Empowering Leadership in a University Spin-off Project: A Case Study of Team Building

Abstract

This case study explores university spin-off (USO) team building from leadership and intrapreneurship perspectives. The study sheds light on a USO team member’s view of team building, examining the inherent tensions and challenges, but also the best practices of team building in general. Thus, the case is based on narrative study and evocative autoethnography, providing knowledge from an insider´s perspective of USO team building and also team leadership, especially for supporting intrapreneurship. The intrapreneurship allows an employee to act like an entrepreneur—in this case, within a USO project team. Instead of considering team building as a completely rational process, the case stresses the need to take into account soft aspects, like emotions, in USO team building. This case study should assist other innovative teams in the future to process narratively different factors, relationships and team behaviour within innovation project teams.

Keywords

Empowerment emotions intrapreneurship narrative study team building university spin-off

Introduction

In recent decades, an increasing number of studies have examined questions relating to university spin-offs’ (USOs’) development, growth and performance (Mathisen & Rasmussen, 2019). Universities increasingly support the creation of spin-offs to commercialize their research results. Alongside teaching and research, growing emphasis has been placed on the ‘third mission’ of universities (Visintin & Pittino, 2014, p. 31); for example, the University of Eastern Finland has stated:

The innovation activities … are based on the university’s societal mission. The university’s research and education meet the needs of society and industry, enable the creation of new solutions, support the growth of know-ledge economy and strengthen regional clusters. The knowledge and expertise generated at the University of Eastern Finland constitute a growth platform for novel business activities and entrepreneurship. (UEF, 2019)

USOs are usually formed to commercialize technology developed by publicly funded research insti-tutions like universities (Walter, Auer, & Ritter, 2006). USOs are typically established by a team to develop and commercialize the potential of their ideas from a business perspective (Druilhe & Garnsey, 2004; Visintin & Pittino, 2014). High-performing teams encompass, and are critically determined by, both scientific and commercial competencies (Mathisen & Rasmusen, 2019). Many studies have examined USO teams and the effects of their members’ cooperation on the USOs (Mathisen & Rasmusen, 2019). According to Walker, Davis, and Stevenson (2017), team cooperation leads to positive work outcomes, especially in innovative projects. However, further study is needed, focussing on the impact of interaction within USO teams, especially from a management and/or leadership perspective. Although research on USO team development and USOs exists, no study has focussed specifically on team building from an insider’s perspective of a USO team and team leadership.

This intensive case study sheds light on the process of formation of a project team, examining its tensions and challenges and the best practices of team building in general, but the focus is on providing knowledge of team leadership from an insider´s perspective. This knowledge is based on the first author’s observations, discussions and experiences of team building and management in an innovative project during 2016–2019. Thus, the data provide a unique insider ‘active-member-researcher’s’ authentic perspective on the case. The case was chosen to illustrate team building and intrapreneurship, especially intrapreneurship attitudes within the team and the team’s leadership. One purpose of this case study was to provide an example that will assist other innovative teams in the future to process narratively different factors, relationships and team behaviours, where relevant, within the innovation team.

This article is structured as follows. In the next section, the theoretical framework of the study will be introduced. Thereafter, the methodology of the case study will be explained. In the empirical section, the analysis will be discussed and, finally, the article will provide a discussion with some recommendations for future studies.

Team Building that Supports Intrapreneurship in USO Teams

The context of the study relates to team building in a USO, intrapreneurship (entrepreneurship in the USO team) and the important role of team leadership. There are many models and a large amount of studies focussing on team development. For example, Tuckman’s (1965) hierarchical stage model suggests that group development goes through a series of defined activities through its lifetime. However, team and group research theorists such as Gersick (1988) and Mcgrath (1991) have suggested that processes are more complex than hierarchal forms for team development. In team development, it is important to identify the processes which fulfil socio-emotional functions in the team and between team members. Previous studies (e.g., Nam, Lyons, Hwang, & Kim, 2009) have analyzed socio-emotional (a focus on the interpersonal relationships among group members) and task-oriented (a focus on achieving the goal) communication using interaction process analysis (IPA) by Bales (1950). The socio-emotional processes, as trust and cohesion, are necessary for the relationship building within teams. However, for experiential and emotional aspect of team dynamics, more studies are still needed.

