ABSTRACT
INTRODUCTION
THEORY AND HYPOTHESES
RESEARCH STRATEGY AND METHODOLOGY
RESULTS
PROJECT MIX
DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS
NOTES
CONTACT
REFERENCES
TABLE 1
TABLE 2
TABLE 3
TABLE 4

Obtaining start-up funding for new product ideas in large corporations is inherently frustrating. We evaluated teams that were successful in obtaining start-up funds from large corporations to determine if their cognitive abilities were different from groups unable to obtain similar funding. We found that the funded teams were strongly correlated (R² = 0.19, p = 0.00) with higher levels of self efficacy (i.e. one’s self belief that he or she can effectively and successfully pursue certain actions) and persuasion (i.e. the ability to sway the actions of other individuals). These results suggest that team level cognitive attributes can predict which teams are more likely to receive start-up funding. Further suggesting that particular cognitive skills are required for success in obtaining start-up funding.

As managers search for innovative ways to respond to their complex environments many realize that corporate entrepreneurship improves the speed and effectiveness of their strategic responses to the competition. Corporate entrepreneurship is essential for market pioneering (Covin, Slevin, Heeley, 2000), the creation of knowledge, goods, and services (Zahra, Jennings, & Kuratko, 1999), restructuring and retrenchment activities (Filatotchev, Wright, Buck, & Zhukov, 1999). Yet, obtaining start-up funds in large corporations is inherently frustrating and difficult (Miller and Camp, 1985, pp. 87–105; Sykes, 1986, pp. 69–74; Venkataraman, Shane, McGrath and MacMillan, 1993).

Recent research indicates that the traditional business factors of strategic fit, business acumen and marketplace understanding are necessary but not sufficient factors for obtaining start-up funds in large corporations (Koen, 1999). Selecting the right executive champion and requesting modest amount of funding were essential for obtaining funds. Koen (1999) reports that credible teams (e.g., have a history of being successful) are an essential criterion for obtaining funding for over one million dollars. Teams with an outstanding track record were essential for obtaining large seed capital. While these findings provide important knowledge on the critical success factors, little is known about teams’ cognitive and social orientation and whether such individual differences also influence the ability to secure capital and resources for newly initiated corporate projects. Recent research by Baron and Markman (1999) identified self-efficacy as a reliable cognitive mechanism that correctly differentiated patent inventors into technical entrepreneur and technical non-entrepreneur. Baron (2000) shows that entrepreneurs may be less likely than other persons to engage in counterfactual thinking—imagining outcomes other than those which actually occurred—and therefore less likely to experience regret over past setbacks.

Building on the theory of entrepreneurial discovery (Kirzner, 1997) and the literature on cognitive psychology, we propose that various cognitive mechanisms may be associated with obtaining start-up funding. Various cognitive mechanisms screen and limit sensory information, which in turn allows individuals to make sense of their data-rich environment (Huff, 1981). As information and knowledge are received, cognitive processes selectively collect, organize and categorize the data that support previously conceived ideas. Such processes create cognitive frameworks whereby corporate entrepreneurs view their external world. Specifically, in this study we seek to evaluate which cognitive mechanisms enhance the ability of corporate entrepreneurs to obtain start-up funding? Although information processing and knowledge management encompass many domains we focus on four cognitive mechanisms in this article that we believe are particularly relevant to obtaining start-up funds in large corporations. Specifically we tested cognitive processes as (1) self efficacy (one’s self belief that he or she can effectively and successfully pursue certain actions), (2) persuasion (the ability to sway the actions of other individuals), (3) social perception (the process we use to obtain an understanding of another individuals traits, motives and intentions) and (4) emotional intelligence (the ability to recognize and manage one’s own emotions).

To this end we conducted a multi-company intervention over a 12-week period with employees from 37 large companies (ex. Carrier, Ciba, Engelhard, Ethicon, Hartz Mountain, Hitachi, Honeywell, Intel, JP Morgan, Lucent, L3 Communications, MITRE, Merck, Motorola, L’Oreal, Lockheed Martin, Nabisco, Ortho, Schering Plough, Telecordia, Verizon and the US Army Communications—Electronic Command Research and Development Center, Wyeth-Ayerst) and one small Venture Capital Start-Up (VisiTalk). (See Note 1 and Note 2.) Teams from each of the firms attempted to obtain funding for their idea at the end of the intervention for a new product or service concept, which was not already in the company’s development pipeline. Start-up funding from $20,000 to $1,100,000 was obtained for 23 of the 36 projects. We regressed the amount of funding teams secured at the end of the intervention on teams’ scores on each of the dimensions described above (self-efficacy, persuasion, social perception, and emotional intelligence). Results suggest that teams’ self-efficacy and persuasion, as measured at the beginning of the intervention were significantly related to the funding that were ultimately secured.

