Footnote:
Nach Informationen von SSRN wurde die ursprüngliche Fassung des Dokuments August 27, 2022 erstellt
Description:
Holders of a STEM doctoral degree are increasingly pursuing non-academic careers for a variety of reasons. There has been special interest in one such path, founding new ventures, because of its potentially disproportionate impact on societal and economic outcomes. We explore the conditions under which “research-oriented” founders (operationalized as those who have published in the peer-reviewed scientific literature) outperform otherwise observationally similar non-research-oriented founders in venture performance. Our contingency-based inquiry helps reduce tension in the literature which has found seemingly conflicting results on performance advantages to such academic founders. We also extend the human capital construct to the founding team and investor level, as such participants may assist in deficiencies in knowledge and expertise at the individual level. Our data consists of a matched sample of several thousand ventures across a wide span of industrial fields. Our results suggest that research-oriented founders’ ventures outperform when they start ventures in their field of expertise, especially so when they are academically accomplished. Furthermore, for research-oriented founders starting ventures outside of their domain of expertise, recruiting co-founders with complementary functional backgrounds can compensate, though the same statement cannot be said about investors with complementary skills. We end by discussing policy implications