Entrepreneurial Team Formation Research Articles

Talking Past Each Other: Construal Level, Utilitarian Motives, and Entrepreneurial Team Formation

Entrepreneurs often struggle to add cofounders who are both interpersonally compatible and who possess complementary resources (i.e., hybrid ties). In this paper, we suggest that there are cognitive and motivational differences between lead entrepreneurs and potential cofounders that complicate the formation of hybrid ties. We propose that lead entrepreneurs prioritize resources, whereas potential cofounders prioritize interpersonal compatibility, because of differences in construal level and utilitarian motives during the team formation process. Although these differences can complicate the formation of hybrid ties, we posit that lead entrepreneurs can overcome these differences by communicating in ways that highlight their interpersonal compatibility with potential cofounders. We find support for our theory across three studies with data from (1) the Y Combinator Co-Founder Matching online platform, (2) an online experiment with entrepreneurs, and (3) a networking event at an incubator. Our findings add novel contributions to the entrepreneurial team formation, entrepreneurial networking, and social networks literatures. Funding: This work was supported by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation [2016 Dissertation Fellowship Award]. Supplemental Material: The online appendices are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/orsc.2022.16693 .

Entrepreneurial team personality-faultline strength and performance: the non-linear relationship and boundary conditions

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to explore the effect of a team’s personality faultlines on entrepreneurial performance. Additionally, this paper verifies the moderating effect of shared leadership on the connection between the two varies. The authors focus on the upper echelons theory and social identity theory as well as personality faultlines in entrepreneurial teams.Design/methodology/approachAn online survey was conducted using data collected in China. Data from 618 members from 144 new venture teams were collected to examine the authors’ hypothesis.FindingsThe authors find a U-shaped relationship between the strength of entrepreneurial teams' personality-faultline and entrepreneurial performance. Additionally, shared leadership negatively moderates this U-shaped relationship. Specifically, when the entrepreneurial team has a high level of shared leadership, both the positive and negative relationships between the strength of the personality faultlines and entrepreneurial performance are weaker.Originality/valueThe research offers important theoretical and practical implications for the formation of entrepreneurial teams.

Matching Inventors with Surrogate Entrepreneurs: A Framework Informing the Entrepreneurial Team-Formation Process

Matching Inventors with Surrogate Entrepreneurs: A Framework Informing the Entrepreneurial Team-Formation Process

The Entrepreneurial Founding Team - Unveiling the Dual Formation Strategy

The entrepreneurial founding team formation literature provides a continuum where the economics lens focuses on 'resource dependency and the social psychology lens focusing on 'interpersonal attraction' occupy the opposing ends. Subsequently, studies found that resource dependency and interpersonal attraction are not mutually exclusive. Instead, both thew collectively explains the EFT formation. This is referred to as the 'dual formation' strategy. However, the existing studies do not solve the debate on how the 'dual formation strategy' reveals itself in the decision-making process. Considering this, we employ a temporal, longitudinal perspective to investigate EFT formation processes in the context of the emerging economy of India. We collected primary data from the founders and co-founders of 13 entrepreneurial firms each year for a period of three years (2017- 2019). Our provides insights that could inform both the literature on entrepreneurial team formation and practitioners involved in the design and delivery of founder pair-up and matching platforms.

Technology transfer offices and the formation of academic spin-off entrepreneurial teams

ABSTRACT A significant proportion of academic spin-offs (ASOs) are founded by entrepreneurial teams (ETs). Yet little is known about how these ETs are formed or the role of technology transfer offices (TTOs) in this formation process. This article examines whether and how TTOs affect the formation of academic spin-off entrepreneurial teams (ASO-ETs). To this end, we study in detail the formation of seven ETs behind life-science ASOs developed in one region in Norway. Our findings show that ASO-ETs followed different paths of formation, partly mirroring the organization of the TTOs. We further identify four different roles played by TTOs, two direct and two indirect, that shape the formation of these ETs. Based on organization imprinting theory, we contribute to the team entrepreneurship literature by developing a new framework showing how TTOs imprint the formation of ETs in ASO settings.

The Model Framework of College Students’ Entrepreneurial Team Formation Based on Relevance Algorithm

Reasonable realization of the task relevance of the entrepreneurial team formation model is a research hotspot in the field of cluster computing. Based on the theoretical basis of the correlation algorithm, this article constructs a parallel computing framework for college students’ entrepreneurial formation model and realizes the application of the team formation model in the entrepreneurial model. This article replaces the traditional structure with the multi-entrepreneurial formation mode structure to avoid premature convergence and initializes the entrepreneurial formation mode with an algorithm, which solves the problem of the first-come, first-served entrepreneurial association degree algorithm of the entrepreneurial formation mode. During the simulation process, the multilevel entrepreneurial relevance algorithm based on the relevance algorithm was experimentally verified and performance tested. In the performance comparison test, the optimal solution search efficiency increased to 89.7%, the heterogeneous fault tolerance rate of resources reached 0.713, and the task set scheduling time was reduced to 0.221s. The experimental results show that the multilevel entrepreneurial relevance model based on the relevance algorithm can effectively reduce the task set scheduling time and relevance cost, and can take into account the load balance of the system, effectively promoting the diversity and dynamics of resource requirements.