Self-Efficacy

Self-efficacy is defined as one’s self-belief that he or she can effectively and successfully pursue certain actions and unlike personality and trait, which are relatively stable characteristics, self-efficacy grows with hard won achievements (Bandura, 1997). Extant research shows that self-efficacy is directly related to one’s perceived control, stress, self-blame, courses of action, level of effort, perseverance, and whether thoughts are self-hindering or self-aiding (cf., Bandura, 1997). If self-efficacy impacts one’s performance and success would it also distinguish among successful and unsuccessful corporate entrepreneurs? While high self-efficacy is beneficial regardless of one’s line of work or career, we suspect that having high self-efficacy would be particularly beneficial for corporate entrepreneurs. This is so because their work is routinely constrained by time, funding, and uncertain outcomes despite their relentless effort. Since the process of technological discovery and new inventions is strewn with corporate and market rejections, success rests heavily on sustained effort and strong self-belief.

Other arguments support our view that self-efficacy could distinguish between successful and unsuccessful corporate entrepreneurs. First, research shows that efficacious individuals not only pursue more challenging activities but they also tend to persevere longer (Bandura, 1997). Since the undertaking of new corporate ventures is replete with difficulties, high self-efficacy may be necessary for such pursuits. That is, since individuals avoid projects and undertakings they believe exceed their capabilities, but instead engage in tasks they judge themselves capable of handling, the higher their self-efficacy, the more challenging the activities they pursue. Second, because corporate entrepreneurs operate at the crux of change, innovation, and market perturbation, they personally and as a team realize higher liabilities; they are particularly exposed to organizational and market resistance. Thus, social cognitive theory suggests that efforts to start a new corporate venture or project and overcome the adversities described above call for high self-efficacy. Finally, recent entrepreneurship research proposes that entrepreneurs tend to have higher self-efficacy than non-entrepreneurs (Chen, Greene, & Crick, 1998). We therefore suggest that the ability to start a new corporate venture, harness corporate support, and recruit key engineers, requires high levels of self-efficacy. Thus our first hypothesis is as follows:

Hypothesis 1: Teams with higher self-efficacy will be more successful at securing corporate support than teams with lower self-efficacy.

Persuasion

Social influence refers to the ways in which individuals sway each other’s attitudes and actions, and like self-efficacy, persuasion skills can be taught and improved upon (Cialdini, 1994). Much research shows that persuasion skills can benefit diverse occupations including marketing, advertising, sales, fund-raising, law, and so on. Such studies show that the ability to get others to say “yes” is highly related to one’s financial well-being. Interestingly, although the study of persuasion is a well accepted in the areas of consumer behavior and psychology (e.g., Eagly & Chaiken 1995; Haugtvedt & Petty 1992), relatively little attention has been given to this topic in the area of corporate entrepreneurship.

Since individuals vary greatly in terms of their proficiency in using persuasion tactics (Wayne & Ferris, 1990), we expect similar variability among teams of corporate entrepreneurs. We also suggest that social influence and persuasion would be relevant to several activities performed by corporate entrepreneurs. For example, a key challenge that corporate entrepreneurs face is that of persuading corporate venture capitalists, executives, supervisors, colleagues, and coworkers to say “yes”—to agree to render time, capital, and other scarce resources in what is frequently a new project or product with no guarantee of success (Aldrich & Fiol, 1994). Clearly, in such context persuasion skills and social influence—ceteris paribus—influence whether corporate entrepreneurs succeed at securing corporate support. Since perceptions are socially constructed in the course of interactions with others, our theoretical emphasis is on perceived social influence to access resource. A corollary of this is that teams that perceive stronger social influence will attain larger funding than teams whose perceived influence over their constituencies is limited. To the extent this is so we suggest the following hypothesis:

Hypothesis 2: The greater corporate entrepreneurs’ adeptness with respect to persuasion and other techniques for exerting social influence, the greater their success at harnessing corporate financial support.

