A LONGITUDINAL PROJECT OF NEW VENTURE TEAM DYNAMICS AND OUTCOMES

Our purpose is to generate scientific knowledge about how team dynamics foster innovation in new firms that may go on to create value. A the majority of all innovative new ventures are started by teams, as opposed to an individual, but little research or theory exists in new venture settings about how members interact with each other over time—team dynamics—to produce innovative technologies, products, and services. Policy makers in Europe, Sweden included, are investing heavily in knowledge creating companies to achieve economic and social objectives, so we believe a systematic study of social and psychological processes that underlie teams’ success in the entrepreneurship process is timely and important.

Unique features of our study include: (1) a team level focus on social and psychological processes (assessed from team members), to assess relations to proximal innovation outcomes (assessed from team stakeholders, i.e., customers, suppliers, and investors), and distal value creation outcomes (assessed from archival data, i.e., milestones, employment, sales and profit). (2) Combined qualitative and quantitative research methodologies to provide both theory building and theory testing for the relations of interest. (3) A time-sequential design with data collection every couple of months over two years to allow us to investigate the relations of interest for new ventures between zero and five years of age using several sorts of longitudinal data analyses.