Research has shown entrepreneurial passion leads to success. But now, there are new questions about whether the passion equals success equation still applies to entrepreneurial teams.
A new study by the Harvard Business Review looked at how passion affects new business teams by surveying 107 tech firms in an accelerator program in the Netherlands. The result: Diversity in passion levels and what employees are passionate about negatively effects the team’s overall performance.
The report looks at three types of entrepreneurial passion—passion for inventing, for founding, and for developing. The study found that when team members held a mix of these passions as well as a varying amount for each area, there was a clear negative effect.
Teams with a mixed level of passion (some members were more passionate than others) saw short-term performance drops. Those with members who varied in what they were passionate about saw worse long-term performance drops.
The HBR study reaches several conclusions, including that entrepreneurs should consider passion diversity when bringing in new team members, investors should be wary of that mix as well, and accelerator programs and boot camps should design courses on team composition to add value to their work. Read the full report.
