Now is the time: The effects of linguistic time reference and national time orientation on innovative new ventures

Two perspectives stand out in examining international variations in innovative new venture creation: institutions and national culture. However, systematic insights into the interconnections between institutional and cultural perspectives and their effects on entrepreneurship are severely lacking. In order to fill this gap, the current research integrates two prominent yet under-explored institutional and cultural factors: linguistic future-time reference (FTR) as an institutional factor and long-term orientation as a cultural factor, and considers how they are linked through the time perspective reflected in risk and uncertainty perception. Drawing upon linguistic relativity theory and cultural theory, we propose that institutions with strong FTR languages and cultures with short-term orientation are more likely to foster innovative new venture creation. We utilized merged, multi-level, and multi-source data of 34,673 entrepreneurs from 42 countries to test our hypotheses. We also conducted a series of scenario-based, intra-group experiments with bilingual entrepreneurs to further confirm that strong-FTR has a positive relationship with innovative new venture creation. Results offer compelling support for our hypotheses.