Entrepreneurial Characteristics

Personal Entrepreneurial Characteristics Workshop 3 “ memihkar lemeizam” 24 June 2008 Uzi de Haan co-developed with Mia Erez 1 Workshop BEIC-TT-2008 2 Workshop BEIC-TT-2008 3 Workshop BEIC-TT-2008 4 Workshop BEIC-TT-2008 Entrepreneurial Characteristics Fundamental Research Questions (Baron, 2002) • How and why do some people, but not others, recognize opportunities • How and why do some people, but not others, decide to become (a) an entrepreneur, (b) start new ventures, and (c) exploit opportunities • How and why do some people, but not others, organize new ventures that grow rapidly and are successful or become life-style entrepreneurs or intrapreneurs 5 Workshop BEIC-TT-2008 Entrepreneurial Characteristics • Are you born with them or can they be learned? • Can you assess/measure them and use this for recruitment and decision to invest • Can teams complement the entrepreneurial traits and abilities needed • To which degree are entrepreneurship characteristics contextual. E.g. in certain environments, organizational cultures individuals are entrepreneurial and in others not • Are there thresholds values for essential entrepreneurial characteristics above which, context determines entrepreneurial action. E.g. Chinese and Indians in Silicon Valley, Russian immigrants in Israel, laid off employees 6 Workshop BEIC-TT-2008 Essential conditions for success and attracting investment High Growth Market $100M+ Exit 7 Unique Technology/ Products Workshop BEIC-TT-2008 The Founder The Team To team or go to on your own Advantages of teaming: • Complementary skills • Risk reduction • Emotional support • Can be part-time for some team members e.g. faculty members • Investors like teams • Success rates of founders teams of start-up companies •Disadvantages of teaming • Dilution of ownership • Conflicts in team • Inequalities in responsibilities • Changes in roles and composition of team difficult to manage 8 Workshop BEIC-TT-2008 Entrepreneurial Roles and Involvement of University Researchers in Technology Transfer 10 CEO of Spin-Off (part-time) member of founder’s team consultant of the spin-off or licensee Level of Involvement consultant during the Technology Transfer Process Support of TT Office in communication with licensees 1 0 Invention disclosure to TT Office/ ISKIT No involvement, only publications Roles 9 Workshop BEIC-TT-2008 Research on the characteristics of entrepreneurs and innovators • Despite extensive research and research hypotheses little conclusive evidence of relations between personality and other characteristics and intention to be entrepreneur or entrepreneurial performance. • Variables with an impact are: - Need for achievement - Need for autonomy - Personal Initiative - Self confidence - Open to experiments, innovativeness - Tenacity and endurance - Incremental Innovator - Breakthrough innovator - Passion - Creativity - Risk-taking - Conformity - Entrepreneurial Self-Efficacy - Employment status, education, married, experience, age, social ties 10 Workshop BEIC-TT-2008 Research on the characteristics of entrepreneurs and innovators as predictor for entrepreneurial intention and performance • - Need for achievement - Need for autonomy - Personal Initiative - Self confidence - Open to experiments, innovativeness - Tenacity and endurance - Incremental Innovator - Breakthrough innovator - Passion - Risk-taking - Conformity - Entrepreneurial Self-Efficacy - Employment status, education, married, experience, age, social ties - Entrepreneurial Experience Workshop BEIC-TT-2008 11 Entrepreneurial Self-efficacy • Motivational construct of self-efficacy and situational selfefficacy is developed by Bandura, 1986 • Self-efficacy is the belief in one’s ability to muster and implement the necessary personal resources, skills and competencies to attain a certain level of achievement on a given task (Bandura, 1997) • Self-efficacy can be seen as task-specific self-confidence and has been shown to be a robust predictor of individual task performance • Entrepreneurial self-efficacy concerns entrepreneurship related tasks and will influence entrepreneurial intentions • Self-efficacy is changeable amongst others by learning 12 Workshop BEIC-TT-2008 Kirton Adaption/Innovation Inventory Dr. Michael Kirton’s Outgrowth of British government study Measures STYLE of creativity, NOT amount Facet of who you are as a person First published in 1976 by Dr. Kirton 13 Workshop BEIC-TT-2008 Your Creativity Style • An inborn Orientation, it’s not a choice; you cannot change it. • Part of who you happen to be. • Observable very early in life. • Stable over time. • Independent of age, education, birth order, gender, culture. 14 Workshop BEIC-TT-2008 Creativity Style Continuum Perfects the system (incremental) 96 # Changes the system (radical) 32 KAI Continuum 15 Workshop BEIC-TT-2008 160 “My first impulse on taking any apparatus into my hand…, is to seek a way of improving it.” “I have never worked on anything that didn’t already have a working model.” -Thomas Edison With 1093 patents to his credit, HOW was Thomas Edison creative? 16 Workshop BEIC-TT-2008 “Imagination is more Important than knowledge.” “If we knew what we were doing it wouldn’t be called research would it?” -Albert Einstein 17 HOW was Albert Einstein Creative? Workshop BEIC-TT-2008 Differences in Style 96 Edison Einstein 32 Continuum 18 Workshop BEIC-TT-2008 160 Research on the characteristics of entrepreneurs and innovators as predictor for entrepreneurial intention and performance • - Need for achievement - Need for autonomy - Personal Initiative - Self confidence - Open to experiments, innovativeness - Tenacity and endurance - Incremental Innovator - Breakthrough innovator - Passion - Risk-taking - Conformity - Entrepreneurial Self-Efficacy - Employment status, education, married, experience, age, social ties Workshop BEIC-TT-2008 19 Exercise with short questionnaire Please complete and calculate average scores on variables • Entrepreneurial Experience Q 1-2 Score between 0-2 • Entrepreneurial Self-efficacy Q3- 10 Score between 1-5 • Personal Initiative Q11-13 Score between 1-7 • Incremental innovation Q14-17 Score between 1-7 • Entrepreneurial intention Q18 Score 1-5 • Radical Innovation Q19-21 Score 1-7 • Risk-taking Q22-23 Score 1-7 Discuss results 20 Workshop BEIC-TT-2008