Team factors such as team composition—including heterogeneity, team tenure and size—and team processes with psychological dimensions have received considerable research attention (e.g., Ancona, 1990; Ancona, & Caldwell, 1992). Research has shown that highly diverse teams carry risks of relationship and goal conflicts, not only in their structure, but also in the dynamics of team building (Nikiforou, Zabara, Clarysse, & Gruber, 2018); thus, homogeneity in team members’ characteristics increases cooperative interaction (Williams & O’Reilly, 1998) and makes communication easier (Zenger & Lawrence, 1989). In entrepreneurial USO teams, the development of shared norms between academic and non-academic members poses challenges due to the individual interaction norms and values (Visintin & Pittino, 2014, p. 34). In team development, a USO teams’ composition is typically homogeneous in the beginning, becoming more heterogeneous and changing over time (Vanaelest et al., 2006).

According to previous studies (Visintin & Pittino, 2014, p. 34), the presence of academic and non-academic team members may facilitate the integration of scientific and economic concepts, thus suppor-ting the research and business goals of the USO team. The studies focussing on USO team formation and development have highlighted the importance of people with entrepreneurial experience in the founding team (Clarysse & Moray, 2004). The inclusion of non-academic team members increases entrepreneurial orientation (Wiklund & Shephard, 2003). Wennberg, Wiklund, and Wright (2011) stress the need to integrate people with prior commercial experience into USO teams. However, university stakeholders like students can also contribute to spin-off development, for instance, through their theses and projects, even if those students are relatively unfamiliar with academic entrepreneurship literature (Rasmussen & Wright, 2015, p. 794).

When entrepreneurship supports the development of a new venture in an existing organization (Parker, 2011, p. 19), intrapreneurship acts in an entrepreneurial way within an existing organizational context that already has its own policies, language, procedures and bureaucracy (Antoncic & Hisrich, 2001). Entrepreneurial orientation describes a firm’s organizational autonomy, willingness to take risks, inno-vativeness and proactive assertiveness that allow for a higher level of competence and performance (Walter, Auer, & Ritter, 2006), while intrapreneurship focusses on the individual level. According to Amo (2010, p. 148), intrapreneurship often ‘single[s] out the individual most likely to engage in inno-vation processes in a proactive way’. Thus, an intrapreneur takes risks and implements innovation in organizations. Intrapreneurs are active, action-oriented, restless and persistent (e.g., Pinchot, 1985). In this article, the authors define intrapreneurship as entrepreneurial attitudes and behaviours in USO teams and team dynamics.

In innovative teams, team leaders play an important role in ensuring that the structure of the work environment, the atmosphere and the climate are such that creative outcomes can and do occur success-fully (Shalley & Gilson, 2004). For success, it is important that management empowers and supports intrapreneurial individuals (Buekens, 2014). By articulating a compelling vision, emphasizing collective identities, expressing confidence and optimism and consistently reinforcing core values and ideals, leaders can ensure employee motivation and performance in organizations (Bass, 1985).

Research Methodology

This case study is based on the narrative of a business student (the first author) and his project journey throughout 2016–2019, including his personal experiences, discussions and observations. The research is ethnographic in nature, including such components as explanations about the innovator’s work in the USO context. Furthermore, elements such as discussions, conversations, studies and observations are strongly autoethnographic. Thus, the author does not try to eliminate himself from the study, and the narrative research supports a phenomenographic approach.

The first author has participated in regional organization development activity and entrepreneurial activity on many different levels during the last 6 years. That experience has enabled the author to interpret the interactivity and outcomes of relationships between the environment and the project from several perspectives. However, the first author admits that it is difficult to objectively analyze something as personal as one’s own working environment.

During the observation, how the team operated and how the workload was identified and shared between the team members prompted the first author to relate to the innovation itself, rather than the clustering. While the first author concentrated on narratives from an insider’s perspective, the second author analyzed the process from an external perspective, thus strengthening the objectivity and focus of the study; hence, the narrative relating to team building and team leadership was based on autoethnography—an insider’s ethnography. Autoethnography is a form of research in which an author does self-reflection and records personal experiences, connecting them to wider cultural, political and social meanings and understandings (Ellis, 2004). In evocative autoethnography, narrative presentations are drawn from conversations and these evoke emotional responses (Ellis, 2004); thus, this research uses the first author’s personal experience to describe cultural beliefs, practices and experiences as a member of the team—revealing, acknowledging and valuing his relationships with others.

