Hi

try theses articles :

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Johan_Wiklund/publication/229781501_Knowledge-Based_Resources_Entrepreneurial_Orientation_and_the_Performance_of_Small_and_Medium_Sized_Business/links/0912f5111cd6de6a0c000000.pdf

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/jsc.821/abstract

https://addi.ehu.es/bitstream/10810/7843/1/CdG_1115.pdf 

Article Knowledge-Based Resources, Entrepreneurial Orientation, and ...

Indeed their internal resources are limited. Some SME have successfully leveraged their supplier network as a VRIN resource to complement their limited internal resources. You can look for instance at

Song, L.Z., Song, M., Benedetto, C.A.D., 2011. Resources, supplier investment, product launch advantages, and first product performance. Journal of Operations Management 29, 86–104.

The suppliers that support the startup firm help her establish a competitive advantage position: supplier contribution can be extremely high as the first product launch initiates a virtuous circle of enhanced reputation, attractiveness for new hires, and new funding.

The term "Extended Resource Based View" has sometimes been used to include the supply chain partners in the RBT.

Mathews, J.A., 2003. Competitive dynamics and economic learning: an extended resource‐based view. ICC 12, 115–145.

Another term you may encounter is "Extended Enterprise" defined as as a system composed of a client and its suppliers who strongly collaborate in order to maximize the benefits of each partner.

Childe, S.J., 1998. The extended concept of co-operation. Production Planning & Control 9, 320–327.

In a sense, key suppliers are an intangible asset of the firm: Philippart, M., & Vieira, D. R. (2014). Measuring and Managing Projects in Extended Enterprise: A value creation focus based on intangible assets. The Journal of Modern Project Management, 1(3).

Let me know if you want to explore further the topic of suppliers as sources of competitive advantages.

MHP

Hi

I'm not suggest you to base your study about entrepreneurship on RBV, because it is limited, you can find more recent theories like: dynamic capacities based view, and the latest theory about Competence based view which was elaborated by Hamel and prahalad (you can find it on google scholar, it is untitled "future conquest"

It is the latest theory appeared that's consolidate the competitive advantage, best than RBV

Good luck 

Quite applicable. And your concern for O being applicable or not is also quite genuine. In case of an entrepreneurial startup the most important is dimension is  'I' which is imitability (of innovative idea). By the time idea gets imitated one must generate enough value and  resources and invest them meaningfully to evolve a sustainable organization structure. This organization should be deployed to meaningfully extend the innovative idea (continuously innovate  and make imitating difficult or challenging or at least not cost effective for competitors).  

Sven, the answer is yes, but ... Management and entreprenership research has a long history of using resource-based theory to explain differences in a variety of organizational outcomes as well as other outcomes like new venture formation and survival. To do so using RBT, however, scholars tend to focus attention on the heterogeneity of individual resource stocks, identifying important resource characteristics that explain differences in firm performance. Despite intuitive appeal, this reasoning has produced equivocal results (see Newbert, 2007 for a really good, but dated review of empirical results using RBT), leading many to criticize resource-based theory as overly focused on the characteristics of resources and essentially naive about how they are used. More recently, while most scholars accept the premise that owning or having access to valuable and rare resources is necessary for firms' "competitive advantage" in strategy or new venture "survival" in entrepreneurship research, most agree that ownership or control alone is not a sufficient condition. Instead, resources must be effectively managed and synchronized to realize a competitive advantage (see Hansen, Perry, and Reese, 2004; Kor and Mahoney, 2005; Mahoney, 1995). For this reason, I encourage you to consider the actions founders and firms take in an entrepreneurial context rather than simply relying on classic VRIO arguments. Best of luck!