How can entrepreneurs achieve legitimacy from audiences? A growing literature stream on the legitimacy of entrepreneurial identities has identified a trade-off regarding "optimal distinctiveness": entrepreneurs need to claim distinctiveness to stand out from others, but also claim similarity to not break with social conventions. In this paper, we theorize how the interplay of individuals' distinctiveness and similarity claims creates "optimal identity distinctiveness", allowing entrepreneurs to gain legitimacy from audiences. Using a configurational (fsQCA) approach, we analyze conversation data (around 760?000 posts) from seven popular entrepreneurial online communities. Our results highlight three configurations that foster high levels of legitimacy and balance similarity as well as distinctiveness claims (creativity complements invention focus, purpose compensates unpopular high-performing, optimal similarity needs no additional attention). Hence, this paper contributes to the understanding of how entrepreneurs can achieve legitimacy and extends knowledge on outcomes of entrepreneurial identity at the sociocultural level.

The field of entrepreneurship has seen remarkable growth, increasing the expectations of academic audiences. Articles need to balance novelty with rigorous methodology, theoretical contributions, social implications, and coherent argumentation to succeed in the publication process. However, navigating these varied and sometimes conflicting expectations to achieve optimal distinctiveness in academic narratives is challenging for authors. To explore how authors can achieve optimal distinctiveness amidst these complex expectations, we studied academic narratives and related editorial decisions of two leading entrepreneurship journals, Entrepreneurship: Theory & Practice (ETP, 4,151 papers) and Small Business Economics Journal (SBEJ, 4,043 papers), using computer-aided text analysis. Our study debunks common assumptions about what makes a successful entrepreneurship paper, providing an empirical basis for understanding actual versus perceived publication requisites. Furthermore, we extend optimal distinctiveness theory by demonstrating that high distinctiveness is not uniformly advantageous, meeting numerous expectations is not necessarily beneficial, and clear language is crucial for complex narratives. Our study underscores that crafting narratives is more nuanced than traditionally believed. Getting published in Entrepreneurship Journals: Less is more! How can entrepreneurship scholars increase their chances of getting published? Our study delves into scholarly articles in entrepreneurship journals, investigating which papers are published and which papers are not. We challenge the assumption that authors must fulfil as many expectations as possible and emphasize the importance of addressing specific audience expectations. By analyzing narratives and editorial decisions from Entrepreneurship Theory & Practice (ETP) and Small Business Economics Journal (SBEJ), we uncover the key to publication success: tailoring articles to meet the targeted audience's most pronounced requirements. Focusing on theoretical contributions when submitting one's work to ETP and focusing on empirical contributions when submitting one's work to SBEJ can increase the chances of getting your work published.

The COVID-19 crisis has caused significant and unforeseen problems for entrepreneurs. Normally, entrepreneurs would seek social support in their networks to help deal with these issues. However, due to social distancing, physical networking is more difficult, and instead, entrepreneurs have to turn to alternative support sources, such as online communities. We, therefore, investigate support-seeking in online communities during the COVID-19 pandemic, and thereby uncover action possibilities that online communities offer to entrepreneurs. We analyze conversation data from an online community of entrepreneurs on Reddit (r/startups) between January 1st and July 7th, 2020, totaling 64’718 community posts. Through a qualitative analysis, we outline what types of support entrepreneurs seek, how support-seeking unfolds, and discover four action possibilities that online communities offer: Online communities help entrepreneurs to resolve problems, reframe their problems, reflect on their situation and refocus thinking and efforts. Our paper contributes to (1) the debate around entrepreneurs’ support during the COVID-19 pandemic; (2) the knowledge about digital entrepreneurial support-seeking and (3) the growing interest in the digital affordances that entrepreneurs can access, such as online communities.

COVID-19 has caused significant and unforeseen problems for entrepreneurs. While entrepreneurs would normally seek social support to help deal with these issues, due to social distancing, physical networks are often not available. Consequently, entrepreneurs must turn to alternative support sources, such as online communities, raising the question of how support is created in such spaces. Drawing on an affordance perspective, we investigate how entrepreneurs interact with online communities and base our qualitative analysis on conversation data (76,365 posts) from an online community of entrepreneurs on Reddit during the COVID-19 pandemic. Our findings draw out four affordances that online communities offer to entrepreneurs (resolving problems, reframing problems, reflecting on situations, refocusing thinking and efforts), resulting in a framework of entrepreneurial support creation in online communities. Thus, our study contributes to debates around (1) entrepreneurs’ support during COVID-19 and (2) digital affordances in the entrepreneurship context.