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

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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.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Tecnologico de Monterrey, Hermosillo, México

    Gertie M. Agraz-Boeneker

  2. Universidad de Granada, Granada, Spain

    Maria del Mar Fuentes-Fuentes

Authors
  1. Gertie M. Agraz-Boeneker
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  2. Maria del Mar Fuentes-Fuentes
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Maria del Mar Fuentes-Fuentes .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Business Administration, University of Verona, Verona, Italy

    Serena Cubico

  2. Department of Business Administration, University of Verona, Verona, Italy

    Giuseppe Favretto

  3. Department of Management and Economics, University of Beira Interior, Covilhã, Portugal

    João Leitão

  4. Friedrich Schiller University Jena, Jena, Germany

    Uwe Cantner

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Agraz-Boeneker, G.M., del Mar Fuentes-Fuentes, M. (2018). Heterogeneity and the Origin of the Founding Team: How the Concepts Relate and Affect Entrepreneurial Behavior. In: Cubico, S., Favretto, G., Leitão, J., Cantner, U. (eds) Entrepreneurship and the Industry Life Cycle. Studies on Entrepreneurship, Structural Change and Industrial Dynamics. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-89336-5_3

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