In this case study, the ethical issues were particularly important. The team building narrative, written by the first author, extensively revealed his personal feelings and relationships with other team members. The authors made every effort to ensure that all the methods used were ethically sustainable and followed established scientific guidelines for data acquisition, research and evaluation. The authors protected the team members’ anonymity and did not expose the research data in any way that might cause harm for organizations, team members or other stakeholders who participated in, or were mentioned in, this narrative research.

Team Building Narrative

In early 2016, a group of five people, including a professor of medical physics, a postdoctoral researcher of medical physics, a doctoral candidate in medical physics and two master’s degree business students decided to apply for funding for the commercialization of their research. The professor promised to hire the business students after the funding was granted.

The group concluded that there was an opportunity to connect research-based algorithms and existing technology to create new, innovative technology. The technology measures and analyzes movement disorders, such as those found in Parkinson’s disease (PD), in patients’ homes using electromyography and motion signals. There is a lack of sensitive, accurate and objective methods for clinicians to quantify the progress, severity and treatment of PD. The research conducted between 2006 and 2016 developed quantitative diagnostic methods and objectively evaluated the effects of PD treatment. The background research for the technology included nine clinical trials in four countries, a significant patient database, and a number of international scientific publications. A manager from the university’s innovation service encouraged and assisted the group in applying for institutional funding.

However, the funding application was rejected twice, whereupon one researcher left to take up another job. Finally, in July 2017, after 1 year and 5 confrontational months, the funding was granted, and the research commenced. The author immediately signed an 18-month contract of employment with the university. Surprisingly, the supervising professor declined to hire the second business student.

Team

In July 2017, the core project team consisted mainly of three people: first, the leading industrial researcher who was experienced in using electromyography for PD; this postdoctoral researcher of medical physics provided the technological championship for the team through her irreplaceable and revolutionary analytical knowledge. Second, a professor from the same research group facilitated relationships with the university and university hospital based on his extensive experience. The professor’s external position was appreciated and was a definite asset for the spin-off team. The aim of the team was to launch a commercial start-up after the project ended in January 2019. In principle, a technological champion could build, verify and perhaps clinically validate the solution for global market needs; however, to enable a technological workflow, the third person, the author, in the team was given the title of commercial champion. Tasks such as business development, entrepreneurship and networking fell on the shoulders of the commercial champion.

However, soon after the project launch it became clear that a team of three people alone could not accomplish the project objectives. After the loss of one researcher and a business developer, the team was short-handed. Moreover, a tight project schedule of 18 months, with a limited budget of 400,000 euros to create a new type of neurodegenerative analysis and medical software, forced the team to seek additional assistance and consultation to support the commercialization of the project. These roles on the project were filled by two software developers.

Recruitment Process

In early 2018, the core team consisted of five people, as specified in the original funding application. The software developers were recruited from the University’s School of Computing, where both were studying for their master’s degree in computer science. Both officially joined the team as trainees and their studies were partially suited to the project’s development. In hindsight, as project manager, it is easy to claim that these two hires were essential for the progress of the project, but the recruitment process could have been better managed, considering that ambitious junior professionals may have goals that do not relate to academia alone.

However, based on the team meeting notes of the author, the successful implementation of this constitutive angle of entrepreneurship was indescribably difficult for the supervising professor; for example, retaining the services of brilliant computer professionals was a challenge for the project because the professor did not want to take the risk of promising something we could not keep. Moreover, based on the notes and closing statements during the meetings, practices of leading entrepreneurial team and academic research group presumably have differences. For instance, the topic of research ethics has been used in most of the team meetings regarding recruitment and upcoming start-up. Documented comments and discussions show that the team does not have a unanimous approach on how to fit research ethics and entrepreneurship together. Usually, the author was documenting all the sweeping notes from team meetings and discussions during the project. Further, leadership was present in most conversations. For example, practical issues, such as the use of soft skills (empathy, team leadership etc.) relating to social capital, are important in team leadership, and in the project, based on the comments of the commercial project manager, but not the experienced research group leader. The rigid hierarchy and organizational silos of universities do not necessarily foster the unity, participation and appreciation that keep teams together. In the modern world, talented software specialists are often poached, very early in their studies, to work for a private sector and the threat of external recruitment is continuously present.

