Heterogeneity and the Origin of the Founding Team: How the Concepts Relate and Affect Entrepreneurial Behavior

Abstract

Although discovery and exploitation of entrepreneurial opportunities have often been attributed to an individual entrepreneur, scholars have increasingly recognized that entrepreneurship is a task performed by teams more than individuals and that the dynamics of entrepreneurial teams add new insights to entrepreneurship research (Klotz et al., Journal of Management 40: 1–30, 2013). It has also been suggested that the traditional way of performing the entrepreneurial process, is not the only way and other alternatives have been proposed to explain how individuals and teams perform this process. Findings of this work suggest differences among founding teams relative to their composition at the moment of creation of their ventures, and to whether they were formed before or after the entrepreneurial opportunity was discovered or created. Relationships are suggested between teams’ heterogeneity and the use of Effectuation and Causation as entrepreneurial behaviors by Founding Teams. Additionally, a Behavioral Classification of Founding Teams is proposed, based on the analysis of the behaviors reported by entrepreneurs from nine Founding Teams.