.178
Find out new solutions earlier than others. 0.714 0.333
Look forward to new solutions. 0.109 0.875
Unsatisfied until the new version improved. 0.218 0.798
Cronbach’s alpha 0.836 0.684

4.4. From Lead Users to User Entrepreneurs

After factor analysis, this study adopted the factor scores of the total characteristics
of a lead user and five extracted user entrepreneurial motivations for correlation analyses,
including the indicator of community involvement. Therefore, the relationship between key
Adm. Sci. 2022, 12, 97 10 of 14

constructs in the research framework shown as Figure 1 can be examined. Table 6 shows
that most of the associations among lead user orientation, community involvement, and
motivations of being entrepreneurs were significant. Next, a product of lead user orientation
and community involvement was created to evaluate the moderating effect. Therefore, a
multiple regression analysis between lead user orientation, community involvement, and
their product was conducted toward five user entrepreneurial motivations. The purpose
of regression analysis is to examine whether the intendedness of user innovators with
higher lead user characteristics are likely to be motivated to become user entrepreneurs,
especially when involving the moderator of user communities. Table 7 shows the results.
All regression coefficients along the lead user characteristics were significantly positive,
indicating that the high level of lead user orientation promotes the high level of user
entrepreneur motivations. However, the effect of user community involvement is not
always significant to all the motivations to be entrepreneurs. Nevertheless, the involvement
of community not only stimulates the entrepreneurial motivations of learning product
knowledge (with a significant coefficient, 1.016) and industry expertise (with a significant
coefficient, 0.925) but also facilitates lead users to elevate these two motivations (with
significant coefficients 0.326 and 0.607, respectively) to become user entrepreneurs.

Table 6. Mean, standard deviation, and bivariate Pearson correlations for all variables.

Variables Mean S.D. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

1. Lead User orientation 3.090 0.543 1
2. Involvement of Community 3.640 1.512 0.394 ** 1
3. Product knowledge advantage 3.162 0.390 0.488 ** 0.732 ** 1
4. Industry expertise 3.358 0.538 0.257 * 0.486 ** 0.516 ** 1
5. Inducement to innovation 3.117 0.641 0.552 ** 0.327 ** 0.565 ** 0.306 ** 1
6. Career expectation 3.020 1.007 0.419 ** 0.220 0.101 0.138 0.092 1
7. Benchmarking motivation 2.687 0.820 0.307 ** 0.286 * 0.282 * 0.072 0.311 ** 0.320 ** 1
* p-value < 0.05; ** p-value < 0.01.

Table 7. Regression analysis from lead users to motivations of user entrepreneurs.

Product Knowledge Industry Inducement to Career Benchmarking

Advantage Expertise Innovation Expectation Motivation
Intercept 0.127 0.098 0.292 0.050 −0.028
Characteristics of Lead user 0.488 ** 0.312 * 0.572 ** 0.419 ** 0.307 **
Involvement of Community 1.106 * 0.925 * 0.271 0.224 0.233
Lead user × Community 0.326 ** 0.607 * 0.073 0.128 −0.071
Adj. R2 0.573 0.416 0.292 0.270 0.175
* p-value < 0.05; ** p-value < 0.01.

5. Discussion
According to the statistical results, the start-up respondents with inclinations towards
lead user characteristics significantly produced five entrepreneurial motivations to become
entrepreneurs, or so-called ‘user entrepreneurs’. The lead user orientation is significantly
related to the entrepreneurial motivations of product knowledge, industry expertise, career
expectation, and benchmarking. The results reveal that the lead user orientation is a push
factor (i.e., escaping from dissatisfactory aspects such as motivation for inducements to
innovate and benchmarking) as well as a pull factor (i.e., stimulating users towards achieve-
ment and opportunities mixed with their relative product knowledge advantage, related
industry expertise, and career expectations) to motivate a person becoming an entrepreneur.
H1 was indeed supported, resulting in expanding the manufacturer’s standpoint of von
Hippel’s lead user theory from merely searching for sources of innovation to the user point
of becoming user entrepreneurs. H1 confirms again the user entrepreneur theory by Shah
and Tripsas (2007).
Adm. Sci. 2022, 12, 97 11 of 14

However, only partial significance was found for the involvement of community and
its moderating effect on the relationship between lead user orientation and entrepreneurial
motivations. H2 was only partially supported. The community effect revealed that com-
munity involvement increased entrepreneurial motivations in terms of the pull factors
of enhancing product knowledge advantage and learning-related industry expertise. In
addition, community involvement positively motivated users to become user entrepreneurs
by its significant moderating effects. Thus, beyond the emphasis of lead user theory, people
with the lead user orientation and involved in communities may allow to exchange related
industry and product knowledge. Moreover, the results reveal that the involvement of
interest-centred communities may be less supportive of innovation, career expectations,
and benchmarking, even though they are also important motivations for a person to be an
entrepreneur. However, H2 still supplements effective motivations of entrepreneurship to
the emphasis of community only on collaborative innovations by Baldwin and Von Hippel
(2011) and Franke and Shah (2003).

