Entrepreneurial Team Dynamics and New Venture Creation Process in Digital Entrepreneurial Teams: An Exploratory Study Within a Startup Incubator

New venture creation plays a significant role in the today’s economy because it accounts for a considerable portion of new product innovations. Despite many success stories, many new ventures fail before they have fulfilled their greatest potential. Overriding the myth of the “lonely hero entrepreneur” and shifting attention to the “entrepreneurial team”, this research attempts to explore several factors that influence team dynamics and affect the new venture creation process. Digital entrepreneurial team dynamics are examined in the early stages of the new venture creation process, called nascent entrepreneurship, starting from developing a minimum viable product until having the first revenues or quitting their effort. Given such direction, comparative case studies are undertaken that cover 12 different digital entrepreneurial teams which, in an incubator environment that can be regarded as an under-researched context of digital entrepreneurial teams. All these teams operate in the domain of Information and communications technology. An in-depth analysis of these digital entrepreneurial teams suggest various factors (differences in the motives and expectations, improper leadership, inefficient communication, commitment, team structure) to have a serious effect on team dynamics and their willingness to continue or quit. As a result, this paper assists nascent entrepreneurs in evaluating their potential, identifying their team dynamics and supporting their decision on moving to a sustainable new venture creation.