Social Perception

Social perception is the process by which we all seek to obtain accurate understanding of others’ traits, motives, and intentions (Kenny, 1994) and research shows that faculty who accurately read students’ nonverbal cues receive significantly higher ratings than professors who don’t (Larkin, 1987). Because executives and other resource providers play a key-deciding role as to whether and how to allocate corporate funds, accurate social perception appears to be relevant to corporate entrepreneurial. For example, after preparing a sound business plan that outlines the team’s technical knowledge, skills, and ability as well the proposed new line of business, corporate entrepreneurs must also persuasively present their plan to highly educated (and sometimes critical) executives and corporate chieftains. Clearly, in such context, adeptness at social perception, such the ability to “read” correctly one’s audience, has been found to be invaluable (Friedman, Prince, Riggio, & DeMatteo, 1980). Indeed, venture capitalists explain that how entrepreneurs present their plans and themselves is a crucial factor in their decisions regarding whether to provide financial backing (Hall & Hofer, 1993). Thus, we suggest that teams of corporate entrepreneurs who are proficient at reading their “environment” stand a better chance of obtaining funding than those who are not.

Clearly, success in negotiations is key for corporate entrepreneurs, particularly during early stage of fund raising. Indeed, it is well known that corporate entrepreneurs must negotiate with executives, supervisors, coworkers, internal venture capitalists, new suppliers, new customers, and others. We suggest that accurate perception will permit entrepreneurs to distinguish “bluffs” from legitimate commitments, and therefore to correctly determine who is on their side and who is not. Accuracy in social perception may also assist corporate entrepreneurs to understand the factors and conditions that will motivate key stakeholders—a crucial task in corporate entrepreneurship which often demands a high level of conviction and commitment from everyone involved while offering relatively little in the way of immediate, tangible rewards. Together, these considerations point to the following hypothesis:

Hypothesis 3: The greater corporate entrepreneurs’ proficiency with respect to social perception (i.e. the ability to accurately “read” and understand others), the greater their financial success.

Emotional Intelligence

Emotional intelligence, or EQ (emotional quotient), is the ability to recognize and manage one’s own emotions, to motivate oneself, restrain itches, to recognize and influence others’ emotions, and to handle interpersonal relationships in an effective manner. Goleman (1995), the originator of the term EQ, contends that several skills relating to the emotional side of life are highly important. We hypothesize that EQ would be particularly useful in corporate entrepreneurship. For example, corporate entrepreneurs, more so than their coworkers, operate in highly unpredictable environments. It is precisely under such conditions that emotion, and EQ in particular, may take precedence over reason (i.e., cognitive intelligence, as measured by IQ; Goleman, 1995). Since high-stress tasks lead to emotional outbursts (Zillmann, 1993), it seems especially important for corporate entrepreneurs to be able to control their own emotions, or at least, their overt expression.

We also argue that corporate entrepreneurs should have high EQ because it is crucial that they effectively influence the emotional states of key stakeholders. For example, a key objective that corporate entrepreneurs often face is that of generating strong “buy-in”—enthusiasm, conviction, and motivation—among those who work with them. Findings from studies of a wide range of occupations, ranging from car salespersons to family physicians, suggest that enthusiastic persons are more successful than those who are not (Friedman et al., 1980). Hence, it stands to reason that teams of corporate entrepreneurs who have a high EQ—the ability to express emotions clearly and appropriately—may have an edge over those who are not (Friedman et al., 1980; Kring, Smith, & Neale, 1994). On the basis of these and related considerations, the following hypothesis is suggested:

Hypothesis 4: The higher corporate entrepreneurs’ EQ (e.g., the ability to regulate their own and others’ emotions, and the capacity for self-motivation), the greater the funding they will secure from their stakeholders.

To recap, in agreement with much research in work behavior, teams of corporate entrepreneurial do not operate in a context-less vacuum. Instead, they actively influence their social-professional space and thus, we suggest, their likelihood to attained access to resources. Teams made of more efficacious and socially adept individuals will be more effective at influencing their organization-wide constituencies and have greater access to and control over a broad array of resources and opportunities.

Intervention

The intervention was comprised of three parts. The foundation portion, or first part, reviews for the employees the key success factors for new projects. The company portion, or second part, reviews the organizational and cultural factors affecting the success of new projects. In the final portion, the employees develop a business plan and attempt to obtain funding for their own project in teams comprised of 3–6 members (i.e., corporate entrepreneurs). The intervention was given over a 12-week period, meeting for several hours each week. Start-up funding from $20,000 to $1,100,000 was obtained for 23 of the 36 projects at the end of the 12-week intervention.

Part I—Foundation

The principal purpose of this portion is to allow the employees to learn the key success factors associated with successful projects by discussing key articles in the literature. Employees were encouraged to choose projects that offer a unique product advantage to the customer, where there is good market and technical synergy and where the market conditions are favorable. Further they were encouraged to optimize speed to the market in their proposal by trading off market dynamics against costs and competitor strengths. The major emphasis was concentrated on the factors that the corporate entrepreneur could influence during the conceptualization of the idea. Activities related to market test and market launch were excluded since they dealt with factors important to later stages of the development process. Based upon this foundation, it was felt that the employees would understand the key issues associated with successful projects and be able to better self-select the higher potential ones. These concepts were further reinforced when the employees evaluated successful and unsuccessful project in their own companies.

