Journal article
Beyond the Startup Stage: The Founding Team’s Human Capital, New Venture’s Stage of Life, Founder–CEO Duality, and Breakthrough Innovation
Organization science (Providence, R.I.), v 28(5), pp 857-872
Oct 2017
Featured in Collection : UN Sustainable Development Goals @ Drexel
Abstract
Using a unique longitudinal study of U.S. biotechnology ventures, we advance extant research by showing that a founding team’s educational heterogeneity and prior founding experience have a positive and significant effect on the likelihood of a firm’s creating breakthrough innovation. However, we demonstrate that these relationships depend on the firm’s stage of life and decision-making structure as reflected in its founder–CEO duality. Specifically, we show that the positive effect of a founding team’s human capital is stronger in the growth stage than the early stages of a startup. While founder–CEO duality increases the positive effect of the founding team’s human capital in the startup stage, during the growth stage, such a structure reduces the impact of the founding team’s human capital. Therefore, to fully appreciate the effect of human capital on a venture’s success in breakthrough innovation, we must consider both the firm’s stage of life and its decision-making structure. As such, our theory provides a meeting ground for economists and organizational theorists on issues associated with human capital, founder’s power, the life cycle of new ventures, and technological entrepreneurship. The online appendix is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/orsc.2017.1152 .
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Details
- Title
- Beyond the Startup Stage: The Founding Team’s Human Capital, New Venture’s Stage of Life, Founder–CEO Duality, and Breakthrough Innovation
- Creators
- Daniel Tzabbar - Drexel UniversityJaclyn Margolis - Graziadio School of Business and Management, Pepperdine University, Los Angeles, California 90045
- Publication Details
- Organization science (Providence, R.I.), v 28(5), pp 857-872
- Resource Type
- Journal article
- Language
- English
- Academic Unit
- Management
- Web of Science ID
- WOS:000413239100005
- Scopus ID
- 2-s2.0-85031756445
- Other Identifier
- 991019168517404721
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- Domestic collaboration
- Web of Science research areas
- Management