As the broad link between small and medium-sized firm activity and key policy goals such as employment or economic growth has become generally accepted, the conversation has focused on a more nuanced understanding of the entrepreneurial engines of economic activity. A significant body of research looking at antecedents to venture performance has identified that entrepreneurial talent variables account for meaningful differences in venture performance and that significant heterogeneity exists across performance measures. These are important issues for institutions and policy makers seeking to achieve specific economic goals (e.g., survival or growth of ventures, employment or revenue). Using meta-analysis, we integrate this work to view connections between aspects of entrepreneurial talent and different performance outcomes. Our investigation includes 50,045 firms (K of 183 studies) and summarizes 1,002 observations of small and medium-sized firms. Analysis of these data yields an unexpectedly weak connection between education and performance. Furthermore, growth, scale (number of employees) and sales outcomes are significantly related to planning skills, while profit and other financial and qualitative measures are strongly connected with the network surrounding the firm founder. Moreover, we observe that entrepreneurial talent is more relevant in developing economies. Keywords: Entrepreneur; Economic growth; Talent; Meta-analysis; SME; Performance.
Stuart Read is an American and a Professor at IMD in Lausanne Switzerland. Stuart received his PhD from the University of Washington and also holds an AB Computer Science with a minor in Economics from Harvard University. Stuart Read's research is focused on effectuation. Derived from the practices employed by expert entrepreneurs, effectuation is a set of heuristics that describe how people make decisions and take action in situations of true uncertainty. As uncertainty is pervasive across all aspects of firms, markets and organizations, his work on effectuation applies to, and has been published in a variety of disciplinary areas. Professor Read has nearly twenty years of industry experience, having participated in the creation of six high technology start-up firms. Four of those firms were acquired by industry leaders including Sun Microsystems and Lotus Development Corporation. Two are publicly traded. He also spent six years with enterprise database software provider, Oracle Corporation. http://www.imd.org/about/facultystaff/read.cfm