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The purpose of this paper is to answer the following question: how should start‐ups be staffed and how should they manage issues of team diversity?

The paper approaches diverse entrepreneurial teams in terms of three meaningful types, each with different assumptions, thus suggesting that their effects are complex.

The article concludes that entrepreneurs need to consider three key dimensions of diversity and form teams that are: moderate in diversity of opinions; high in diversity of expertise; and low in diversity of power.

The paper offers a set of practical recommendations to entrepreneurs, outlining how they can compose their teams and manage different dimensions of diversity; and to venture capitalists, suggesting how to assess team diversity as a critical factor in entrepreneurial teams.

This paper aims to focus on the role of team and entrepreneurial experience for firm performance of serial entrepreneurs in the multi‐media industry.

The research assumes that serial entrepreneurs have certain advantages over novice entrepreneurs, such as the development of effective start‐up teams and entrepreneurial experience effects. Disadvantages, however, are also mentioned in the literature, and these are assumed to out‐balance the advantages, leading to mixed research findings. The hypotheses are tested on a sample of 52 European multimedia companies.

The results show a positive impact of relevant entrepreneurial experience and evidence both team advantages as well as disadvantages. Team diversity had a positive impact on performance while the extent of repeated partnerships (or relative team stability) had a negative impact on performance. Moreover, entrepreneurial experience helps to build better diverse teams but has no impact on repeated partnerships.

The degree of experience of serial entrepreneurs in the same industry matters, and suggests that more experience is better. The findings challenge a general assumption about serial entrepreneurs: that the building of superior teams creates performance differences. Team diversity drives performance and the study could also show that habitual entrepreneurs are better in building diverse teams (through a positive moderation of team diversity by entrepreneurial experience). However, relying heavily on previous partners is counter‐productive. Limitations of this study are due to self‐reported data, small sample size and survivor bias.

Entrepreneurs need to focus on opportunities and resource needs linked to these opportunities, and use their experience to build stronger teams but to resist the temptation of replicating perceived past success formula by over‐relying on previous partners. The latter is also important for stakeholders in the entrepreneurial venture.

This paper tests various assumptions and propositions about serial entrepreneurship that are rarely based on sound evidence. The role of entrepreneurial experience to build better diverse teams and the role of repeated partnerships constitute an original contribution to habitual entrepreneurship research.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the influence of team member diversity and internal social capital on project performance within the context of business plan competitions (BPCs).

The paper uses survey data on 95 nascent entrepreneurial teams enrolled in an open‐to‐the‐public BPCs. It assumes that higher levels of functional diversity as well as higher levels of internal social capital enhance the performance of nascent entrepreneurial teams in the crafting of their business plans (BPs).

Under this particular context, where the needs for information processing and decision‐making requirements are so high, teams having higher levels of functional diversity attained better performance. Inversely, teams with higher levels of internal social capital did not show a significant advantage in the development of the BP.

Limitations are associated with the exclusion of external social capital measures and not considering demographic faultlines, which might have some impact on the results. Besides, this paper has the limitation of basing its analysis upon teams within a BP contest. Theoretical implications stress that under contexts maximizing the difference between potential upside gains and downside losses, team diversity is expected to play a larger role for BP effectiveness and success than team members' internal social capital.

Recognizing team prevalence and the impact of social dynamics amongst team members within entrepreneurial settings.

The paper contributes with the impact of social dynamic processes on nascent entrepreneurial teams.

The purpose of this paper is to identify the characteristics of an entrepreneurial team that influence the likelihood a new venture will successfully launch.

This paper uses a sample of prospective start‐up banks that applied for a charter application in Florida between 1996 and 2005. Logistic regression was used to test the hypotheses.

Analysis suggests that entrepreneurial teams where: the CEO is strongly embedded into the team; no team member holds 10 per cent or more of the firm's total equity; team members have less rather than more industry experience; and more team members have prior founding experience, all point to a successful new venture launch.

This study focuses on start‐up success in a single industry and thus may not be generalizable to other research contexts.

Results suggest that bank regulators in charge approving new bank charters would be well advised to revisit their guidelines and recommendations for prospective new bank founders.

Given the unique regulatory requirements of the US banking industry, the successful as well as failed efforts to launch a new bank can be identified and the “success bias” present in many entrepreneurship studies can be averted.

