{"413241":{"#nid":"413241","#data":{"type":"news","title":"Study Examines \u201cJoiners\u201d Who Help Make Startups Successful","body":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003EA growing interest in the startup culture has focused attention on company founders who often take great risks to launch new ventures. But what about the people who join these founders to help them develop and commercialize innovative new products and services?\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EA research highlight published this week in the journal \u003Cem\u003EScience\u003C\/em\u003E reports on research analyzing these \u201cjoiners,\u201d and finds that while they resemble founders in their willingness to take risks and their desire for the freedom of a startup, there are important differences. For instance, joiners are less interested in management and more interested in functional roles such as research and development, making them more like the people who go to work for established companies.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cSometimes you can have a single founder who handles the full range of activities for a startup, but especially in technology you need additional people to research and develop the products,\u201d said \u003Ca href=\u0022http:\/\/scheller.gatech.edu\/directory\/faculty\/sauermann\/index.html\u0022\u003EHenry Sauermann\u003C\/a\u003E, an associate professor in the \u003Ca href=\u0022http:\/\/scheller.gatech.edu\/\u0022\u003EScheller College of Business\u003C\/a\u003E at the Georgia Institute of Technology. \u201cThere are many people who are interested in working for startups but who don\u2019t want to be founders.\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003ESauermann and co-author Michael Roach, an assistant professor in the Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management at Cornell University, found the differences while examining the entrepreneurial interests of 4,200 Ph.D. candidates who were within two years of obtaining degrees in STEM fields. Nearly half (46 percent) of these scientists and engineers reported an interest in joining a startup as an employee, while slightly more than one in ten (11 percent) said they expected to found their own companies.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EThe researchers surveyed these Ph.D. candidates about personal characteristics such as acceptance of risk, desire for autonomy, interest in commercializing new technology and willingness to take on managerial tasks. They also asked about interests in entrepreneurship, in roles as both startup founders and the joiners who support them. The study, which includes a more comprehensive companion article to be published in the journal \u003Ca href=\u0022http:\/\/pubsonline.informs.org\/doi\/abs\/10.1287\/mnsc.2014.2100\u0022\u003E\u003Cem\u003EManagement Science\u003C\/em\u003E\u003C\/a\u003E, may be the first to consider founders and joiners as separate groups.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cA key insight from our research is that many of the characteristics that we often think of as unique to founders, such as a tolerance for risk and the desire to bring new ideas to life, also generalize to the broader entrepreneurial workforce, including people who want to work in startups but don\u2019t want to be founders themselves,\u201d Roach said.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EUnderstanding how the personal preferences of newly-minted Ph.D. scientists and engineers fits into their entrepreneurial interests may be important to helping them find the best application for their hard-won knowledge and skills. Increasingly, startups provide an attractive career path for Ph.D. graduates who may not find academic research attractive or may experience difficulty in finding positions in academia \u2013 but who still want to be involved in research and commercialization activities, Roach said. More emphasis may be needed on preparing STEM doctorates for these entrepreneurial employee career paths.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cMost university programs designed to foster entrepreneurship \u2013 such as courses, workshops and incubators \u2013 focus on training people to be a founder,\u201d Roach noted. \u201cBut founders make up a small share of the entrepreneurial workforce, and we do very little to train the larger share of people who will work in startups as employees rather than founders. For example, many programs focus on how to write business plans and secure funding, while less attention is paid to how to work effectively in a small startup team.\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EThe high degree of interest in entrepreneurship among science and engineering Ph.D. candidates surprised Sauermann, who expected that the soon-to-be-graduates might prefer a safer career path in established companies.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cA surprising number of people from this group found entrepreneurship attractive,\u201d he said. \u201cThis may mean we don\u2019t have as much of a problem getting people interested in startups as is widely believed. It may be more a question of how the transition from the Ph.D. training to the startup world happens.\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EThe paper is based on a 2010 study of Ph.D. candidates about to graduate from 39 different U.S. tier one colleges and universities. In a follow up study, Roach and Sauermann surveyed the group to examine the career transitions they made into industry, startups and academia. Results are being analyzed, and the two researchers hope to follow this group to see how their careers develop.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EThe data may also help provide information on how context affects careers. For instance, exposure to an entrepreneurial environment appears likely to increase an individual\u2019s willingness to work in a startup, but doesn\u2019t seem to boost their interest in being a founder.