Entrepreneurial Team Development in Academic Spinouts: An Examination of Team Heterogeneity
研究了学术衍生企业中创业团队在衍生过程中的动态演变，发现团队构成和异质性随时间变化，并引入“特权见证者”这一新角色。
This article examines the dynamics of entrepreneurial teams as they evolve through the different stages of a spin–out process. Using a unique, hand–collected set of data covering all team members in 10 cases, an in–depth analysis of the heterogeneity of team members’ experience and perception of the strategic orientation needed to attain different milestones in the spin–out process was performed. Our findings suggest that teams evolve over time and change in composition, and therefore, they cannot be studied as immutable entities. At the start of the venture formation, we introduced a new team role, the privileged witness, potentially specific for spinouts. Analysis of the teams indicates that the team's heterogeneity changes as it evolves through the different stages of the spin–out process. In particular, we found that new team members brought in different kinds of experience; however, they did not introduce a different view on doing business from the initial team members.