Document Type

Closed Project

Publication Date

1995

Instructor

Dundar F. Kocaoglu

Course Title

Management of Engineering & Technology

Course Number

EMGT 520

Abstract

There are numerous references in articles and Journals to the poor track record of Entrepreneurs achieving success. Study has also been devoted to the reasons for these failures and, more importantly, to determine predictors to success of startup firms. Such predictors would be extremely valuable to bankers, venture capitalists and others associated with these businesses.

The authors of this paper chose to specifically study the areas of entrepreneurs experience and expertise and the affect it has on business performance especially with regards to technology-based firms. Other studies suggested a mixed impact of prior business experience as a predictor of success. Reuber and Fischer propose that expertise is a much better predictor. Therefore the authors studied the relationship of expertise and success in technology-based firms.

The findings indicated three areas of correlation in the data. The first was that owner’s expertise is a better indicator of success than experience. Second that different types of experience leads to different types of expertise, giving experience an indirect link to expertise. Finally experience was found to actually have some direct impact on performance separate from, but subservient to, expertise. The research lead the authors to determine that expertise in an area would be positive predictor of success in technology-based firms.

Rights

In Copyright. URI: http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/ This Item is protected by copyright and/or related rights. You are free to use this Item in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. For other uses you need to obtain permission from the rights-holder(s).

Comments

This project is only available to students, staff, and faculty of Portland State University

Persistent Identifier

http://archives.pdx.edu/ds/psu/23604

Download

Share

COinS