Academic Teams and Commercialization in the Life Sciences.

We review the literature on entrepreneurial team formation with a focus on data to study academic teams and summarize our empirical work on the life sciences industry. We consider how academics form teams to start new companies and the implications of various configurations on firm behavior with regards to patenting, survival and firm growth. We present several empirical challenges facing research on academic teams and conclude with suggestions for future research.

Forming entrepreneurial teams: Mixing business and friendship

Founding teams can form utilizing either a resource seeking strategy (instrumental focus on complementary skills) or an interpersonal attraction strategy (close relationships with similar others in an immediate network). Yet, utilizing both (dual) formation strategies may be more beneficial. Our paper provides novel theory and evidence to shed light on why and how a dual formation strategy, although challenging and difficult to execute, may be critical for early performance. We theorize that teams that employ dual formation strategies from the onset develop stronger transactive memory systems, owing to close relationships that facilitate smooth coordination among founders who specialize in complementary tasks. Stronger transactive memory systems thus mediate the relationship between initial formation strategy and early entrepreneurial success. Findings from two field observational studies and a field intervention study are consistent with our theory: teams formed based on a dual strategy raised greater seed funding on Kickstarter – a leading crowdfunding platform (Study 1), were more successful in a prestigious entrepreneurial competition (Study 2), and gained more profits from selling their initial products (Study 3). Our research advances knowledge on entrepreneurial team formation and offers practical recommendations to facilitate this process at such nascent, but critical stages.

Understanding the Life Cycles of Entrepreneurial Teams and Their Ventures: An Agenda for Future Research

While research on entrepreneurial teams has flourished over the past two decades, it has mainly taken a static perspective, neglecting the developments both teams and their ventures undergo over time. To address this issue, we develop a “double life cycle framework” covering entrepreneurial teams’ formation, collaboration, and dissolution phases as well as potential nonlinear sequences of these phases. While this team life cycle is embedded in the venture life cycle, both life cycles can progress independently. We offer research suggestions on entrepreneurial team formation, collaboration, and dissolution in each venture phase, highlighting the role of entrepreneurial teams in advancing their ventures.

Entrepreneurial team formation and evolution in technology ventures: Looking beyond the top management team

ABSTRACT Drawing on a stage-based and knowledge-based view, this study investigates the process of team evolution in technology ventures, paying attention to top managers and other team members. In-depth analysis of six cases shows that team evolution is linked to the changing knowledge needs technology ventures face when proceeding through different development stages. In each stage, they add (1) complementary or (2) more of the same knowledge to their existing knowledge base by hiring top managers as well as non-top management employees, and redirect team members whose knowledge is no longer crucial. In particular, the study highlights the crucial role of non-top management employees for technology ventures’ development.

Entrepreneurial Team Formation

Entrepreneurial team formation—the process through which founders establish a team to start a new venture—has important implications for team performance and entrepreneurial success. Although resea...

Partnering with Whom and How? Institutional Transition and Entrepreneurial Team Formation in China

Extant literature suggests that entrepreneurs tend to form a team with their existing committed ties. However, contextual influence on entrepreneurial team formation remains underexplored. We offer...

The role of individual financial contributions in the formation of entrepreneurial teams

This paper studies how entrepreneurs, limited in how much they are able to contribute to a joint business, organize in partnerships, and how this process is impacted by the frictions common for team production. It demonstrates that moral hazard and reliance on simple equity sharing contracts create incentives for the entrepreneurs making large contributions to team up together, even if the production technology exhibits decreasing returns to scale to total investment. The paper formalizes this novel mechanism in a matching model and illustrates that the model’s predictions regarding co-owners’ financial contributions and ownership shares are consistent with the empirical evidence from the Kauffman Firm Survey data.

Unraveling Entrepreneurial Team Formation: A Qualitative Study Among Funded Ventures

Arguably, entrepreneurial team formation constitutes an arduous but fundamental task toward venture establishment. Given the relatively scant attention that has been paid to this research topic, th...

Homophily in Entrepreneurial Team Formation

We study the role of homophily in group formation. Using a unique dataset of MBA students, we observe homophily in ethnicity and gender increases the probability of forming teams by 25%. Homophily in education and past working experience increases the probability of forming teams by 17% and 11 % respectively. Homophily in education and working experience is stronger among males than females. Further, we examine the causal impact of homophily on team performance. Homophily in ethnicity increases team performance by lifting teams in bottom quantiles to median performance quantiles, but it does not increase the chance of being top performers. Our findings have implications for understanding the lack of diversity in entrepreneurship and venture capital industry.

