To enhance the development of academic spin-offs, surrogate (external) entrepreneurs are often added to the entrepreneurial team comprising academics. Existing research focused on entrepreneurial team diversity (horizontal member differences) and has mixed results. Vertical member differences (i.e., inequality) between academics and non-academics are not addressed. However, strategic decision making is one of the main responsibilities of an entrepreneurial team. Decision-making power, as reflected in ownership, in particular, is thus of the essence. Based on a sample of 164 Italian academic spin-offs, this article investigates the impacts of both horizontal and vertical heterogeneity of entrepreneurial teams on the firms’ performance. The findings confirm that surrogate entrepreneurs generally make a positive contribution to academic spin-off performance but become counter-productive when their presence overpowers that of academics.

中文翻译：

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将非学术人员纳入学术衍生创业团队：可以产生影响的垂直多样性

为了促进学术衍生品的发展，通常会在由学者组成的创业团队中增加代理（外部）企业家。现有的研究侧重于创业团队的多样性（横向成员差异），结果喜忧参半。学术界和非学术界之间的纵向成员差异（即不平等）没有得到解决。然而，战略决策是创业团队的主要职责之一。决策权，尤其体现在所有权上，因此至关重要。本文基于 164 个意大利学术衍生企业的样本，研究了创业团队的横向和纵向异质性对公司绩效的影响。