Top management team heterogeneity and economic performance: a micro-foundations perspective of academic business venturing.

Purpose: This research focuses on the relationship between Top Management Team heterogeneity (TMT) and University Spin-Offs (USOs) economic performance according to a micro-foundational perspective. The purpose consists in exploring whether a high academic representation in TMTs may improve USOs' performance and how their competencies and backgrounds affect USOs' economic success. Design/methodology/approach: The authors employed data from the Italian platform Netval to identify the entire population of USOs in southern Italy. They selected both pure and hybrid spin-offs that had at least one academic member on the TMT. Applying these conditions to our sample selection, the authors came to a population of 136 firms. They applied a hierarchical regression analysis to test the hypotheses. Findings: Our main findings reveal that the USOs' economic performance improves with more academicians in the TMT and even in the same scientific field. Our data also shows that CEO duality has a negative impact on economic performance. Originality/value: This work takes for the first time a micro-foundational perspective to analyze individual-level factors that affect USOs' performance. The authors tried to bridge a research gap in the USO literature, shedding light on the relationship between TMT composition and new venture performance, considering some significant interactions between team members. Our expected findings also contribute to the general literature on entrepreneurial teams in new ventures and suggest a means to reconcile some inconsistent literature results on TMT heterogeneity and USO performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]