Hiring entrepreneurs for innovation

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• dc.contributor.author Lindbjerg, Louise
• dc.contributor.author Vladasel, Theodor
• dc.date.accessioned 2025-10-21T15:12:34Z
• dc.date.available 2025-10-21T15:12:34Z
• dc.date.issued 2025
• dc.date.updated 2025-10-21T15:12:34Z
• dc.description Data de publicació electrònica: 27-08-2025
• dc.description.abstract Research Summary: What human capital do established organizations need to bring new ideas to market? Combining Danish registry and Community Innovation Survey data, we document a robust positive relationship between hiring former founders and firms' sales from innovation. Entrepreneurs join smaller, younger firms (which exhibit larger effects), managerial skills and external industry founding experience matter, while other selection or human capital-based explanations appear muted. Founder hires especially enhance innovation when given middle management decision rights, for incremental offerings, and in innovation-active firms. Our collective findings indicate startup experience equips founders with a generalist ability to acquire and mobilize resources around new ideas. By clarifying the nature of entrepreneurial human capital, we highlight a novel innovation input that helps firms unlock its commercial value. Managerial Summary: As entrepreneurial careers proliferate, former founders represent a growing pool of potential employees with expertise in bringing new products and services to market. Can hiring entrepreneurs help established organizations enhance innovation? Using data from Denmark, we answer this question affirmatively and offer several explanations. Former founders gravitate towards younger, smaller established firms, where effects are stronger; they also bring valuable managerial skills and external industry founding experience. Notably, they generate more value when given broader authority as middle managers, for less obvious resource combinations, firms already active in innovation or research and development, and higher uncertainty contexts. Taken together, our findings suggest former founders' distinct combination of skills helps firms marshal resources around new offerings.
• dc.description.sponsorship Agencia Estatal de Investigación (Spain), Grant/Award Number: AEIPID2019-109377GB-I00; Agencia Estatal de Investigación (Spain) - Severo Ochoa Programme for Centres of Excellence in R&D, Grant/Award Number: BSE CEX2019-000915-S
• dc.format.mimetype application/pdf
• dc.identifier.citation Lindbjerg L, Vladasel T. Hiring entrepreneurs for innovation. Strateg Manag J. 2025 Aug 27. DOI: 10.1002/smj.70004
• dc.identifier.doi http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/smj.70004
• dc.identifier.issn 0143-2095
• dc.identifier.uri http://hdl.handle.net/10230/71613
• dc.language.iso eng
• dc.publisher Wiley
• dc.relation.ispartof Strategic Management Journal. 2025 Aug 27
• dc.relation.projectID info:eu-repo/grantAgreement/ES/2PE/109377GB-I00
• dc.rights This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License, which permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made. © 2025 The Author(s). Strategic Management Journal published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
• dc.rights.accessRights info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess
• dc.rights.uri http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
• dc.subject.keyword Entrepreneurship
• dc.subject.keyword Human capital
• dc.subject.keyword Individual sorting
• dc.subject.keyword Innovation
• dc.subject.keyword Learning by hiring
• dc.title Hiring entrepreneurs for innovation
• dc.type info:eu-repo/semantics/article
• dc.type.version info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion