Open for business: The impact of creative team environment and innovative behaviour in technology-based start-ups

Abstract

Rather than the view of the entrepreneur as a ‘lone ranger’, recent work has focused on the importance of teams in bringing a start-up to growth and success. Here, we aim to bridge the gap between the individual characteristics of entrepreneurs and the characteristics of their teams by examining openness of founders in relation to creative team environment (CTE), innovative work behaviour (IWB) and performance. On the basis of upper echelon theory and integrating other complementary theories such as the attention-based view, we develop a theoretical framework and test this using a survey of 322 high-tech entrepreneurs. Our findings suggest a mediating role of CTE and IWB in the relation between openness of entrepreneurs and performance. The implications of the results for managerial practices and future research directions are discussed.