Based on the conversations with recruits, it can be difficult to meet the ambitions and support the career expectations of students, in order to retain computing personnel, without a model of how to set appropriate goals beyond academic ones. According to the experience of the first author, a common team vision, an open atmosphere and empathetic leadership might have provided an effective approach.

According to technological project management, it was very clear from the beginning of the project that, after the spin-off, the company would need specially trained personnel to support the technological champion. However, this matter is still pending because the supervisor is reluctant to recruit people, share his vision of the forthcoming business and delegate the responsibility for recruitment. Based on the steering group meetings and meetings with entrepreneurial mentors, decisions should be based on a strong entrepreneurial approach to facilitate successful proactive recruiting, especially when it comes to key personnel. To the author, it seems paradoxical that some academics need clear answers and continuous support to complete their logical deductions before they are willing to pursue a vision or take an entrepreneurial leap of faith, even though they claim that they wish to be entrepreneurs.

Numerous team meetings are pointing that the academic reputation of project supervisor and techno-logical manager is in danger in front of entrepreneurship. Commercialization needs promises of deliver-ing something uncertain, service for an example, and that is why the risk of entrepreneurship has been seen as being larger on the technical side. The meeting note diary includes comments of technological management, that failing in start-up service delivery will destroy the whole career of technological management. However, the mentoring and steering groups are convinced that successful entrepreneurship requires learning to fail continuously, until the successful practices are found. Furthermore, conversations with business advisors and entrepreneurial mentors raised a question of whether long-term academic reputations and unclear visions may be the reason, in some cases, for the difficulty in recruiting people. Based on these conversations, university researchers often work with best practice, and many of them are reputable researchers with a strong vision and excellent careers. However, the conclusions with mentors were that some, even rare, academics are in danger to be alienated from practice, although they may eventually become policymakers, project supervisors and professors. Instead of merely yearning to prove scientific facts, supervisors should tell and sell their vision for entrepreneurship and successful recruitment. From that perspective, some researchers are in danger of becoming prisoners of their own academic reputations, inhibiting technology transfer and, moreover, barring themselves from entrepreneurship.

Soft Skills that Attract or Repel Employees

In 2018, the author spent 8 weeks at the European Institute of Innovation and Technology’s Digital Health Validator (2018). The team-oriented incubation programme included 10 USO teams from different European countries and employed a very intensive schedule. During the programme, the author collaborated with numerous stakeholders from Ireland, the Netherlands, France and the UK to discuss successful team building, successful entrepreneurship and technology transfer. Furthermore, the author observed the other USO teams closely, especially regarding their team dynamics and structure. It appeared that a lack of soft skills was common across these USOs, as was the global challenge of recruiting and retaining employees in research-based start-ups. The soft skill of team building in the incubation programme related to assignment of responsibilities, mutual respect, ideas for revenue sharing, reward and appreciation and a relaxed atmosphere.

Regarding the soft skills mentioned above, during and after the programme, the author recognized similar challenges in his home USO project, especially with regard to team building and entrepreneurial spirit. For instance, at the beginning of the project, the commercial and technological manager did not clarify responsibilities, milestones or tasks with the supervising professor before he left for vacation. The assignment of responsibilities was expected to emerge spontaneously, in experience of the research group colleagues of the author. Mutual respect and teamwork were other soft skills that were not discussed.

Based on the meeting notes, revenue sharing was perhaps the most difficult issue to deal with. The other half of the team stated continuously that the economic value of USO has already been established. Moreover, the topics of team dynamics and revenue creation were rarely discussed by the team. Concerning reward and appreciation, salary was the only reward granted to project employees by the project team. Regarding entrepreneurship, it was clear that the topic of revenue sharing was challenging, while the team supervisors seemed to believe that developing innovative technology was sufficient, with no necessity for entrepreneurship or team building. Concerning soft skills and work–life balance, at the beginning of the project, a colleague warned the author that the work culture of the research group afforded little relaxation time and no one would offer it.

