Entrepreneurial Impact: The Role of MIT

Presents an analysis of firms founded by Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) alumni -- revenues, employees, spending on marketing and research and development, and type of firm -- by state to quantify MIT's entrepreneurial impact

Implementing New Educational Technology For the Military

In this article the authors discuss the current status of computer-based educational technology in the military and offer some proposals on the next steps in this field

Ally or Acquire? Case Studies of Compaq and Cisco as Additional Tests of the External Technology Life Cycle Model

In our first paper we proposed a dynamic theory relating alliances and acquisitions to the evolution of a technology and the market it serves. Industry structure and critical success factors change as the underlying technology evolves from phase to phase, competitive pressures exerted on a firm vary, and companies respond by adopting changing approaches to inter- firm collaboration. During the fluid phase new technology companies often form marketing alliances with established technology firms and pursue an aggressive licensing strategy to gain market recognition. The proliferation of technology startups provides an opportunity for established technology companies to obtain new technologies or enter niche markets through acquisitions or minority equity investments. Anticipating the emergence of a dominant design, companies can form standards alliances to promote their own proprietary technologies. During the transitional phase, companies with dominant designs gain recognition from the stock market, and soaring stock prices make it possible for them to acquire some of their competitors. During the mature phase, technology is well defined and competition becomes intense. Companies can form technology alliances to cut R&D costs. If a particular technology cannot be developed in-house, companies can acquire it on the open market. Marketing alliances frequently help companies target latent markets and expand into new geographic markets. During the phase of technological discontinuities the market is invaded by new technologies. Incumbents can utilize their resources to acquire the technologies needed for the newly defined marketplace. Attackers can gain market recognition through forming strategic supply alliances with established technology companies, which for the attackers is akin to the fluid phase behavior described above. In that first paper we illustrated these phenomena with a detailed case study of Microsoft, the world's leading software firm, from its origins until 2000. In this paper we further examine this hypothesized technology life cycle model through additional case studies of two high-tech companies during the same time period as the Microsoft analysis (i.e., until the year 2000): Compaq Computer and Cisco Systems. Compaq Computer was then the No.1 personal computer (PC) manufacturer in the world and is now a major portion of HP Corporation, and Cisco Systems was and still is the leading computer networking company. Each of these companies faced unique challenges at each stage of development of its underlying technologies and markets, which in turn affected its choice and extent of use of collaborative strategies. The additional case studies illustrate varying degrees of concurrence with the hypothesized dynamic model, and raise new issues for theory building. Each company's history is synopsized at the end of this paper in accord with the technology life cycle theor

Are You Experienced or Are You Talented?: When Does Innate Talent versus Experience Explain Entrepreneurial Performance?

We explore whether entrepreneurial performance is due to innate talent or the accumulation of entrepreneurial experience. Using a novel data set with multiple observations of founding attempts per individual, we generate a unique measure of entrepreneurial talent. In contrast to prior findings, the relative importance of experience versus talent changes with the context. When the current market or technology is familiar, experience dominates. However, when the venture context is unfamiliar, talent is more important. Individuals with experience and talent handle both familiar and unfamiliar aspects and may extract more from a given level of experience. The findings advance our understanding of how the drivers of venture performance shift with the broader technological and industry environment and places limits on when experience aids performance.MIT Entrepreneurship CenterStanford University. Stanford Technology Ventures ProgramEwing Marion Kauffman Foundatio

Bringing Entrepreneurial Ideas to Life

Organizational design in the context of new venture development is particularly challenging due to initially severe resource constraints. Deepening our understanding of differential productivity in the startup resource assembly process is therefore important. We address the twin questions of what assets are important to venture performance, and under what conditions are those assets especially important? We do so by considering initial venture idea assets and founder contracting experience. The resource-based view of the firm stresses developing the right assets, which accords with idea assets. Firm boundary theories of the firm emphasize structuring relationships in the right way given a set of organizational assets, which accords with founder contracting experience. Using unique survey data, we find that neither view by itself is as important as both theories taken together. We therefore advance an integrated perspective by showing that new ventures perform better when they both identify valuable resources and also assemble human assets with expertise in structuring organizational arrangements to commercialize those ideas. An important implication is that organizational resources have a range of potential values, and that realizing the upper range of value capture involves the additional ability to structure organizational relationships.We gratefully acknowledge funding from the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, the M.I.T. Entrepreneurship Center, and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation under the Industry Studies Program

The Contingent Effects of Top Management Teams on Venture Performance: Aligning Founding Team Composition With Innovation Strategy and Commercialization Environment

How does the relationship between founding team composition and venture performance depend on the venture\u27s strategy and business environment? Using data from a novel survey of 2,067 firms, we show that while diverse founding teams tend to exhibit higher performance, this is not universally true. We find that founding teams that are diverse are likely to achieve high performance in a competitive commercialization environment. On the other hand, technically focused founding teams are aligned with a cooperative commercialization environment and when the enterprise pursues an innovation strategy. These results are robust to corrections for endogenous team formation concerns. The findings suggest that ventures cannot ignore founding team composition and expect to later professionalize their top management teams to align with their strategy and environment

Spinning-off New Ventures from Academic Institutions in Areas with Weak Entrepreneurial Infrastructure: Insights on the Impact of Spin-off Processes on the Growth-orientation of Ventures

We discuss the characteristics of academic "spin-off processes" in environments outside of high tech clusters and where technology transfer and entrepreneurship infrastructures have been weak. To identify their implications for venture formation, we studied the case of Belgium, gathering data from eight universities and forty-seven firms. We propose that spin-off processes in academic institutions affect the form and growth orientations of ventures

Genetic and environmental influences on eating behavior - a study of twin pairs reared apart or reared together

This study examined the relative influence of genetic versus environmental factors on specific aspects of eating behavior. Adult monozygotic twins (22 pairs and 3 singleton reared apart, 38 pairs and 9 singleton reared together, age 18-76 years, BMI 17-43 kg/m2) completed the Three Factor Eating Questionnaire. Genetic and environmental variance components were determined for the three eating behavior constructs and their subscales using model-fitting univariate and multivariate analyses. Unique environmental factors had a substantial influence on all eating behavior variables (explaining 45-71% of variance), and most strongly influenced external locus for hunger and strategic dieting behavior of restraint (explaining 71% and 69% of variance, respectively). Genetic factors had a statistically significant influence on only 4 variables: restraint, emotional susceptibility to disinhibition, situational susceptibility to disinhibition, and internal locus for hunger (heritabilities were 52%, 55%, 38% and 50%, respectively). Common environmental factors did not statistically significantly influence any variable assessed in this study. In addition, multivariate analyses showed that disinhibition and hunger share a common influence, while restraint appears to be a distinct construct. These findings suggest that the majority of variation in eating behavior variables is associated with unique environmental factors, and highlights the importance of the environment in facilitating specific eating behaviors that may promote excess weight gain.R01 AR046124 - NIAMS NIH HHS; R01 MH065322 - NIMH NIH HHS; T32 HL069772 - NHLBI NIH HHS; R37 DA018673 - NIDA NIH HHS; R01 DK073321 - NIDDK NIH HHS; R01 DA018673 - NIDA NIH HH