The influence of vertical and shared leadership within new venture founders' teams on the performance of spin-offs

This study explores how the leadership style affects the academic spin-off companies’ performance. We have studied the relative influence of vertical and shared leadership within new venture founders’ teams on the performance of spin-offs through a survey that has involved 30 spin-offs operating in five incubators located in the North East of Italy, partially reproducing an empirical research done by Ensley, Hmieleski and Pearce (2006) on American start-ups. We assume that the type of leadership has a direct influence on performance for spinoff firms given the lack of organizational structure, hierarchy and a consolidated network of relationships (Ensley et al., 2003; Ucbasaran et al., 2003). We propose a model that delineates a matrix of leadership styles between vertical leadership and shared leadership, enriched with the contributions of Likert (1961), Tannenbaum and Schmidt (1973) and Goleman (1998). Our results show that academic spin-off founders’ teams often haven’t formal leadership structures and vertical directive leadership that exercises strict control on knowledge workers could undermining economic performance of the firm, while the relation between shared leadership and performance in the context of academic spinoff deserves a more in-depth analysis.