The process of new venture creation is characterized by the need to decide and take action in the face of uncertainty. Especially in the context of technology-based ventures uncertainty is substantial, posing difficulties for strategic decision-making based on prediction and planning. and how entrepreneurs' emphasis on these logics shifts and re-shifts over time. From our data, we induce a dynamic model which extends the literature on strategic decision-making in venture creation, illustrating how external and venture conditions -including not only uncertainty but also resource position and stakeholder pressure -lead to changes in venture scope, and thereby to shifts in the use of decision-making logics.

Using a meta-analytical procedure, the relationship between team composition in terms of the Big-Five personality traits (trait elevation and variability) and team performance were researched. The number of teams upon which analyses were performed ranged from 106 to 527. For the total sample, significant effects were found for elevation in agreeableness (r ¼ 0.24) and conscientiousness (r ¼ 0.20), and for variability in agreeableness (r ¼ À0.12) and conscientiousness (r ¼ À0.24). Moderation by type of team was tested for professional teams versus student teams. Moderation results for agreeableness and conscientiousness were in line with the total sample results. However, student and professional teams differed in effects for emotional stability and openness to experience. Based on these results, suggestions for future team composition research are presented.

This article reports a multimethod study of product innovation processes in small manufacturing firms. Prior studies found that small firms do not deploy the formalized processes identified as best practice for the management of new product development (NPD)

Academic entrepreneurship by means of university spinoffs commercializes technological breakthroughs, which may otherwise remain unexploited. However, many universities face difficulties in creating spinoffs. This article adopts a science-based design approach, to connect scholarly research with the pragmatics of effectively creating university spinoffs. This approach serves to link the practice of university spinoff creation, via design principles, to the scholarly knowledge in this area. As such, science-based design promotes the interplay between emergent and deliberate design processes. This framework is used to develop a set of design principles that are practice-based as well as grounded in the existing body of research on university spinoffs. A case-study of spinoff creation at a Dutch university illustrates the interplay between initial processes characterized by emergent design and the subsequent process that was more deliberate in nature. This case study also suggests there are two fundamentally different phases in building capacity for university spinoff creation: first, an infrastructure for spinoff creation (e.g. including a collaborative network of investors, managers and advisors) is developed, that then enables support activities to individual spinoff ventures. This study concludes that, to build and increase capacity for creating spinoffs, universities should:1. create university-wide awareness of entrepreneurship opportunities, stimulate the development of entrepreneurial ideas, and subsequently screen entrepreneurs and ideas by programs targeted at students and academic staff; 2. support start-up teams in composing and learning the right mix of venturing skills and knowledge by providing access to advice, coaching and training; 3. help starters in obtaining access to resources and developing their social capital by creating a collaborative network organization of investors, managers and advisors; 4. set clear and supportive rules and procedures that regulate the university spinoff process, enhance fair treatment of involved parties, and separate spinoff processes from academic research and teaching; 5. shape a university culture that reinforces academic entrepreneurship, by creating norms and exemplars that motivate entrepreneurial behavior. These and other results of this study illustrate how science-based design can connect scholarly research to the pragmatics of actually creating spinoffs in academic institutions.2

Relationships between team composition in terms of team members' Big Five personality traits and individual satisfaction with the team after project completion were researched. Questionnaires were filled out by 310 undergraduate students ( N= 68 teams) working on an engineering design assignment. Individual satisfaction with the team was regressed onto individual, dissimilarity, and interaction scores. A positive main effect was found for individual agreeableness and emotional stability and for dissimilarity in conscientiousness. A moderation of the main effect of dissimilarity was found for extraversion: Satisfaction with the team is negatively related to dissimilarity to the other team members only for members low in extraversion.