Friday Leadership Research Forum, 2011-2012
“Leadership Research In and Across Sectors”

During the 2011-2012 academic year CIL will host a monthly Friday Leadership Research Forum where participants and presenters will discuss and debate research conducted by University faculty, students and community members on leadership issues that span boundaries in and across sectors.

Please join us!

Fridays from 11:30-1:00
Room 123Science Teaching and Student Services Building
University of Minnesota East Bank

A light lunch and drinks are provided
Participation is free but registration is requested. See below.

Friday, February 24, 2012:
Register at: http://fridayforum5.eventbrite.com/

Designing Entrepreneurial Teams:
Evidence from University-Based Startups

Presenter: Associate Professor Dan Forbes, Carlson school of Management

Abstract (co-authored with Mary E. Zellmer-Bruhn and Harry J. Sapienza from the Carlson School of Management and Patricia S. Borchert from U. of Minnesota - Duluth, Labovitz School of Business & Economics):

Integrative leadership often calls for small groups of people from different professional backgrounds to come together and work together towards a common goal. Entrepreneurial teams represent one setting where this need exists. The need for cross-disciplinary, cross-sector collaboration is particularly acute for entrepreneurial teams that seek to commercialize university-based inventions. In recent years, management researchers have begun to study entrepreneurial teams. That research has focused on the extent to which teams’ structure and composition affect their performance. However, we still know little about how entrepreneurial teams form in the first place. This is unfortunate, because team formation encompasses critical choices that can exert long-term, path-dependent effects on the teams and the efforts they lead. In this study, we focused on the earliest steps taken toward team formation during the pre-startup stage and asked, “How do nascent founders design entrepreneurial teams?” To investigate this question, we conducted an inductive, five-year longitudinal study based on in-depth interviews with nine university-based inventors exploring the development of startup firms. Focusing on academic inventors allowed us to identify inventions around which entrepreneurial teams might form before those teams had actually taken shape. Spotlighting the principles nascent founders invoke as they consider creating teams, we identified three alternative cognitive models that capture key variations in how nascent founders think about their early-stage teams. We then developed propositions about how each model influences a formation process and a set of compositional and structural features. These models, their features, and the consequences they imply provide insight into how startup teams actually form and how new organizations emerge. More generally, they illustrate several different ways people approach collective tasks that require the successful integration of knowledge and skills from different domains.

This research has been supported by the National Science Foundation, Program on Innovation & Organizational Change, Grant # SES-0322-512. The presenter & corresponding author for the February Research Forum will be Daniel Forbes; he can be reached at forbe010@umn.edu.

Forum Organizers and Hosts:
Jodi Sandfort, Humphrey School of Public Affairs
Paul M. Vaaler, Carlson School of Management

Questions? E-mail us at CIL@umn.edu