Der Resource-based View und -in enger Verbindung dazu -das Management von (Kern-)Kompetenzen haben in den vergangenen Jahren die Unternehmensführung nachhaltig beeinflusst. Wissenschaft und Praxis beteiligen sich gleichermaßen an Fragen der ressourcenorientierten Unternehmensführung und des Knowledge Managements. Die Schriftenreihe greift diese Entwicklung auf und schafft ein Forum für wissenschaftliche Beiträge und Diskussionen.
Foreword V
ForewordResearch on the creation and development of new firms has gained substantial prominence over the past ten years -especially in the German-speaking countries, where many new entrepreneurship chairs have been created in universities. Despite the surge in interest, short-comings in the research domain remain. These shortcomings primarily concern the lack of solid empirical research that reflects the state of the art of management science. Based on psychological theories, explanations of the founding of a firm and its subsequent success have been made frequently in terms of character traits and attitudes. Yet these studies explain little about a new firm's success. Their usefulness was especially limited concerning team-based ventures, which represent the majority of technology-based ventures.Other more recent approaches focus on entrepreneurial activities and how they impact new venture development. In this stream of research, the competence perspective has special importance as competencies of founders determine which activities they undertake, and how they perform these activities. A key question has been raised often by entrepreneurs, researchers and educators with respect to competencies of the founders: What are the critical competencies needed to create and grow a new firm? Although this is a fundamental question of entrepreneurship research, this question has hardly been investigated empirically. The dissertation of Dr. Jan Brinckmann analyzes how competencies of founding teams of new technology based firms affect the development of the new firms. In order to identify the critical competencies needed to create and grow a firm, Dr. Brinckmann reviewed entrepreneurship and management literature in depth and conducted interviews with entrepreneurs. The resulting competence concept comprises three areas of competencies: general entrepreneurial, social, and functional competencies. The general entrepreneurial competencies consist of conceptual, innovative, and execution competencies. The social competencies are comprised of teamwork, leadership, and network competencies. The functional competencies analyzed in his work include technology-management, marketing management, and financial management competencies. Foreword VI Prior to determining the success relevance of these different competencies, Dr. Brinckmann offers a detailed overview of the current state of the art of prior empirical findings in competence-related entrepreneurship research. This provides an excellent overview of how different competencies affect the development of new firms. Based on his own empirica...