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Dominic Lim is a member of the Entrepreneurship group at Ivey, and teaches various entrepreneurship-related topics such as new venture creation, managing high growth, corporate entrepreneurship, and innovation. He is one of the designers and core faculty of the Leadership Retreat for the Business Development Bank of Canada’s Growth Driver Program for high-impact firms, and have worked with over 100 high growth entrepreneurs across Canada. He also works with a diverse range of private and public sector clients in North America, Asia, Europe and Middle East at the executive level. He previously taught at Brock University's Goodman School of Business in Niagara and USC Marshall School of Business in Los Angeles.
Dominic's research focuses on entrepreneurs, entrepreneurial firms, and the context of entrepreneurship—especially the intersections and interactions among them, and his work has been published or forthcoming in top academic journals such as the Academy of Management Review, Strategic Management Journal, Entrepreneurship Theory & Practice, Journal of Business Venturing, and the Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science. He is also a member of the Editorial Review Board of Entrepreneurship Theory & Practice and Journal of Business Venturing, and is currently serving as a Consulting Editor for International Small Business Journal.
Prior to his academic career, Dominic was an entrepreneur, having co-founded a B2B e-business startup, and an intrapreneur, having launched a new information security business unit for one of the leading IT consulting and system integration companies in Seoul, Korea. He also worked with many university-based startups as a consultant in Cambridge, UK. He currently serves on the advisory board of several startups.
A Canadian national born in South Korea, Dominic received his Ph.D. in Business Administration from Ivey, MBA from Cambridge University in the United Kingdom where he was a British Chevening Scholar, and BS (Computer Engineering) from Seoul National University, Korea.
Specialties: New venture creation; Scaling up and managing growth, International entrepreneurship; Corporate venturing and innovation; Entrepreneurial cognition, Entrepreneurship ecosystem; Stakeholder enrollment
Abstract: The use of coworking spaces – flexible, shared workplaces for mobile knowledge workers – has gained popularity among entrepreneurs, small-business owners, and freelancers over the last decade. Coworking spaces shape a social setting for a community, within which mobile knowledge workers can network, collaborate, and share ideas. This study adopts a social-symbolic work perspective to explore how founders and community managers create and curate the communities in their coworking spaces. Based on qualitative data gathered from 16 coworking spaces, we elaborate on how founders and community managers can integrate boundary work and social identity work in their social-symbolic work practices to create a sense of community.
Abstract: Research suggests that entrepreneurs persuade stakeholders to engage in risky projects in an uncertain future through visions, compelling narratives of the future. A unique challenge for entrepreneurs, however, is how entrepreneurs can construct a narrative that unites stakeholders with different perceptions of the degree of risk or uncertainty posed by the future. We address this question with a diegetic narrative model of stakeholder enrollment. Our primary argument is that to reduce variation in how potential stakeholders view the future, a story must embed a vision of the future in a coherent and collectively held narrative of the past. We introduce rhetorical history as the primary construct through which this occurs. We demonstrate how successful visions employ historical tropes at the intradiegetic level to appeal to individual perceptions of risk or uncertainty and how those historical tropes are combined into meta-narratives or myths drawn from the collective memory of a community to create broad, extradiegetic appeal to all stakeholders regardless of their temporal orientation. Finally we describe three categories of historical reasoning – teleological, presentism, and retro-futurism – that act as bridging mechanisms between past, present and future that provides stakeholders with an enhance sense of agency in the future.
Mitchell, J. R.; Israelsen, T. L.; Mitchell, R. K.; Lim, D. S. K., 2021, "Stakeholder Identification as Entrepreneurial Action: The Social Process of Stakeholder Enrollment in New Venture Emergence", Journal Of Business Venturing, November 36(6): 106146 - 106146.
Abstract: In this commentary, we examine both the positive and negative potential impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the growth of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). We conceptualise the firm as a system of various resource components (strategic, physical, financial, human and organisational resources) and firm growth as the expansion of this resource system. Based on qualitative data drawn from Canadian high-growth SMEs, we discuss the potential impact of the crisis on these resource system components. We demonstrate how virtuous growth spirals of these resources co-evolve through various feedback and feed-forward loops. Furthermore, we discuss how a temporary growth setback, due to the crisis, can in fact provide an opportunity for entrepreneurs to realign, and regain the balance and fit within their firm’s resource system. This realignment enables the firm to take on the next phase of growth.
Abstract: This paper examines individuals’ engagement in entrepreneurship in emerging economies. We conceive of such engagement as encompassing opportunity discovery, evaluation, and exploitation. We investigate the influence of individuals’ household income and level of education on their engagement in entrepreneurship, as well as the interaction effects between these individual-level factors and country-level regulatory, cognitive, and normative institutions. We test our hypotheses on a multi-source dataset from 22 emerging economies using a multilevel analysis technique. Our results indicate that the direct effect of individuals’ household income on their engagement in entrepreneurship is persistent, regardless of institutional conditions but the influence of education level varies contingent upon various institutional conditions.
Abstract: This study examines international corporate entrepreneurship associated with new product lines and new geographic markets. Drawing upon agency theory and the corporate entrepreneurship literature, we posit that aligning CEO incentives with shareholder interests and adopting CEO monitoring mechanisms will promote international corporate entrepreneurship. We test the hypotheses using 277 U.S.-based manufacturing firms during the period from 2003 to 2009. Our findings highlight how various governance mechanisms such as a CEO's compensation linked to the long-term performance of the firm, the values of the CEO's shareholding, independent board leadership, and the representation of outside directors influence international corporate entrepreneurship of existing firms.
Abstract: This study addresses the relationship between the munificence offered by a country’s proximate institutions in terms of a critical financial resource (informal investments) and human resource (entrepreneurship education) and its early-stage entrepreneurial activity. We also examine how this relationship might be moderated by underlying cultural values. Our main thesis is that the positive effects of resource munificence of proximate institutions on early-stage entrepreneurial activity should be attenuated in countries with a more hierarchical and conservative culture. We test our hypotheses using a multi-source dataset that spans 42 countries.
Abstract: This study considers the relationship between people's access to resources and their likelihood to start a new business, and particularly how this relationship might be moderated by formal and informal institutions. Individual-level resources might be more potent for new business creation in countries with financial and educational systems that are more oriented toward entrepreneurship, higher levels of trust, and cultures that are less hierarchical and conservative. The hypotheses are tested by undertaking random-effects multilevel analyses of a multi-source data set that spans a 5-year time period (20032007). The study's findings offer important implications for research and practice.
Abstract: This paper posits that the efficacy of different retrenchment strategies depends upon the firm’s core rent creation mechanism. We focus on two distinct mechanisms of rent creation: Ricardian rent creation based on the exploitation of resources and Schumpeterian rent creation based on explorative capabilities. We argue that cost retrenchment may have detrimental effects on firms with a relatively high Schumpeterian rent focus. On the other hand, asset retrenchment may erode the basis for future rent creation for firms with a higher Ricardian rent focus. Our findings based on a sample of large non-diversified Japanese firms highlight the differing degrees of fragility and recoverability of the two rent creation mechanisms in the context of different retrenchment strategies.
Abstract: International competitiveness ultimately depends upon the linkages between a firm’s unique, idiosyncratic capabilities (firm-specific advantages, FSAs) and its home country assets (country-specific advantages, CSAs). In this paper, we present a modified FSACSA matrix building upon the FSACSA matrix (Rugman 1981). We relate this to the diamond framework for national competitiveness (Porter 1990), and the double diamond model (Rugman and D’Cruz 1993). We provide empirical evidence to demonstrate the merits and usefulness of the modified FSACSA matrix using the Fortune Global 500 firms. We examine the FSAs based on the geographic scope of sales and CSAs that can lead to national, home region, and global competitiveness. Our empirical analysis suggests that the world’s largest 500 firms have increased their firm-level international competitiveness. However, much of this is still being achieved within their home region. In other words, international competitiveness is a regional not a global phenomenon. Our findings have significant implications for research and practice. Future research in international marketing should take into account the multi-faceted nature of FSAs and CSAs across different levels. For MNE managers, our study provides useful insights for strategic marketing planning and implementation.
Abstract: In this study, we investigate the relationship between institutional elements of the social environment and entrepreneurial cognitions, which lead to the individual's venture creation decision. Employing a sample of 757 entrepreneurs and non-entrepreneurs from eight countries we examine the extent to which institutions influence venture creation decisions, where entrepreneurial expert scripts act as a mediator. Results show that various institutional elements, such as legal and financial systems, affect venture arrangements and willingness scripts. Venture arrangements scripts, in turn, have the most significant impact on an individual's venture creation decision.