Responsibilities

A common start-up vision should include the preferences of key employees concerning responsibilities and tasks if an employer wishes to retain them for long-term. Based on the meeting notes, sometimes, the power distance between an experienced academic and an entrepreneurial person who lacks a strong academic background can become an obstacle to continue the discussion. The author served for more than 8 years in the military as a non-commissioned officer and had an Army Academy education. During military service, the author’s main responsibilities were to teach survival skills for conscripts, and help them to understand how to build successful teams for unstable and challenging circumstance. The author taught leadership and self-driven thinking, and how to be effective and innovative with limited resources, like entrepreneurs. Each team was provided a vision of team success before the mission and responsibilities were clearly defined and understood. The author also has a Bachelor’s Degree in Leadership Education from the National Defence University, Finland. Dialogues are relatively formal in military organizations, yet there are many similarities in organizational behaviour between experienced academics and senior military officers in terms of expressing opinions and managing teams. Based on the author’s observations during military service, if power distance is not acknowledged by the superior, it may cause fear of failure or avoidance of discussions in employees. Although respect-based power distance can be a strength in leadership, it should not become an obstacle to interaction or inhibit employees’ personal growth or empowerment.

Respect

The author recognized a few personal experiences concerning respect. In 2018, during a team meeting, the supervisor presented a verbal evaluation of the project managers. He stated: ‘I do not trust your [the author’s] work style enough to let you do self-driven work, unlike your colleague’, by explaining that they had more working experience together. Another interesting situation concerned the author’s effectiveness after the successful application for the health programme. The project was announced as one of the top 10 digital health start-ups in Europe and, hence, to reinforce the importance of the project for the team, the author sacrificed his personal summer vacation to maintain the team’s momentum. However, in a group meeting, the supervisor claimed that the author was taking days off and not doing his work. The supervisor added that ‘things must happen’ in front of the whole project team, immediately after the author raised the issue that, in start-ups, everyone must participate in selling. Moreover, the truth about days off was that the author had had no days off during that or the previous week or weekend. Furthermore, the working hours of project managers were 100 extra per month, because the project managers understood that a spin-off does not follow the usual office hours. The interpretation was that the supervisor became stressed because the technology transfer process was unclear.

The third example concerns the most difficult matter facing university technology transfer spin-offs—shareholding. Shareholding relates to respect as much as revenue sharing. The author used the entire mentoring network to develop a discussion about entrepreneurship and shareholding with his supervisor but, so far, without complete success. However, the founding team of three people initiated the shareholding discussion in the summer of 2018, with no common understanding of the proposed roles in the start-up. The conversation was very tense, with the technical team sitting on one side of the table, and the supervisor said to the author: ‘You may think you have achieved something, but the truth is that, according to my records, you are an outsider’. This statement followed 2 years of cooperation from the author. The author did not react to this feedback, but the conversation took place 1 week before the first investor debate. The technological management explained that most of the work for the valuation of the start-up was already done, and that the role and shareholding of the author are not significant unlike their roles and shareholdings. After this meeting, the discussion of shareholding was stalled for months.

Revenue Sharing

Using the business vision as a recruitment tool is ineffective if only part of the USO project team shares the vision. In this USO project, the project supervisor announced that he wanted to be a founding member of the forthcoming start-up, as did both of the project managers. Based on the meeting notes, in pre-liminary discussions inside the project team, the author was considered as the chief executive officer for the USO, the other project manager as the chief technology officer and the project supervisor as an advisor who would not resign his professorship. Moreover, the team discussed, and preliminarily decided, that the chief executive officer or technology officer would recruit for the USO, while the project supervisor would manage the recruitment process and make the final recruitment decision. As a result, the role of the project supervisor was significant for successful recruitment, especially because he could empower the relationship between employees and the forthcoming USO. The project managers shared their vision with key employees during their daily work on the USO project. However, the supervisor refused to discuss what positions people would hold in the start-up and did not share the organization’s vision, thus exacerbating the threat to employee retention.

Following the recruitment of new employees, project managers turned their attention to selling the USO’s vision to the employees without making the supervisor nervous. Employees spoke about their dreams of working in an innovative company and possibly becoming entrepreneurs. This particular USO could have improved recruitment and the commitment of employees, earlier and with less effort, by empowering employees and sharing the USO’s business vision openly. The steering group and project team mentors suggested that with a mutual plan and determination by the founders regarding business growth, it becomes possible to sell the idea of future positions and ‘dream jobs’ to young, self-confident professionals. However, the employer, the university’s project supervisor, prohibited the author from sharing future visions of entrepreneurship with software trainees. Within a few months, both the trainees applied for other jobs, which was shocking news because losing these employees was severely detrimental to the project. In fact, unlike other applicants, these brilliant software developers were selected because they were keen to work for the project. In autumn 2018, the other software specialist left to take up another job.

