关键词: 创业叙事, 论点主张, 论证策略, 投资者共鸣

Abstract: The theory of cultural entrepreneurship suggests that entrepreneurial narratives is an important means for new ventures to obtain entrepreneurial resources and establish legitimacy, and that it has become an integral part of the process by which entrepreneurs create new businesses and new wealth. While the existing studies have risen from case to theory to reveal entrepreneurial narrative typology, they do not give feedback to entrepreneurs on how to choose rhetorical strategies to maximize their effectiveness. Meanwhile, empirical studies on cultural entrepreneurship have only focused on the simple linear relationship between antecedents such as narrative content, narrative style and rhetorical strategies and entrepreneurial resource acquisition, but in fact, entrepreneurial narratives contain multiple core elements, and the complex causal relationship between multiple concurrent causes on resource acquisition needs to be explored. As investor resonance is a key antecedent that drives investor support behavior, entrepreneurs' entrepreneurial narratives need to resonate with investors. Based on the argumentation theory and cultural resonance, this study analyzes the textual content of 304 entrepreneurial narratives in We are The Hero by integrating text analysis, necessary condition analysis (NCA) and fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA), and investigates the configuration effect of entrepreneurial narrative micro level arguments (mission-oriented claim, environment successfully oriented claim, intermediate performance oriented claim and entrepreneurial team oriented claim) and argumentation strategies (enthymemes, temporal reorganization argument, present state argument and data argument) on investors resonance from the perspective of configuration. The study found that: (1) a single claims or argument strategy does not constitute necessary condition for investor's high resonance. (2) "The performance team carries forward the past and ushers in the future" narrative, "clear arguments led by the team" narrative and "mission prospect time intertextuality" narrative are three types of entrepreneurial narrative that can inspire investor's high resonance. (3) All configurations of high investors resonance include high-quality entrepreneurial teams and present state argument that pays more attention to the development of enterprises. Therefore, high-quality entrepreneurial teams play more important role in stimulating the high resonance of investors, and a reasonable entrepreneurial narrative is essentially the result of entrepreneurs’effective allocation of arguments based on the development and business practice of new ventures. The findings help deepen the research on cultural resonance in narratives from the micro argumentation structure and respond to the performativity of cultural entrepreneurship based on the important role of present state argument in entrepreneurial narratives, as well as bring beneficial practical enlightenment to guide entrepreneurs to carry out entrepreneurial narrative reasonably. First, new ventures need to develop entrepreneurial narratives based on business practices, identify their own development strengths, and look cautiously into the future of the enterprise. Second, entrepreneurial narratives need to balance economic and social values, which means that new ventures should have a good mission orientation. Third, the high quality entrepreneurial team plays an important role in the entrepreneurial narrative and inspiring resonance with investors, yet the enterprises in the case generally lack performance in terms of entrepreneurial team. Finally, entrepreneurs should reasonably configure the micro-content of the narrative. Entrepreneurs should effectively combine argumentation strategies and reasonably configure arguments based on the business practices of new ventures, and also realize the interconnection of argumentation strategies and successfully argued arguments to strengthen the logical structure of the entire entrepreneurial narrative. Certainly, there are gaps in this study, such as the fact that the micro-level arguments are essentially based on logos in Aristotelian rhetoric, as well as placing more emphasis on present state argument. Therefore, future research is encouraged to continue to explore how entrepreneurial narratives effectively combine logos, pathos and ethos to enhance narrative validity, and how entrepreneurs lay out effective temporal structures in their entrepreneurial narratives to ensure narrative coherence.

Key words: entrepreneurial narratives, argument, argument strategies, investors resonance