Charles W. Hofer

The measurement series foreword

Strategic management and entrepreneurship are both relatively new fields of study. Both are, therefore, experiencing the myriad pains associated with ‘growth’, including issues related to the legitimacy and definitions of the fields themselves, as well as to the development of new knowledge regarding the various phenomena that they address. Currently, both fields are healthy and vibrant – a fact substantiated by several indices, including: (i) an increasing number of articles and books being published in both fields; (ii) increasing professional meeting program time being devoted to papers, symposia and workshops addressing the issues of each field; (iii) an increasing number of scholars indicating both fields as the primary focus of their teaching and research; (iv) an increasing number of graduate students seeking PhDs in both fields; and (v) an increasing number of universities offering PhD programs in one or both of these fields. In the 1970s, the field of strategic management was beginning to evolve as an academic discipline from the business policy and planning area, which had existed at most business schools as a ‘capstone’ course for their MBA and executive program curricula. Toward the end of that decade, I helped Dr Dan Schendel, currently the editor of the Strategic Management Journal, to organize a conference at the University of Pittsburgh around the theme ‘Strategic Management: A New View of Business Policy and Planning’. Later, Dan and I published a Proceedings of that Conference under this title. In addition, we co-edited a series of ‘advanced’ strategic management texts, with the help of Richard Feldman of West Publishing Company, which addressed various important issues in this newly emerging field. At that time, one of the major ‘challenges’ facing the fields of both strategic management and entrepreneurship, in the opinion of many of the scholars in them, was the lack of a substantial theoretical base for these fields. As a consequence, most of the research that was done in both fields at that time was of an exploratory nature. The major focus was on trying to describe the phenomenon of interest, and trying to abstract from ‘best

Key Attributes of the Founding Entrepreneurial Team of Rapidly Growing New Ventures

Critical characteristics and influential attributes of new venture management teams have long been presumed, but empirical research in this field has lagged behind. This study offers new insights into what factors bode well for the founding entrepreneurial team and their rapidly growing new venture, what conditions and circumstances motivate team members, and how venture investors might weigh these factors as they steer their companies toward growth and success.