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Entrepreneurial teams
Edited by Leon Schjoedt and Sascha Kraus
Introduction
Entrepreneurial teams (ET) start a significant number of new ventures; or a team is created within the early years of start-up ([1] Aldrich et al. , 2002; [47] Kamm et al. , 1990; [59] Ruef et al. , 2003; [69] Watson et al. , 1995). Existing research shows a strong association between higher corporate success and team-created ventures ([8] Birley and Stockley, 2000; [17] Cooper and Bruno, 1977; [22] Eisenhardt and Schoonhoven, 1990). One reason for this superior performance is that an entrepreneurial team has - relative to an individual - more human and social capital at its disposal in dealing with the uncertainties and vicissitudes associated with new venture creation in today's environment ([13] Chowdhury, 2005; [50] Lechler and Gemünden, 2003; [71] West, 2007). Additionally, also in established firms, the top management team (TMT) has shown to have greater influence on organizational performance than an individual executive ([6] Barrick et al. , 2007; [35] Hambrick, 2007; [37] Hambrick and Mason, 1984; [54] O'Reilly et al. , 1993). This situation is also evident from the entrepreneurship literature which shows that the ET influences new venture performance ([4] Amason et al. , 2006; [24] Ensley and Pearce, 2001; [28] Foo et al. , 2006; [29] Francis and Sandberg, 2000; [52] Mellewigt and Späth, 2002; [68] Vyakarnam et al. , 1999). Furthermore, venture capital firms rarely consider venture proposals from individual entrepreneurs, but favor proposals from ET because team-based ventures, overall, have a better performance record ([7] Baum and Silverman, 2004; [47] Kamm et al. , 1990; [66] Timmons and Spinelli, 1999). Therefore, the ET appears to play a critical role to new venture success ([14] Clarkin and Rosa, 2005; [18] Cooper and Daily, 1997).
Despite the importance of the ET, most of the extant entrepreneurship literature has focused on the individual entrepreneur ([69] Watson et al. , 1995), with ET neglected in the literature ([28] Foo et al. , 2006). One reason for this neglect might be that the concept of ET has not been adequately defined ([8] Birley and Stockley, 2000). Thus, there is a need to define the ET and to examine how factors influence ET performance and, in turn, new venture performance....