Please use this form to submit your study for inclusion into our database. It will be checked by a member of the Innovation Growth Lab team, who may be in contact to ask for more information. Your email address * Your name * Title * The name of the study Short summary This paper explores the relationship between cognitive abilities and team performance in a start-up setting in a field experiment in which 573 students in 49 teams started up and managed real companies. Performance in this setting hinges on three tasks: opportunity recognition, problem solving, and implementation. Cognitive ability at the individual level has a positive effect on opportunity recognition and problem solving but no clear effect on implementation. A brief description of the project's goals and its current state Abstract <p>This paper explores the relationship between cognitive abilities and team performance in a start-up setting in a field experiment in which 573 students in 49 teams started up and managed real companies. Performance in this setting hinges on three tasks: opportunity recognition, problem solving, and implementation. Cognitive ability at the individual level has a positive effect on opportunity recognition and problem solving but no clear effect on implementation. Within teams, a combination of higher and lower cognitive ability levels may be productive insofar as some individuals can be assigned to mundane tasks (that are often involved in implementation), while others can be assigned to tasks that impose a greater cognitive load (problem solving or opportunity recognition). Exogenous variation in otherwise random team composition was ensured by assigning students to teams based on their measured cognitive abilities. Each team performed a variety of tasks, often involving complex decision making. The key result of the experiment is that the performance of start-up teams first increases and then decreases with ability dispersion. Strikingly, average team ability is not related to team performance.</p> The full abstract of the study, if available Links https://doi.org/10.1287/orsc.2017.1158 Links to any published papers and related discussions Authors * Affiliations Academic and other institutes that the authors of the study are members of Delivery partner Organisations involved in delivering the trial, if appropriate Year Year Year199419951996199719981999200020012002200320042005200620072008200920102011201220132014201520162017201820192020202120222023202420252026 Month MonthJanFebMarAprMayJunJulAugSepOctNovDec Day Day12345678910111213141516171819202122232425262728293031 Journal Journal publishing the study, if available Publication stage * Working Paper Published Ongoing Research Forthcoming Discussion Paper Research theme * Entrepreneurship Innovation Business Growth Country Country or countries where this study took place. Topics What sort of topics does the study cover? Sample attributes Hypotheses / research question How does the cognitive ability of members of start-up teams affects team performance? Sample Trial population and sample selection Based on the APM test outcomes of individuals, the ability composition of teams was manipulated and students were randomly assigned to teams in accordance with the imposed variation in cognitive ability. In particular, based on their APM test scores and within fields of study, students were divided into four quartiles per class. Number of treatment groups Size of treatment groups Size of control group Unit of analysis Clustered? Yes No Cluster details Trial attributes Treatment description Teams of undergraduate students start up and manage real companies as a compulsory part of the curriculum in an international business program as a compulsory part of the curriculum at the School of International Business Studies(SIBS) of the Amsterdam College of Applied Sciences. Rounds of data collection Baseline data collection and method A questionnaire eliciting the cognitive ability of students and their background characteristics was administered one week before the start of the entrepreneurship program. Data collection method and data collected Evaluation Outcome variables <p>Business performance was operationalized by four measures: sales, profits, a binary indicator for positive profits, and profits per share. </p> Results <p>Keeping average ability constant, teams with medium levels of ability dispersion outperformed both teams with low and high ability dispersion. Keeping ability dispersion constant, the average ability of the team did not improve team performance.</p> Intervention costs Not available. Cost benefit ratio Reference Hoogendoorn, S., Parker, S.C. and Van Praag, M., 2017. Smart or diverse start-up teams? Evidence from a field experiment. Organization Science, 28(6), pp.1010-1028. Citation for use in academic references
