The extant literature highlights that environmental conditions, during the creation phase, imprint on a startup's survival and growth. However, there are few studies that explore the composite nature of a founding team's capabilities and networks, developed within this phase, and the contribution made to future performance. This paper uses the distinctive context of university spin-offs, where early stage ventures are fostered by institutional interventions, to analyse the influence that the capabilities and networks of a founding team, at incorporation, have upon the future performance of the spin-off. Based on data from 181 university spin-offs, this paper empirically demonstrates that the entrepreneurial capabilities of a founding team, augmented during the 'creation' phase, have a positive influence on the performance of a spin-off during the 'growth' phase, and that the networks of a founding team indirectly affect a spin-off's performance through the enhancement of a team's entrepreneurial capabilities.

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In this paper, a model for determining innovation degree in service industries is presented. Such a model is developed under the knowledge‐based theory lens. So, knowledge flows and knowledge integration capabilities of the organisation’s members are considered as crucial for the innovation processes to be successfully implemented. The model is tested in a sample of engineering consulting firms of Spain. Main results point out the strong explanatory power of innovation intensity with knowledge theory‐based models. Final conclusions consider knowledge management policies as the main impellers of service innovation.

Drawing on the resource-based view of the firm, and counter to the mainstream literature, we propose and empirically show that two knowledge resources can be substitutive (rather than complementary) for each other. Our test focuses on the interplay between managers' and workers' knowledge stock, considered as knowledge resources that firms can apply to improve innovation. We hypothesise a mutually exclusive effect of managerial experience (managers' knowledge stock) and labour skills (workers' knowledge stock) on product innovation. Drawing on the most recent waves of the World Bank Enterprise Survey (WBES), we construct a cross-sectional sample of 2,725 manufacturing firms. We used binary choice model to test the proposed effects. The results show negative interaction between labour skills and managers' experience in determining the probability to achieve product innovation, putting the knowledge resource complementarity hypothesis into question, and opening an academic debate that will have implications for knowledge management practice.