6. Conclusions
This research links lead users to user entrepreneurs through exploring their motiva-
tions. After integrating the driving forces behind users to be entrepreneurs (Franke and
Shah 2003; Shah 2005; Shah and Tripsas 2007; Haefliger et al. 2010; Schuurman et al. 2011;
Füller et al. 2013; Shah and Tripsas 2016) with the general entrepreneurship motivations con-
tributed by Dubini (1989) and interactions within the user community ((Franke and Shah
2003), a moderating effect on entrepreneurial motivations was examined. Statistical signif-
icance indicated positive regression effects from lead user orientation to entrepreneurial
motivations as well as a moderating effect of intensiveness of community involvement.
The results indicate that people inclining toward the lead user orientation are motivated to
have a lower estimate of entrepreneurial costs than other roles (e.g., manufacturers) and to
expect larger benefits from entering markets, resulting from product knowledge advantage
and industry expertise, especially when they are highly involved in the user community.

6.1. Academic Implications

The results add to the literature regarding the power of lead users. The alternative
value of lead users can be shifted from merely licensing innovation to manufacturers, as
Von Hippel (1986) argued, to being entrepreneurs themselves. This paper demonstrates
an empirical study to show that people with lead user orientation are inclined to produce
multiple motivations to be entrepreneurs. Nowadays, in a world where outside facilitators
such as interest-centred communities, industrial society, or Internet forums prevail, people
with lead user orientation can share and obtain feedback for their ideas in real time and
more easily than previously possible, resulting in aggregating complementary assets to
challenge the original market. Especially, the research results delineate the role of com-
munity involvement in the generation of entrepreneurial motivations related to economic
incentives because of more insights about product and industry. Furthermore, this research
augments the other three non-economic motivations to incubate user entrepreneurship.
Because this research collected the entrepreneurs’ motivations after they have owned their
own companies, future research could compare the likelihood of different motivations of
the wannabe entrepreneurs to build their start-ups. In addition, concerning the importance
of community, future research should focus on organisational designs of communities that
efficiently attracts people and lead users who are willing to be involved.

6.2. Managerial Implications

From an empirical perspective, the role of community facilitating entrepreneurial
motivations gives insights to strategic employment. Firms should encourage employees
to join outward industrial societies and interest groups, or to advocate inward interest
groups, where innovation can be further shared, discussed, and challenged. From the
outward side, the linkage to communities provides firms opportunities to acquire new
Adm. Sci. 2022, 12, 97 12 of 14

ideas, collaborate on open innovation, and even to invest in start-ups. For the inward side,
internal communities can play as a leverage of ‘intrepreneurship’ because they provide the
right path of the pre-commercialisation of useful innovations, resulting from dissatisfied
equipment users, and hint at market potential to launch new diversified businesses.
Another valuable implication of this research is focused on entrepreneurship educa-
tion. Most entrepreneurship education curricula teach marketing, finance, and strategic
partnership skills for market segmentation, exploration, and collaboration through corpo-
rate imagination, investigating customer demands (Jones and English 2004), or searching
through relevant industry employer statements (Pittaway and Cope 2007). Entrepreneur-
ship programmes developed by universities can help raise awareness of enterprise op-
portunities for students and shape perceptions; however, little evidence had previously
been found to guide students actually to be new entrepreneurs (Pittaway and Cope 2007).
According to the results, the properties of being lead users and community involvement
in real entrepreneurial life can be applied to further the development of entrepreneurship
education. The focus of entrepreneurship education should be on transforming students
into being lead users, thereby increasing the likelihood of them seeking to become self-
employed. In addition, community involvement hints at developing user communities,
such as special but open interest groups, wherein ideas can emerge, be demonstrated,
and be challenged to anticipate outside demands, with visiting experienced industrial
mentors. As discussed by Gilbert (2012), designing an industry-centred laboratory may be
more suitable for students to practice community engagement on campus or in their local
community because they can receive possible feedback without rivalry. Such communities
are full of debates and experiments before a dominant design and feasible business plan
emerge (Baldwin and Von Hippel 2011). This is in stark contrast to most tournament games
or entrepreneurial forums initiated by entrepreneurship education programmes or gov-
ernmental economic departments that invite student groups to compete using their own
business plans and innovative ideas (Hytti and O’Gorman 2004). The nature of competition
impedes the possibility of continually reshaping innovation. Nevertheless, more research is
required to examine the costs, benefits, mechanisms, and effects of loosely coupled student
incubation communities and their ability to encourage students to focus on innovations
and catalyse their entrepreneurial motivations.

Funding: This work was funded by the Ministry of Science and Technology of Taiwan (MOST-105-
2410_H-260-14; 106-2410-H-260-040).
Institutional Review Board Statement: Not applicable.
Informed Consent Statement: Not applicable.
Data Availability Statement: Not applicable.
Conflicts of Interest: The author declares no conflict of interest.

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