Beyond the Startup Stage: The Founding Team's Human Capital, New Venture's Stage of Life, Founder-CEO Duality, and Breakthrough Innovation

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Tzabbar, Daniel; Margolis, Jaclyn
• 署名单位: Drexel University; Pepperdine University
• 刊物名称: ORGANIZATION SCIENCE
• ISSN/ISSBN: 1047-7039
• DOI: 10.1287/orsc.2017.1152
• 发表日期: 2017
• 页码: 857-872
• 关键词: founding team; Human capital theory; decision-making structure; life cycle of new ventures; breakthrough innovation; technological entrepreneurship

摘要

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.