As a business developer, without the supervisor’s authorization, the author started to talk to the remaining employee, openly, about how the business could grow and what jobs might be available in the spin-off, what risks it might include and what opportunities it has. Unexpectedly, the employee started to attend meetings and appointments about the forthcoming business. After the employee was accepted by the start-up team, the employee ceased seeking other jobs. Although the idea of a future position attracted the employee, the author emphasizes that providing reasons for staying requires constant attention. Should the organization establish a model of how to implement and sell the idea of revenue sharing in USO projects, is a question worth studying more in future.

Reward

The fourth factor that could drive employees away is lack of reward. Within USOs and teams, the issue of reward can be controversial. Sometimes, the idea of taking emotional needs into account in social groups can be problematic, despite the research goals having been established. Most of the project founding team lunched together and behaved as equals. However, the supervisor did not value the key employees and stated that ‘software developers can be replaced easily’. This situation became very challenging from the point of view of the team’s leadership.

According to USO acceleration programmes, a lack of emotional interaction can be a critical weakness in start-up teams with diverse backgrounds, if it is not acknowledged. When it comes to emotional reward, there is a danger that superficial rewards, such as eating together or wearing the same logos, may appear negative to employees and be perceived as shallow or insincere. If the actions are not genuine, the reward may be ineffective. The author highlights that universities need to address these issues, but the challenge relates to how experienced academics, working on innovative projects, can effectively manage and lead people from outside the academic world. If the rewards relate only to non-human objectives, they may undermine employee retention.

Inequality was a challenge for intrapreneurship in this USO project. The project team took over a year to determine the project plan and apply for institutional funding. In the project plan, the commercial and technological elements were estimated to be approximately equal in terms of budgets and other resources, working hours, personnel, milestones and goals. However, during the project, the supervisor announced repeatedly that supporting the technical project manager and her employment were the primary goals of the project. Commercial events and meetings, for instance, did not receive nearly as much attention from the project supervisor as technology-related issues; for instance, the commercial manager e-mailed weekly reports to the supervisor regarding the progress of commercial tasks, but in subsequent meetings, it appeared that the supervisor had not read the reports. The commercial manager spent a lot of time preparing the updates for the supervisor, because he was working almost independently, but this sometimes caused conflicts because the supervisor believed that the commercial process was too rapid.

The author and several business and team developers coached the USO project team on the importance of all the team members feeling valued as individuals, and the importance of showing empathy for others. Requests for empathy, for an employee without a strong academic background, were sometimes met with comments such as ‘wasting an academic’s time … you are not married or do not have kids … or you simply fail to understand complicated phenomenon—unlike physicists’. Dealing with the emo-tional needs of employees in teams is difficult if the supervisor does not contribute. Paradoxically, based on the mentoring discussions, the upcoming spin-off team must collectively confront common challenges or the start-up may fail. The concept of meeting emotional needs and providing appropriate rewards should be clear and robust in USOs.

Work–Life Balance

In the case of the project team, work–life balance was a very controversial issue. Permission to take time off for personal matters was permitted, but was often accompanied by doubting questions such as: ‘Why do you need a day off?’ or ‘Where are you going?’ even if the reason was clearly private. Based on the acceleration programmes in which the team participated, employers should not question individual needs or force employees to explain why. Second, employers should distinguish between private time and working from home. In this case, the project managers often worked twice their contractual hours, and this sometimes necessitated working from home. However, the project supervisor did not respect the difference between relaxation time and working from home. It is clear that something was lacking within the project work culture, but what? A tacit rule of academia is that ‘failure is not an option’ and the author witnessed colleagues taking sick leave, sometimes for months, because of work burnout.

Long-term commitments require interaction between individuals inside the team. The expectation is that employees should maintain long-term commitments, but it is equally vital that an employer gives employees a good reason to stay. After almost 2 years as a business developer assigned to an open innovation laboratory, the author is still surprised at how unfamiliar academia is with recruitment strategy. The environment’s culture needs to become more interactive and open if the organization wishes to gain innovators’ commitment to entrepreneurship. Additionally, if researchers are not able to discuss entrepreneurship, even in principle, why should entrepreneurs dedicate themselves to innovation and entrepreneurship? Innovators should focus on improving the culture in order to retain employees instead of driving them away.

