Development of Entrepreneurial and Marketing Capabilities in Engineering & Technology Based Firms

EM (Entrepreneurial Making) and MC (Marketing Capabilities) play a crucial role in the success of a firm. Many engineering and technology firms are run by people having an engineering degree which have less exposure to marketing. A strong EO (Entrepreneurial Orientation) enables the firm to carry out and develop its MC in opportunistic, proactive and innovative way. The EO and MC are shaped and defined by various antecedents i.e. technological and market turbulence, market and strategic orientation. The impact and influence of these antecedents vary as the organization moves from its infancy to growth and maturity. The following research tests the impacts of various antecedents during the various stages of the life cycle of the engineering and technology based firms. To conduct the longitudinal study, the engineering and technology firms were grouped in to four categories temporally i.e. (1) less than 2 years, (2) 3-4 years, (3) 5-8 years and (4) more than 9 years. This allowed a quasi longitudinal observation to find out and compare the changes over time. The results show that the various factors influence the MC in varying degree during the various stages of the life cycle of the firm.

technology that has the power to change the market place [1]. The sales and marketing function become complicated as there is no market research data available for new products [2]. The existing market research data is largely ones product or service. The four "P" s of marketing are also not clear. The entrepreneurs use resource parsimony along with boot strapping to find new market opportunities. The scarcity of resources enhances their creativity.
An EM framework has been proposed [3] which combines marketing and entrepreneurship to define this firm. The EM and MC combined are considered as idiosyncratic and intangible resources in this research and the firms can achieve a competitive advantage by the proper utilisation of these skills and capabilities [4]. This research tests the Qureshi model [4][5], of EM during the various stages of the life cycle of the firm. A survey of engineering and technology based firms in Berlin was carried out.

THEORETICAL FOUNDATIONS AND RESEARCH FRAMEWORK
Hamel and Prahalad [7] introduced the concept of core competencies to enhance firm performance and gain competitive advantage. The resource based view of the firm highlights the importance of tangible and intangible assets and capabilities [8].

Environmental Turbulence
The external environment of the firm impacts the various variables of the firm. According to Miller [9], the firms are more innovative in a TE. Turbulence has been defined to be in two ways [10] i.e. market and technological turbulence. The ET impacts the various variables inside the firm. Some of the important variables selected for this study are EM, MC and SO.

An Integrative Framework
Qureshi [4][5] has proposed an integrative EM model based on the above mentioned variables. One of the external variable is the ET [9]. This impacts the various internal variables of the firm. As the environment becomes turbulent, the company has to be more entrepreneurial (proactive, innovative and a risk taker) higher in market orientation (intelligence generation and dissemination) [11] and better in strategic orientation. The following hypothesis used in the Qureshi [4][5] model are adopted for this study.

OPERATIONALIZATION OF VARIABLES
The different variables used in the study were previously used and tested. Some of the variables were adapted to the context of technology parks. The various variables used in the study were as follows. The market turbulence variable used was developed by Jaworski, and Kohli [14].
This variable measures the extent of technological change.
Strategic orientation variable used was developed by Vorhies and Harker [15]. The EO measures three things i.e. Innovation, proactiveness, and risk taking. This variable was developed by Namen and Slevin [16]. MO variable was developed by Jaworski and Kohli [14]. It measures three things i.e. market intelligence generation, market intelligence dissemination, and to response to the gathered intelligence. The MC variable developed by Vorhies and Harker [15] was used. Firm performance variable used was developed by Venkatraman [17].

RESULTS
The testing of the model consisted of two parts. The

Discussion and Study Implications
The Qureshi model [4][5] was tested and found to be supported in this research. In the early stages of the life cycle of the firms, ET has a very minor impact on EO and MO. EO has no impact on SO i.e. Hypothesis three is not supported.

FIG. 1. THE T STATISTICS FOR GROUP 1 OBTAINED USING PLS SMART [4-5]
In Group-1, EO has a strong impact on MO, SO and MC.

TABLE 2. T-VALUES OF THE VARIOUS PATHS IN THE STRUCTURAL EQUATION MODEL
The companies in group four are in the later stages of the life cycle and must develop new technologies and introduce innovation in products and services. A summary of the findings of all four groups is presented in Table 3. In the first stage of the life cycle EO has a high impact on MC and SO. There is a less impact of EO on MC of the firm. In the second stage EO has a high impact on MC. Now the firm is getting mature and has some marketing data to develop and refine existing strategies.
In the third stage EO impact becomes higher on the MO and MC construct. The company has a firm marketing strategy by this time. This impact continues in the last stage. At this stage marketing capability has a high impact on FP (Firm Performance).
One of the limitation of the study is that it was limited to one city i.e. Berlin. This limitation limits the study to be generalised to other places. Another limitation is the key informant bias [19]. Moreover some moderating effects can also be looked to understand the phenomena in detail.

CONCLUSIONS
The comments on the impact of one variable on the other is based on the path coefficients. A path coefficient of more than 0.5 is considered to be very high, less than 0.5 and greater than 0.2 is high. The others are less. A key finding of this research is that the entrepreneurial founders need not to worry about learning and developing formal marketing capabilities.
They have to focus more on small experiments and to make and deliver the product/service to the customer in the best possible way that fulfills the need and adds value to them.
This research provides useful information to the entrepreneurs to develop different MC during the lifecycle of the firm. In addition it apprises them of the various antecedents that impact MC and FP at the various stages of the firm.