Berlin is Hotter Than Silicon Valley! How Networking Temperature Shapes Entrepreneurs’ Networking Across Social Contexts

Abstract

Our study contributes a contextual perspective on entrepreneurs’ networking, shifting focus from individual-level network structure and networking activities toward understanding networking as a multilevel process involving individual and contextual mechanisms. Through a multiple case study of entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley and Berlin, we introduce networking temperature as novel concept that captures context-bound templates for how entrepreneurs should network, ranging from colder to warmer. As core implications, networking temperature enables a contextualized understanding of tie quality, to explain why networking takes different forms in different contexts, and why entrepreneurs gain more cumulative advantage from their existing relationships in warmer than colder contexts.