Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Birds of A Feather Struggle Togethe
Birds of A Feather Struggle Togethe
EDITOR'S NOTE: The Babson College Entrepreneurs often follow one of three new team
Entrepreneurship Research Conference (BCERC) formation strategies: interpersonal attraction, resource
taps leading-edge research conducted by an elite seeking, or a combination of both. First, the
group of doctoral students from top universities around interpersonal attraction strategy indicates that
the world. A total of 25 students have participated in entrepreneurs tend to duplicate their own qualities by
the 2022 BCERC Doctoral Consortium, and have hiring others like them. This protects the entrepreneur’s
written essays that share practical insights from their original goals and interpersonal fit. Alternatively, startup
research. With Babson's permission we are sharing teams can be formed via a resource-seeking strategy:
some of these essays, including this one. attracting others with complementary human capital.
Due to their resource constraints as new ventures,
Imagine finally achieving your goal of forming a new founders attempt to identify and fill the perceived needs
business but failing because you did not select the right of the team via this approach. Lastly, entrepreneurial
team members. This is what is happening to a group of teams can also be formed via the combination of
entrepreneurs who contribute more than 5% to U.S. resource-seeking and the interpersonal attraction
GDP yearly. In the last decade, minority entrepreneurs approach: hiring some with similar values and thinking
have created over one million new businesses in the and others with complementary knowledge. In practice,
United States. Historically, underrepresented racial this dual strategy has been shown to lead to proper
groups form more new ventures compared to majority team functioning over time. Entrepreneurs in
groups not only in the United States but also in Europe. crowdfunding settings and entrepreneurial competitions
In fact, they are often recognized for their propensity to have been shown to raise more funds and be more
create new companies and contribute to the economy. profitable when using the dual strategy.
Copyright © 2022 The Authors. Entrepreneur & Innovation Exchange is published at EIX.org. This is
an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs License,
which permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited and
no modifications or adaptations are made. View EIX.org Authorship Terms at https://eix.org/terms
(Mercado, 2022) Page 2
structuring behaviors. It leads team members to feel of attending to other tasks and detract from the
safe, be willing to share information, and develop the innovativeness and autonomy needed for
norms and practices needed to collaborate effectively. entrepreneurial success. In closing, given the staggering
and growing economic importance of minority
entrepreneurs in the United States, more of them should
consider forming teams of both like-minded individuals
and divergent thinkers.
Learn More
To learn more about how Babson is supporting the
Thus, this can explain why minority entrepreneurs future of entrepreneurship research, see this article:
create many new businesses, as the interpersonal
strategy they choose enables new ventures to be How Babson is Improving the Relevance and
successfully formed. Once teams are formed, cognitive Reach of Scholarly Research
strategies, forged by constant interaction among (https://eiexchange.com/content/how-babson-is-improvi
individual members over time, help things get done. ng-the-relevance-and-reach-of-scholarly-
These cognitive strategies are particularly essential to res?search=zacharakis)
an entrepreneurial team's performance due to the
uncertain, dynamic, and resource-constrained nature of
the entrepreneurial environment. Underrepresented
minorities form teams via interpersonal attraction, so
their shared knowledge eases coordination among team
members at first. However, as the startup team grows,
too much like-minded thinking can prevent them from
growing their knowledge bases and expertise.
Implications
A founders’ race not only influences the kinds of people
chosen for the startup team, but also can predict the
team's learning processes and eventual performance.
The close ties of racially homogenous teams and their
overlapping mental models may produce harmony in a
firm's early stage, but over time it can increase the costs
Copyright © 2022 Mauricio Mercado, Published by Entrepreneur & Innovation Exchange EIX.org (2022)
DOI: