Strategic consensus at founding and product innovation performance in high-tech ventures

This study examines whether high-tech ventures would be better at product innovation if their top management team (TMT) members had higher levels of strategic consensus at founding, and, if so, how it happens. Taking the entrepreneurial process model (EPM) as our research lens, we propose that TMT strategic consensus can streamline opportunity recognition, leading to faster TMT decision-making; higher TMT decision speed then facilitates opportunity exploitation in which product innovation is realized. We also suggest that this indirect influence is contextually sensitive; that is, external conditions (specifically, environmental competitiveness) negatively moderate the relationship between strategic consensus and decision speed, and internal conditions (specifically, structural specialization among TMT members) positively moderate the relationship between decision speed and product innovation. Drawing on a sample of 92 Chinese high-tech ventures and using a lagged, multiple-respondent design, we found support for these arguments.