Paper title and abstract:

Go Hybrid! Founders’ Identity and Radical Innovation in Technology Based New Ventures

The research aims at exploring the implications of hybrid founders’ identities on new ventures’ radical innovation. Our study is carried out on a unique sample of 398 new technology based firms operating in Italy. With supportive empirical results concerning the significance of hybrid social identities for radical innovation, our research offers two important contributions. First, it answers the call for research that examines hybrid identities by increasing the knowledge on how combinations of different views, beliefs, and motivations result in different outcomes. Second, it adds to the understanding of the relationship between founders’ social identity and entrepreneurial outcomes, by focusing on an outcome at the organizational level, while so far research has mostly focused on individual level/intermediate outcomes and by suggesting possible mechanisms through which identity hybridity can foster radical innovation.

About Daniel Pittino:

Daniel Pittino is Senior Associate Professor of Business Administration at the Center of Family Entrepreneurship and Ownership at Jönköping International Business School, Sweden, and associate professor of Organization and Human Resource Management at the University of Udine, Italy. His main research interests are strategic leadership, organizational behavior and performance in entrepreneurial and family firms, and the organization and governance of entrepreneurship and innovation in new ventures. He is currently member of the editorial board of Journal of Family Business Strategy and Journal of Management and Governance.

This seminar represents an integrative and important part of the House of Innovation's strategy to build a research environment through engagement with prominent guests and their work.

This seminar is a part of the Academic Seminar Series offered in cooperation with the Stockholm School of Entrepreneurship.