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Investigating the Existence of the Lead Entrepreneur

2000; Wiley; Volume: 38; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

0047-2778

Michael D. Ensley, J. W. Garland, JoAnn C. Carland,

Entrepreneurship Studies and Influences

This research involves an attempt to verify the existence of lead entrepreneurs, or alpha heffalumps, posited by Timmons (1984, 1994), and to examine their impact on venture performance, if they do exist. The authors used two samples drawn from owner/managers of the inc. 500 list of the fastest growing firms in the United States. Respondents completed the Katz (1974)/Herron (1990) Skill Typology and the Garland Entrepreneurship Index (Garland, Garland, and Hoy 1992), modified and expanded for the purposes of this research. The results empirically confirmed the existence of lead entrepreneurs among macro-entrepreneurial firms and suggested that the strength of their strategic or entrepreneurial vision-the ability to see what is not there-and their self-confidence set them apart from other entrepreneurial team members. In 1971, Peter Kilby (1971) likened the search for an entrepreneur to the hunt for the heffalump led by Winnie the Pooh in A.A. Milne's famous 1926 children's book. The heffalump was a large and important animal that everyone in the Hundred Acre Wood reported having seen, although each one described it differently. Hull, Bosley, and Udell (1980) cemented the tradition of entrepreneurs as heffalumps in their early work on entrepreneurial personalities, and the analogy has become part of the folklore in entrepreneurship research. In this article, the authors intend to join Winnie-the-Pooh in his search for the elusive creatures. More importantly we intend to seek out the leader of the creatures: the alpha heffalump. If indeed heffalumps exist, might there not be leaders among beffalumps? If so, they must be even more rare and strange. There is a growing body of evidence that an entrepreneurial event is more often supported by a team of entrepreneurs than by an individual (Gartner et al. 1994), and there is also a growing interest in entrepreneurial teams among entrepreneurship researchers (Kamm et al. 1990; Ensley and Banks 1992; Ensley and Spencer 1997; Ensley, Carland, and Garland 1998). Some researchers argue that viewing entrepreneurship as a collective activity is a new meta-theme in the discipline that has remained basically unexplored either conceptually or empirically (Gartner et al. 1994). Most of the research to date on the collective nature of entrepreneurship has been directed toward such issues as: the potential effect of the team on new venture performance (Ensley 1997, 1999; Siegel, Siegel, and MacMillan 1993); the relationship of the team with venture capitalists (Virany and Tushman 1986); team composition issues (Roure and Madique 1986; Virany and Tushman 1986); and theoretical development (Kamm et al. 1990; Ensley and Spe ncer 1997). Little investigative effort has been expended on the general behavioral and cognitive dynamics of an entrepreneurial team. One of the most intriguing aspects of entrepreneurial teams is the issue of a lead entrepreneur. Timmons (1984, 1994) argued that teams almost always have lead entrepreneurs who clarify the firm's vision and craft the dream and strategy for the rest of the team to follow. This perspective implies that the lead entrepreneur, if such an individual exists, should have different characteristics, skills, or abilities from other members of the team, although there has been no empirical attempt to demonstrate the existence of a lead entrepreneur. Herron (1990) argued that characteristics such as entrepreneurial drive, skill, risk-taking propensity, and self-confidence are important determinants of venture performance. A number of other researchers have made similar findings (for example, Carland, Carland, and Aby 1989; Carland and Carland 1997; Ensley, Carland, and Carland 1998). Examining these findings in the light of an entrepreneurial team, one immediately wonders whether lead entrepreneurs, if they exist, differ from their team members in these areas. If they do exist and they differ, what impact, if any, do the differences have on venture performance? …