Existing research on businesses that are both owned and managed by their workers suggests that these firms have one of two kinds of effects for their participants. They either learn to be better citizens of democratic society through daily democratic practice, or they become better capitalists through the daily practice of business ownership. Drawing on data collected through in-depth interviews and participant observation, I argue that cooperative participants learn both things. Furthermore, participants in cooperatives develop a spirit of Cooperative Entrepreneurialism that allows them to engage in free enterprise, while also adhering to the cooperative values of equality and democracy.

We advance entrepreneurship research by developing a theoretical model of how founding teams form. Our neo-Carnegie model situates nascent founders in particular network-structural milieus, engaging in aspiration-driven search for and evaluation of prospective co-founders. The formation of co-founding ties between nascent founders can be divided into four theoretical steps, which we label activation, evaluation, approach, and reciprocation. Successful founding team formation is a consequence of mutually favorable evaluations by nascent founders in a multi-sided matching process. Nascent founders with higher and less flexible aspirations are more likely to undertake distant search for co-founders by seeking referrals, forming ties with strangers, and forming new ties to social foci where they might meet potential co-founders. Churn in newly formed founding teams emerges as a consequence of shifting dominant coalition dynamics in the founding team caused by organic venture evolution and intentional changes in strategic direction. Our theoretical model provides new insights on the formation pathways of founding teams, their initial task and relational resource endowments, and initial team dynamics.

The purpose of this research is to discuss the nature of co‐entrepreneurs (i.e. those companies that have a mixture of male and female founding members) within the ICT sector in Ireland. For the purposes of this paper, the term “co‐entrepreneurship” is used to describe male and female business partnerships. The characteristics of co‐entrepreneurs; their educational, skills and family backgrounds; their current role in the company, and the nature of the team founder structure are examined. A discussion on why the team approach was selected is also included. Other issues explored in the paper include the shareholding percentage of the co‐entrepreneurs and the extent to which the business has a lead entrepreneur.

In 2003 the authors compiled a database of 1,026 indigenous ICT companies, which were electronically surveyed for information regarding software production, ownership of company and gender of founding members. A total of 24 per cent (81) of the responding companies from this survey indicated that there was a mixture of male and female founding members. These companies were subsequently sent another survey designed to gather information on company background, profiles of co‐entrepreneurs, co‐entrepreneurs' motivational factors and co‐entrepreneurs' roles. A total of 34 (43 per cent) of the companies responded, of which 23 were suitable for the research.

The findings of the study indicate that the family business or spouse/partner structure represents a major component of mixed gender companies in the ICT sector in Ireland, and that such companies tend to be small, with well‐educated and experienced founders.

A particularly interesting contribution of this paper is the provision of insights into the co‐entrepreneurial partnership through identifying the key differences between the male and female co‐founders. A key conclusion of the study is that there would appear to be a recognition among co‐entrepreneurs that complementary skills and knowledge are critically important in the exploitation of new business opportunities, especially in the IT industry.

This paper attempts to synthesise the theoretical research on entrepreneurship and social capital undertaken in previous studies, and presents a multi‐dimensional view of entrepreneurship. In examining overviews of past single perspective entrepreneurship research, this study shows that the primary role of entrepreneurs in organisation emergence is to acquire knowledge and create social capital properly. This process is necessarily accompanied by creation of knowledge communities to establish the domain consensus of new organisations among various stakeholders paying particular attention to the fragility and dysfunctional side of entrepreneurship and social capital. The paper concludes with a hypothesis and suggestions towards a future research agenda. It is hoped that, as a result of this theoretical development, this paper will help to focus greater attention on the concept of entrepreneurship in studies of management development.

The concept of company culture is now playing an ever‐increasing role in the continuing endeavour to work towards ever better company management, particularly in the industrial field. This monograph reviews the history and development of both national and company cultures, and then goes on to demonstrate the significance of a culture to proper company management. Well‐managed companies will have both a “quality culture” and a “safety culture” as well as a cultural history. However, it has to be recognised that the company culture is subject to change, and effecting this can be very difficult. Of the many national cultures, that of Japan is considered to be the most effective, as is demonstrated by the present dominance of Japan on the industrial scene. Many industrialised nations now seek to emulate the Japanese style of management, but it is not possible to copy or acquire Japan′s cultural heritage. The text is illustrated by a large number of practical examples from real life, illustrating the way in which the company culture works and can be used by management to improve company performance.