Complementary Roles in the Project Team

The medical regulatory and approval processes for medical devices are complex, but despite the regulatory strictness, amendments and changes are frequent; for instance, routines and habits arise from the team’s daily activities and these should be comprehensively in an organization’s quality management system. In late 2017, the project team started to cooperate with an experienced regulatory consulting firm, allowing the consultants to define the regulatory process for the project and help the project team to understand and follow the steps of the medical approval process.

In autumn 2017, the need for a market research specialist was recognized. Potential market segments had to be identified quite rapidly, including private and public special healthcare systems in different countries, pharmaceutical drug developers, industrial key opinion leaders and all of the stakeholders involved in the surgical and invasive treatments of PD. As mentioned earlier, the project team was supposed to have two commercial champions and two technological champions, who were expected to support each other. However, two key people left before the project started. The project team hired an experienced and well-known neuroscientist with a long career in pharmaceutical organizations to study and identify potential go-to markets for the project. This neuroscientist’s task was to assist the project team in understanding the value chain for movement disorders and create a solid business model for their innovative intrapreneurship.

Discussion and Recommendations

This case study has explored the building of a USO project team and team leadership. A number of studies have examined USO teams from different perspectives, using various research methods, including ethnographic studies; for example, Clarysse and Moray (2004) followed a research-based spin-off from its initiation and through the start-up using participant observation over a period of 20 months. They closely followed the founding team and took part in founding team activities. However, studying a USO team from an insider’s perspective using evocative autoethnography, this study closes the research gap of USO team building. The case narrative provides an example of the tensions and challenges, but also the best practices, of team building.

The structure of USO project teams varies. In a typical team, while one part of the team is academically oriented, without an entrepreneurial focus, the other part is entrepreneurial, with experience in leadership and teamwork, but a weak academic background. Furthermore, one member of the team generally has a strong academic background and offers technological championship with an entrepreneurial orientation. Hence, a typical team has academic and entrepreneurial members, and an integrative member who connects the two facets in certain situations when the leadership of a commercial project manager is inadequate for generating cooperation with academic partners. The entrepreneurial and academic responsibilities cannot rest with one person, so the building of an entrepreneurial and innovative team is essential, despite the challenges.

The first author has written the narrative, which is based on unique data collected by the first author, stating his subjective view of the process and explaining how the project team was created and developed. Furthermore, team dynamics and roles during the team building process have been described. The team narrative reveals team dynamics, and also the intense relationship between the first author (team member hired for commercialization) and the project supervisor in the USO team. However, the narrative’s subjective data is valuable in providing important information about a commercialization member’s experiences of USO team building in a university context.

Clarysse and Moray (2014), who conducted an ethnographic study of research-based spin-off team building, stressed that, in the start-up phase, it is crucial that all members of the team communicate and find their own roles in the company. Work hours and who should control them is often a source of conflict (Clarysse & Moray, 2004, p. 69). This case study concerning USO team dynamics and collabo-ration shows that the academic culture of the university did not encourage fixed working hours.

Our case study shows that team leadership and human resources management are very important factors in USO team building. Collaborative teams that share responsibilities may experience an enhanced ability to innovate (Batarseh, Usher, & Daspit, 2017). Previous research (Batarseh et al., 2017) has shown that trust, communication and commitment are valid indicators of underlying collaboration capabilities in innovative, deep-level diverse teams.

The case study supports discussions of empowerment in USO team building. However, university researchers and practitioners should acknowledge that the effectiveness of empowering leadership cannot be realized to its fullest extent without considering the multifaceted nature of empowering leadership (Cheonga, Yammarinob, Dionneb, Spainc, & Tsai, 2019). Empowerment is positively linked to the efficiency of teams and knowledge sharing (Zhang & Bartol, 2010). Empowering leadership consists of procedures that encourage employees and support their efforts at work (McFairlin & Coget, 2013). Empowering leadership consists of power sharing, such as delegating and sharing authority between employees and encouraging them to make autonomous decisions. Supportive motivation from leaders encourages employees to make decisions and take the initiative in developing self-leadership skills and other desirable work-related behaviours (Amundsen & Martinsen, 2014). However, the current discussion has recognized and addressed the multidimensional pressures of academic research and professional commercialization, particularly in obtaining continuous funding.

