Elizabeth G. Pontikes and William P. Barnett have a working paper about "salient events" and entrepreneurial entry, "When to Be a Nonconformist Entrepreneur? Organizational Responses to Vital Events" (available here). I don't have much additional commentary to offer on this as the authors do a good job of giving the practical implications in the abstract (bold is my emphasis):
Salient successes and failures among organizations, such as spectacular venture capital investments or agonizing bankruptcies, affect consensus beliefs about the viability of particular markets. We argue that such vital events lead to over-reactions in the organizational entry process, with new firms flooding the market after salient successes and a dearth of entries after salient failures. Particularly notable are the implications of nonconformity under these conditions. An entrepreneur who bucks the consensus and enters a market after salient failures must endure considerable scrutiny, and so is likely have a strong fit to that market. Such a nonconformist will be spared from a passing fad, whereas an entrepreneur that follows trends is more likely to enter markets that are not a good fit for the organization. So we propose that in the wake of salient vital events nonconformity is a preferable approach. We find support for this idea in an analysis of software firms: Organizations that enter a software “market space” after salient bankruptcies are especially likely to remain, while those that enter a space after high-profile venture capital funding events are especially likely to leave.
Don't follow the crowd--I would imagine a comforting research finding for many entrepreneurs and startups out there facing headwinds.
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