Entrepreneurs' Bricolage and Social Media

Opportunity-based entrepreneurs work in dynamic environments that pose interesting challenges to get efficient access to the resources they need. Thus, based on the social network theory and the Resource-Based theory this article investigates how opportunity-based entrepreneurs use social media to satisfy their resource challenges. More precisely, built on the recent findings suggesting that entrepreneurs strategically network with social media this article sheds light on how entrepreneurs accommodate their capabilities to satisfy their resource needs. The study employed a grounded approach to analyze how technology-based entrepreneurs actively use social media to get access to entrepreneurial resources during their new venture formation process. Data was collected through semistructured interviews to the main founders of startups until a saturation level was reached. Results support that entrepreneurs develop new kind of capabilities, improvisational capabilities, to improve efficiency by using social media to develop their social networks and, in this way, to overcome their resource constraints. Moreover, the article identified that entrepreneurs employ different strategies when developing their social network and that social media allow to develop new capabilities for startup founders.