Empowering leadership may increase intrapreneurial attitudes and innovation activity, instead of merely managing research. Moreover, when the power distance is significant, the work performance of employees can be greatly enhanced, and their silence overcome, if empowering leadership is strong, and vice versa. When the power distance is minimal, empowering leadership is inadequate for reducing employees’ silence and encouraging high performance (Ju, Ma, Ren, & Zhang, 2014). However, in individual societies, employees often feel obligated to their leaders, even when empowering leadership is engaged (House, Hanges, Javidan, Dorfman, & Gupta, 2004).

This case study stresses the need for mutual support and respect among the team members in team building. Williams and Scott (2012) remind us that respect, instead of being merely a spoken word, is a concept by which people ‘will always remember the way you made them feel’, and that many workplace legends arise because of ‘the horrific things weary and stressed-out managers said or did’. According to Lebret (2017), a commercial person can be seen as lazy in technology-driven spin-offs because the commercial field and process is usually unfamiliar to researchers. The first author felt strongly that respect was a controversial phenomenon in the case of the USO team, which worked hard and collaborated from day-to-day, and that greater support was needed.

To retain employees, Williams and Scott (2012) proposed that, by tying a part of employees’ wages to the company’s performance, the company becomes more resilient and agile, while employees have an inherent incentive to stay with the company as it grows: a growing company enables employees to grow both professionally and economically. They also added that ‘the rewards you give your employees should speak to their emotional needs and should go beyond their monetary compensation’ (William & Scott, 2012); for instance, considering the importance of work, experiencing a supportive atmosphere and consistent team attendance strengthens internal motivation. A lack of face-to-face conversations contributes to a lack of motivation and interaction between deep-level diversity and collaboration capa-bilities. Moreover, offsetting of the negative effects can be achieved without face-to-face interaction by training team members to facilitate collaboration building and to detect and resolve conflicts as soon as they arise (Batarseh et al., 2017).

Williams and Scott (2012) recommended being generous with personal private time and suggested that pacing the workflow can be highly beneficial for enduring employee relationships and high-quality performance, and it is unreasonable to expect continuous perfect performance. Their advice was to ‘allow employees the chance to catch their breath from one assignment to the next with the help of team-building activities or mini break periods over the course of the day’. In the case of this study, the project could have been more successful in team building if it had shared its entrepreneurial growth vision.

According to the narrative, the attention of the team was focussed on the ‘hard’, technical side of success in the USO, and they aimed to develop innovation and commercialize the research rapidly. Team leadership (the ‘soft side’ of USO development, involving good human resources management) and motivating the whole team to work together towards a common goal seemed to be very challenging. Thus, more attention should be paid to emotional intelligence in USO team formation and the interaction of team members. In addition, attention should be given to equity in the distribution and production of knowledge, how team members respond to unfair treatment (see e.g., Breugst, Patzelt, & Rathgeber, 2015; Greenberg, 1990) and how power distance can be minimized to support effective teamwork and goal achievement.

The recruitment of computing professionals requires continuous modern sales and marketing activities from employers. The supervising workload in universities could be lightened by reducing the burden on supervisors, and this case study recommends that, by delegating the right responsibilities (not only single tasks) supervisors could share the workload and arrange and optimize their work routines more effectively. This could also reduce the power distance and bring practitioners and employees closer to supervisors. The first author stresses that business developers should manage commercialization projects, such as the case project, but at the same time prepare project teams for the entrepreneurial demands of the commercial world. USO teams should make recruitment choices that facilitate the success and commitment of employees, with less stress, by conveying an empowering vision of intrapreneurship. Building an innovative team using modern sales methods to gain long-term entrepreneurial commitment requires effort from both the innovation team and the organization.

Conclusion

This case study explored the building of a USO project team and team leadership. Although the main theme of the study was not a process view of team development, the narrative has illustrated how the USO team developed over time. The original scope for this study was to analyze how the project team was built. However, the analysis of the narrative raised the issue of empowering leadership, which is relevant to intrapreneurship (entrepreneurship in a team). Previous research has not focussed on soft aspects such as emotions and empowering leadership in USO teams. As a contribution, this case study sheds light on the project team formation’s tensions and challenges, but also the best practices of team building.

Based on this case study of a USO team, we suggest that project teams could be more successful if they share their entrepreneurial vision during team building; thus, future studies should not only focus on studying empowering leadership in USO teams, but also organizational entrepreneurship and organization development to support entrepreneurial commitment in a university context. In addition, in line with Breugst, et al. (2015), we recommend that future research should focus on studying emotions, control and power relations in team building and decision-making in USO teams.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.

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