Part II—Organizational and Cultural Factors

In order to be successful in acquiring resources, the corporate entrepreneur needs to understand the often-prevalent difficulty that corporations have with new projects that are out of sequence with the funding cycle. Organizational and cultural factors (Burgelman, 1984) along with management behaviors (MacMillan & George, 1985; Venkatraman, Shane, McGrath, & MacMillan, 1993) are reviewed since they play a significant role in determining new product success. Employees then studied their respective organizational structure so that they can better understand the obstacles and hurdles that they are likely to encounter. All projects required an executive champion (i.e., an active liaison between the newly emerging team and the corporation). The rationale is that since corporate entrepreneurship typically involves activities that disobey “normal rules and procedures” and occasionally violate organizational power structure, the executive champions can help to attenuate and absorb some of the risk. Venkataraman, MacMillian, and McGrath (1992) highlighted the need for champions by indicating that “new ideas are resisted within the organization and are often viewed with suspicion, a new venture idea requires one or more powerful agents” (p. 503). Others suggested that finding a sponsor is critical for securing resources for new products (Tighe, 1998).

Part III—Business Plan Development

Developing a business plan for the new idea represents the final project of the intervention. The proficiency of developing the idea into business terms has been shown to be important to new product development success definition (Bacon, Beckman, Mowery, & Wilson, 1994; Brown & Eisenhardt, 1995; Song & Parry, 1996). The business plan involves a clear product definition (Bacon, Beckman, Mowery & Wilson, 1994) and emphasizes the risk and assumptions (MacMillan, Block & Narashimha, 1986; McGrath & MacMillian, 1995) associated with start-up rather than focusing on elaborate financials. The participants were required to complete the business plan and attempt to obtain funding.

Procedures and Measures

At the very beginning of our 12-week intervention, participants were asked to complete a questionnaire that assessed their self-efficacy, persuasion, social perception, and emotional intelligence. We assumed that using the questionnaire early would reduce post hoc recall biases stemming from respondents’ knowledge as to whether their project was funded or not. Items measuring self-efficacy were adopted from Maurer and Pierce (1998), whereas persuasion, social perception, and emotional intelligence were adapted from widely used measures of social skills (Baron & Markman, in press; Riggio, 1986). Table 4 depicts the questions that made up these constructs. All the constructs are unidimensional and with an acceptable level of reliability. Completed questionnaires were obtained from 154 participants who attend the intervention.

Analysis

Prior to analyses, all variables were examined through various SPSS programs for accuracy of data entry, missing values, and fit between their distributions and the assumptions of regression analysis. This led us to use log transformation for funding level. As our analysis was based on 36 teams (154 individuals) and four variables, the sample size provided more than the minimum 5:1 ratio of cases to variables suggested by most experts (e.g., Hair, Anderson, Tatham, & Black, 1995). A standard hierarchical regression was performed where a log transformation of the amount of funding secured was regressed on self-efficacy, persuasion, social perception, and emotional intelligence.

The means, standard deviations, and correlation matrix for the variables are shown in Table 1. The mean size of the funding that teams secured was $108,460. In the present case our primary focus was in testing the overall hypothesis that a specific set of social skills were related to funding level. Table 2 displays the regression coefficients (B-weights), standard errors, standardized regression coefficients (Betas), and the overall adjusted R². As shown in Table 2, two of our variables—self-efficacy and persuasion—were significant predictors of funding, and our model accounts for almost 20% of the variance in funding level. Unfortunately, our other two variables (social perception and EQ) were not significant. Hence, our findings lend support for hypotheses 1 and 2, but led us to reject hypothesis 3 and 4.

Relative innovativeness of the projects may have influenced the results. Projects were grouped in Table 3 into six distinct categories using the format suggested by Griffin and Page (1996). Table 3 may be further subdivided into high risk (i.e. new to the world and new to the company) and low risk projects (i.e. add to existing product lines, improvements to existing products, repositioning and cost reductions). Low risk projects constitute 83% of the total projects with 70% obtaining funding. In contrast, high-risk projects constituted 17% of the total with 33% of the projects obtaining funding. Funding of mostly low risk projects is not surprising due to the short time frame of the intervention.