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cAn interest in being a founder is more closely associated with individual traits and preferences that predispose them to entrepreneurship,\u201d Roach said. \u201cAt the same time, individuals who lack these traits are unlikely to become interested in being a founder even when exposed to entrepreneurial influences. One implication of this is that programs that hope to stimulate entrepreneurship may do more to increase the pool of entrepreneurial workers than to make people into founders.\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EThe study should be encouraging for those promoting the entrepreneurial career path, Sauermann said. \u201cNot everybody has to start their own company,\u201d he added. \u201cYou can also make a difference for the world by joining a founder.\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EThe overall research is supported by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, the National Science Foundation and the Georgia Research Alliance. Its larger goal is to examine the educational experiences and career paths of Ph.D. scientists and engineers.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003EResearch News\u003C\/strong\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003EGeorgia Institute of Technology\u003C\/strong\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003E177 North Avenue\u003C\/strong\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003EAtlanta, Georgia 30332-0181 USA\u003C\/strong\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003EMedia Relations Contact\u003C\/strong\u003E: John Toon (404-894-6986) (\u003Ca href=\u0022mailto:jtoon@gatech.edu\u0022\u003Ejtoon@gatech.edu\u003C\/a\u003E)\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003EWriter\u003C\/strong\u003E: John Toon\u003C\/p\u003E","summary":null,"format":"limited_html"}],"field_subtitle":"","field_summary":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003EResearch highlighted this week in the journal Science analyzes a class of \u201cjoiners,\u201d employees who support the founders of startup companies. The joiners resemble founders in their willingness to take risks and their desire for the freedom of a startup, but there are important differences.\u003C\/p\u003E","format":"limited_html"}],"field_summary_sentence":[{"value":"Research highlighted this week in the journal Science analyzes a class of \u201cjoiners,\u201d employees who support the founders of startup companies."}],"uid":"27303","created_gmt":"2015-06-10 21:39:59","changed_gmt":"2016-10-08 03:18:33","author":"John Toon","boilerplate_text":"","field_publication":"","field_article_url":"","dateline":{"date":"2015-06-11T00:00:00-04:00","iso_date":"2015-06-11T00:00:00-04:00","tz":"America\/New_York"},"extras":[],"hg_media":{"413211":{"id":"413211","type":"image","title":"Technology Square","body":null,"created":"1449254222","gmt_created":"2015-12-04 18:37:02","changed":"1475895145","gmt_changed":"2016-10-08 02:52:25","alt":"Technology Square","file":{"fid":"202379","name":"technology-square_0.jpg","image_path":"\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/technology-square_0_0.jpg","image_full_path":"http:\/\/hg.gatech.edu\/\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/technology-square_0_0.jpg","mime":"image\/jpeg","size":2079651,"path_740":"http:\/\/hg.gatech.edu\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/740xx_scale\/public\/images\/technology-square_0_0.jpg?itok=PVLWohww"}},"413221":{"id":"413221","type":"image","title":"Henry Sauermann","body":null,"created":"1449254222","gmt_created":"2015-12-04 18:37:02","changed":"1475895145","gmt_changed":"2016-10-08 02:52:25","alt":"Henry Sauermann","file":{"fid":"202380","name":"henry_sauermann.jpg","image_path":"\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/henry_sauermann_0.jpg","image_full_path":"http:\/\/hg.gatech.edu\/\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/henry_sauermann_0.jpg","mime":"image\/jpeg","size":1634107,"path_740":"http:\/\/hg.gatech.edu\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/740xx_scale\/public\/images\/henry_sauermann_0.jpg?itok=TZ9QwBpo"}},"413231":{"id":"413231","type":"image","title":"Michael Roach","body":null,"created":"1449254222","gmt_created":"2015-12-04 18:37:02","changed":"1475895145","gmt_changed":"2016-10-08 02:52:25","alt":"Michael Roach","file":{"fid":"202381","name":"michael_roach.jpg","image_path":"\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/michael_roach_0.jpg","image_full_path":"http:\/\/hg.gatech.edu\/\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/michael_roach_0.jpg","mime":"image\/jpeg","size":1729821,"path_740":"http:\/\/hg.gatech.edu\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/740xx_scale\/public\/images\/michael_roach_0.jpg?itok=HOEWazo_"}}},"media_ids":["413211","413221","413231"],"groups":[{"id":"1188","name":"Research Horizons"}],"categories":[{"id":"139","name":"Business"},{"id":"135","name":"Research"}],"keywords":[{"id":"2301","name":"entrepreneur"},{"id":"2161","name":"founders"},{"id":"128591","name":"joiners"},{"id":"166994","name":"startups"}],"core_research_areas":[],"news_room_topics":[{"id":"71901","name":"Society and Culture"}],"event_categories":[],"invited_audience":[],"affiliations":[],"classification":[],"areas_of_expertise":[],"news_and_recent_appearances":[],"phone":[],"contact":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003EJohn Toon\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EResearch News\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Ca href=\u0022mailto:jtoon@gatech.edu\u0022\u003Ejtoon@gatech.edu\u003C\/a\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E404-894-6986\u003C\/p\u003E","format":"limited_html"}],"email":["jtoon@gatech.edu"],"slides":[],"orientation":[],"userdata":""}}}