Entrepreneurship The Team Composition Heterogeneity Interactive Relationship Between Quality And Entrepreneurial Performance

With a global perspective, entrepreneurship is the most active part in the economic development of a country and an important source of economic increase. It has important theoretical and practical value to choose entrepreneurial team as a research subject. On one hand, entrepreneurial teams respond for much more start-ups than individual entrepreneurs and larger venture teams were more successful, on the average, than individual entrepreneurs. That is because venture team has the advantage of combining individuals with diversify characteristics, knowledge, skills and capabilities, so as to create better venture performance through the complementation of their capabilities. But on the other hand, researches of entrepreneurial team theory are far less than the entrepreneurial teams'practices.It has been widely accepted that, complex venturing activities always need venture teams have varied skills, use different sources of information and make better decisions. Thus, taking into account the complementary capabilities, heterogeneous entrepreneurial teams have inherent advantages. While, related research conclusions also show that the relation between venture team heterogeneity and venture performance is uncertain, some positive and some negative. The reason why the heterogeneous team has a positive effect on venture performance is that heterogeneous team always has more plenty of cognitive bases and values. While the reason why the heterogeneous team has a negative impact on venture performance is that heterogeneities also lead to conflicts among team members more easily. Researchers think about different models by adding some situational factors, such as environmental factor, industrial factor or factor of team leader style. But seldom researches understand heterogonous teams'venture performance basing on analyzing internal team process.This paper focuses on the relationship among heterogeneity of entrepreneurial team composition, team interaction quality, and venture performance. Basing on the study of relevant literatures and on Upper Echelons Theory, Resource-Based View (RBV) and Input-Process-Output (IPO), this article builds a general process model to describe team venturing, which includes three core factors:team composition, team interaction and venture performance. And some hypotheses are also raised basing on this model.This article uses two research methods, including case study and empirical research, to understand and analyze features of team venturing from multiple perspectives. In the case study, three typical venture teams and its operation features are analyzed and compared. In the empirical research, through questionnaire's designing, delivering and recovering, SPSS 17.0 is used for data analysis and also following some important findings:(1) Entrepreneurial team's functional background heterogeneity has a statistically significant correlation with venture performance. (2) A good quality of team interaction helps to improve the performance of entrepreneurial teams. (3) Team interaction quality plays an intermediary role between entrepreneurial teams' composition heterogeneity with venture performance.Innovations of this paper lie in combination of advanced researches in group dynamics, upper echelons theory, resource based view, the team process theory, and other areas of entrepreneurial teams'research, which is well-knit with Chinese local team venture practice. Using questionnaires and case studies, this paper analyzes the relationship between entrepreneurial team heterogeneity, team interaction and venture performance from both qualitative and quantitative way. This paper promotes the development of theoretical and localized empirical research of entrepreneurial team by combine micro and macro perspective. The research conclusions can be used as references for venture investment institutions and investors in identifying successful venture team and as guidelines for team venture practices.Finally, in conclusion part, we summarized the practical and theoretical contributions and limitations of this study, and outline a blueprint for future research.