Entrepreneurial Team Formation Dynamics: Mind the Sector

The purpose of this paper is to extend existing research on entrepreneurial team formation under a competence-based perspective by empirically testing the influence of the sectoral context on that dynamics. We use inductive, theory-building design to understand how different sectoral characteristics moderate the influence of entrepreneurial opportunity recognition on subsequent entrepreneurial team formation. A sample of 195 founders who teamed up in the nascent phase of Interned-based and Cleantech sectors is analysed. The results suggest a twofold moderating effect of the sectoral context. First, a technologically more challenging sector (i.e. Cleantech) demands technically more skilled entrepreneurs, but at the same time, it requires still fairly commercially experienced and economically competent individuals. Furthermore, the business context also appears to exert an important influence on team formation dynamics: data reveals that individuals are more prone to team up with co-founders possessing complementary know-how when they are starting a new business venture in Cleantech rather than in the Internet-based sector. Overall, these results stress how the business context cannot be ignored when analysing entrepreneurial team formation dynamics by offering interesting insights on the matter to prospective entrepreneurs and interested policymakers.

The Start of Team Start-Ups: Collective Dynamics of Initiation and Formation of Entrepreneurial Teams

This study aims to describe and understand the start of team start-ups through answering why and how team entrepreneurship (TE) is initiated, how teams form, and what kinds of criteria are used in team building. While the above topics have been examined by many scholars, we aim to elaborate new insights into understanding the very first steps of initiating a new venture by an entrepreneurs’ collective. We employ a qualitative multiple-case study approach and analyze individual and group interview data from four high-technology team start-ups through inductive thematic analysis. We find that TE starts with an impetus established by a collective desire, collective value orientation, collective demand, and collective encouragement to TE. The impetus concretizes in coming together of team members where one or some need to take initiative to form the team, and search for members with specific criteria for membership that include not only technical but social-psychological dimensions. The study suggests that emergence of entrepreneurial opportunities at the collective-level might be distinctive from the individual-level. It contributes to researchers, prospective entrepreneurs, investors, policy-makers, and educators’ understanding of TE as a versatile and dynamic phenomenon where individual and group levels of analysis and technical and social-psychological aspects intertwine.

When members of entrepreneurial teams differ: linking diversity in individual-level entrepreneurial orientation to team performance

While prior research has focused on differences in entrepreneurial orientation between organizations, we direct attention to differences in entrepreneurial orientation within organizations. We propose that individual members in entrepreneurial teams may differ in their dispositions to act in entrepreneurial ways, that is, in their individual entrepreneurial orientation (iEO) and that these differences have meaningful implications for team performance. Drawing upon research in team diversity and entrepreneurial orientation, we argue that the three iEO diversity dimensions—proactiveness, risk taking, and innovativeness diversity—affect team outcomes in different ways, although they belong to the same diversity type and even belong to a common superordinate construct. Empirical data gathered in 104 dyadic entrepreneurial teams supports our theory: Diversity in proactiveness within a team impairs team performance. Risk-taking diversity also harms team performance by heightening relationship conflict. However, innovativeness diversity facilitates team performance. The present study contributes to two streams of research, namely, entrepreneurial team research and research on entrepreneurial orientation and is of practical significance to entrepreneurial team formation and performance.

The role of friendship in the formation and development of entrepreneurial teams and ventures

Purpose– The purpose of this paper is to examine the potential influence of friendship on entrepreneurial teams (ETs) and on venture formation and development. The theoretical framework is built on the literature around friendship ties, the interaction of friendship ties and professional ties, and ETs.Design/methodology/approach– Taking an interpretative methodological approach, the authors carried out qualitative interviews with ten business founders in Paris, France.Findings– The authors identified different four profiles or types of ETs according to how friendship ties interact with professional ties among team members, which the authors designate as “fusion” and “separation”, and describe the orientation of this interaction, which the authors label as “affective” or “strategic”. These profiles affect the emergence of the idea and the choice of members in the formation of teams. They also shape the functioning of teams in terms of decision-making processes, recruitment and investment.Research limitations/implications– The findings underline the difficulties of studying friendship in ETs empirically and recommend longitudinal approaches for further research.Practical implications– Findings offer insights in to why and how ETs based on friendship ties approach the pre-launch, launch and development phases of businesses as well as in to the interactions between professional and friendship ties, which is helpful to both practitioners and academics. The authors also discuss the consequences and implications of the different team types in terms of their risks and strategies for mitigating these risks.Originality/value– This is one of the first empirical studies to examine how friendship and professional ties may combine and evolve in ETs, and their influence on the entrepreneurial process as it relates to venture formation and development.

The importance of surrogate entrepreneurship for incubated Swedish technology ventures

Universities and incubators that are more experienced in venture creation have been found to appoint surrogate entrepreneurs as one way to improve entrepreneurial team formation. However, it is not known how such intervention into the core of a venture affects performance. This article investigates the impact of surrogate entrepreneurs on technology ventures stemming from leading Swedish university incubators. From a total of 170 ventures incorporated 1995–2005, belonging to 16 incubators, 59 ventures (35%) have received incubator help to recruit a surrogate entrepreneur. Swedish surrogate ventures perform significantly better in terms of growth and revenue compared to non-surrogates. Significantly higher performance of surrogates is also found in the subgroup academic technology ventures as well as the largest technology subgroup of information and communication technology (ICT) ventures. These findings in combination with a case study of the most productive incubation environment are used to propose future research and policy regarding university incubators intervening into entrepreneurial team formation in different ways.