Among participants of our projects we have some companies builded by entrepreneurial teams. I can look for their efectivness vs. companies started by lone entrepreneurs (f.e. financial outputs in 6 months or 3 years in other group). In my opinion, but I have to check that with data, entrepreneurial teams are more dynamic and more bold in drawing their business goals, also more achievement oriented. BUT in my orientation entrepreneurial teams efectivness depends also heavilly on efectivness of communication between team members and especially on openess in communicating of personal goals and expectations of company founders. We observed that in some point of company's development path some of our entrepreneurial teams started to have problems with sharing the same level of commitment of team memebrs. In my opinion this is correlated with kind of motivation of founders for company building (external/basic or internal in terms of GEM Monitor definitions). Sometimes the entrepreneurs have the same level of readiness for starting the company fast on the begining but after initial success some of them are satisfied by company's outputs and are not interested in further expansion. The others are more achievement oriented and this can undermine the team effectiveness.

Thank you for your answer. Your viewpoints/results about the dynamics in the group seem to make sense. What do you think, is it possible to find the "most suitable" persons, some kind of mixture, for a entrepreneurial team?

This is indeed a very interesting and relevant area of research and investigation within entrepreneurship. I am currently working in the area of Entrepreneurial Teams and studying their dynamics of trust, conflicts and diversity in relation to their effectiveness and efficiency. There are three recent special issues in International Small Business Journal (Cooney, 2005), Management Research News (Schjoedt & Kraus, 2009) and Entrepreneurship Theory & Practice (Schjoedt, Monsen, Pearson, Barnett, & Chrisman, 2013) on "Entrepreneurial Teams". I personally believe that entrepreneurial teams are indeed more common than they are acknowledged and as a subject of interest should be researched and taught.

I would be happy to know more and possibly explore collaborations within this domain.

It is very nice to notice, that this field of study is starting to expand; and I do think that it is because many entrepreneurial teams (ET`s) are performing better than "lone heroes". Maybe we should also remember that several of the biggest companies of the world have started as family companies: and family is also some kind of a team.

But basically my first subject of interest is: ”what happens, (or should happen), before something really starts to happen”. By that I mean the prerequisites, what is needed, before certain people establish a firm, and start to perform more officially.

Is there anything we could or should do - with the means and tools of education - to find, train and eventually pair suitable persons, for team entrepreneurship

I don't know about teaching it, but my colleague Karin Hellerstedt wrote her doctoral dissertation on the subject. Perhaps contact her? (JIBS)

Thanks for your tip! I`ll get her dissertation right away.

That's an interesting topic indeed; I did research on the topic of how team decide to exit a business, base on the Threshold Model of Entrepreneurial Exit (Gimeno et al, 1997, ASQ). We did it on technology-based university start-ups; and now we used it for teaching at PhD level. Very much appreciated and funny as the TMEE has the strong value of disentangling micro-perspective on why people join or exit an entrepreneurial team.

Here is the reference:

Criaco, G., Minola, T., Migliorini, P., & Serarols-Tarrés, C. (2013). “To have and have not”: founders’ human capital and university start-up survival. The Journal of Technology Transfer, 1-27.

Would it be possible for you to kindly share your article on [email protected]

Entrepreneurship and innovation can be taught through work integrated learning. See the article: http://www.apjce.org/files/APJCE_15_1_1_11.pdf

I am doing a Sustainable Innovation and Entrepreneurship class. The process starts with team building based on strengths skills and values. To find the templates for the Business Model for Sustainability Framework go to

https://sites.google.com/a/evoltas.eu/evoltas-sites/sustainable-generation-model

The link between entrepreneurial teams and performance is one of the most studied by the research subjects (Cooper and Daily, 1997; Ensley et al, 2000.), But even performance evaluation of an entrepreneurial team remains a major challenge (Bird, 1989; Kamm et al, 1990.). On this question, the research is mainly based on studies of the management teams. However, the latter, according to the theory of "upper-echelons" of Hambrick and Mason (1994), commonly use the performance of the company as a proxy for the performance of the management team (Rau, 2005). Thus, most studies on entrepreneurial teams they also measure the performance level of the company.

But research on entrepreneurial teams and other types of organizational teams shows that this is a too restrictive definition, not allowing a team to capture the concept of performance in its complexity.

Both in theory and practice, entrepreneurship has traditionally

tend to be embodied in a mythic figure of the solo entrepreneur, heroic (Cooney

and Bygrave, 1997; Packendorff and Lindgren, 2003), neglecting the fact that

"Entrepreneurship is socially embedded and entrepreneurial action can be performed

by one or more persons "(Holmquist, 2004). In addition, a social network crystallizes

often an entrepreneurial team (Chabaud and Condor, 2006). Ucbasaran, Westhead and

Wright (2001) argue that entrepreneurial teams are a field of research

crucial although relatively neglected. They illustrate the importance recalling nearly

50% of businesses are created by teams (Kamm et al, 1990. Watson, Ponthieu

Critelli, 1995).

look the article:The assessment of the performance of entrepreneurial teams:

a delicate issue ...

Cyrine BEN HAFAIEDH-DRIDI

Enseignant-chercheur, ESC Troyes

Laboratoire ICI, I.A.E. de Brest, Université de Bretagne Occidentale

[email protected]

Team or Shared Leadership is a field my colleges and I are actively involved.

Quantitatively speaking most new ventures are team-based. In terms of performance, there are mixed results. Generally team-based new ventures have better growth though... I believe that entrepreneurial teams should be a teaching subject (and I teach it) but not as a "must" or "should" do. Team entrepreneurship is not a panacea. I try to gather evidence for the best uses of entrepreneurial teams and, once that choice is made, for the hurdles to overcome and suggest solutions, methodologies. There are some interesting elements in Noam Wasserman's book "The Founder`s Dilemmas – Anticipating and Avoiding the Pitfalls That Can Sink a Startup" although I wouldn't be as categorical as the author in many instances. Also, I would recommend a forthcoming edited book I have worked on.

http://www.e-elgar.com/shop/research-handbook-on-entrepreneurial-teams