The aim of this study was to examine the relationships between four social constructs— self-efficacy, persuasion, social perception, and EQ—of team members and the amount of funding these teams obtain after a 12-week intervention. Results showed that teams’ self-efficacy and persuasion, but not social perception or EQ, were significant predictors of funding secured at the end of the intervention. Thus, it seems that self-efficacy and persuasion at the individual level were related to teams’ success at securing capital for their newly developed business ideas.

As the predictors were measured prior to the beginning of the intervention (to assure that there was no retrospective recall biases), our findings suggest the predicting corporate teams’ success in attaining seed capital is less uncertain than we originally thought. Indeed, the high correlations between self-efficacy and persuasion and funding (r = .33 and .36 respectively; p = .05) suggest that these variables are significant predictors of funding level. Thus, our study implies that we may be able to improve predictions regarding which teams get funded. Seen in this light, future research should attempt to further assess team characteristics and their success.

Our findings that self-efficacy is positively related to the amount of funding teams secured after our intervention complements earlier research advocating the importance of the self-efficacy and task performance (cf., Bandura, 1997). As explained earlier, the importance of this construct is underscored by the fact that similar individuals with similar skills performing various tasks under comparable conditions often differ greatly in their success, depending on their self-efficacy (Bandura, 1997). With this finding in mind, the conversion of abstract ideas into products and services is a function of strong personal conviction. Since self-efficacy is crucial for the pursuits of challenging attainments it is not surprising that it was a strong and significant predictor of successful teams; teams were able to attract capital from their stakeholders. Indeed, our results suggest that teams comprised of highly efficacious individuals had significantly higher chance of securing capital than teams comprised of less efficacious members. Based on this finding we suggest that strong self-efficacy may well be crucial to success in other entrepreneurial undertakings (e.g., Chen, Greene, & Crick, 1998).

Our findings that social influence is positively related to funding complements earlier research advocating the importance of the executive champion to the funding decision. Using a similar intervention with a large number of teams (N = 49), Koen (1999) showed that forming a compatible relationship with the executive champion (i.e., liaisons) was significantly (p = 0.02) related to the funding decision. The importance of the executive champion to entirely new projects in a corporation is a consistent theme supported by other researchers (Knight, 1987; MacMillian & George, 1985; Tighe 1998; Venkataraman, MacMillian, & McGrath, 1992). Teams skilled at social influence are better able to develop and reinforce a positive interaction with the executive champion. In fact, the higher a team’s social influence skills the better their ability to convince other people in the organization that this project merited funding.

Limitations

Intervention research is inherently incomplete depictions of the “general” world. Our study was designed to examine the relationship of various individual-level constructs as they apply to teams’ success of attaining corporate funding. By necessity, then, our intervention was restricted by the setting and scope and leads us to overlook some potentially important factors. For instance, both the sample size and project time horizon limit generalization, which suggests that the study needs to be replicated with a larger sample size and over a longer time frame to validate our predictions. In addition, we did not assess project risk, and thus risk level may co-vary with funding.

Implications

This research is important for a couple of reasons. It provides a unique opportunity to extend our knowledge and theory regarding firm growth and success in initiating new projects within large corporations. This is particularly important in turbulent periods where large firms are downsizing as corporate entrepreneurs generate new capital to their organizations and provide new employment. Our study also replicates and extends prior work in entrepreneurship (cf., Koen, 2000). Finally, findings from our research and intervention are highly authentic. The study was carried out in the context of established corporations, where successful teams of entrepreneurs develop business initiatives in which the successful plans lead to actual funding. Thus the research permitted a direct comparison of teams who secured capital, and who therefore were responsible for inter-business creation, with teams who tried, but failed to attain capital.

The only other new product development research which exists in large corporations is the work of Stevens, Burley and Divine (1999) who looked at the personality and creativity of the individual analysts who evaluated the projects and found a strong correlation with success and profitability utilizing a creativity index measure. Similar personality tests were not conducted thus it is impossible to compare our results with there study. Nevertheless this research stream has begun to identify unique differences between individuals and their likelihood of being successful. Perhaps these studies will encourage other researches to begin to evaluate the cognitive issues associated with new product development.

1. Each particular project is focused on one company—though may of the project teams consist of employees from multiple companies.

2. The Venture Capital Start-Up is included since one of the students left his large company during the time the course was being taught, began working at the start-up and convinced his team to try to get a new project started within his new company.

CONTACT: Peter A. Koen, Wesley J. Howe School of Technology Management, Stevens Institute of Technology, Castle Point on Hudson, Hoboken, NJ 07030; (T) 201-216-5406; pkoen@stevens-tech.edu.

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