创始人背景与企业研发效率： 生物科技企业的实证研究

Abstract

With the rapid development of the global biotechnology industry and the continuous expansion of the innovative pharmaceutical market, R&D efficiency has become a core determinant of industry competitiveness and sustainable growth. In a sector characterized by high R&D risks, substantial investment, and significant uncertainty, the innovation performance of biotechnology firms is not only influenced by external resources and macro policies but is also deeply embedded in the experience and capabilities of founders and top management teams. In recent years, both academia and industry have increasingly focused on the characteristics of top management teams, founder backgrounds, and their driving effects on R&D efficiency. However, there remains a lack of systematic and comprehensive empirical analysis, particularly regarding the differentiated impacts of managerial versus entrepreneurial experience, the moderating effects of top management team diversity, and the strength and interaction mechanisms among different types of founder experience—especially under the evolving context of the biotechnology industry, where further theoretical and empirical enrichment is needed.
Drawing on upper echelons theory, the resource-based view, and signaling theory, this study conducts a multidimensional and comprehensive analysis based on the different experience backgrounds of founders, and incorporates the cross-mechanism of top management team diversity. First, the study differentiates between managerial experience (emphasizing process governance, institutional development, and organizational execution) and entrepreneurial experience (focusing on strategic sensitivity, risk response, and resource integration), and examines their respective direct effects on R&D efficiency in biotechnology enterprises. The study further explores the heterogeneity in the strength of these two types of founder experience. Second, by constructing interaction terms between top management team diversity and the two types of experience, the study investigates the moderating effects of team diversity on the relationship between founder experience and R&D efficiency. Finally, by introducing the interaction between managerial and entrepreneurial experience, the study also tests the interplay between these two experience types.
For empirical analysis, this study selects a sample of 64 biotechnology companies listed under Chapter 18A of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange and the fifth set of standards of the STAR Market during 2018–2024, ultimately building a panel dataset covering 1,596 clinical trial observations to comprehensively track the micro-level innovation processes of biotechnology enterprises. The main findings are as follows: First, both managerial and entrepreneurial experience of founders significantly enhance corporate R&D efficiency, with robust and highly significant positive effects on shortening R&D cycles and accelerating project advancement. When both types of experience are included in the model, entrepreneurial experience exerts a stronger positive effect on R&D efficiency than managerial experience, suggesting that founders with extensive entrepreneurial backgrounds are better equipped to navigate uncertainty and expedite key phases of clinical R&D. Robustness checks using alternative measures of R&D efficiency further confirm the reliability of these conclusions. Second, top management team diversity exhibits a significant positive moderating effect in the managerial experience pathway: in more diverse teams, managerial experience more strongly promotes R&D efficiency, indicating that higher team diversity amplifies the benefits of process governance, organizational coordination, and risk control. However, the moderating effect of team diversity on the entrepreneurial experience pathway is not significant, suggesting that the value of entrepreneurial experience is rooted more in personal capability, opportunity recognition, and adaptive response, rather than in the amplification by team heterogeneity. Third, the analysis of interaction effects between managerial and entrepreneurial experience reveals that the two operate relatively independently, each influencing R&D efficiency through distinct mechanisms. Finally, qualitative interviews with two entrepreneurs further validate the empirical findings and generate a series of practical insights. The interviewed founders emphasized that the accumulation of industry experience and optimization of top management team structure form the foundation for innovation efficiency in biotechnology enterprises; in practice, attention should be paid to both the standardization of processes and institutions, as well as to opportunity identification, external resource integration, and emergency responsiveness. The theoretical contributions of this study are threefold. First, it innovatively examines founder backgrounds by distinguishing between managerial and entrepreneurial experience, thus addressing the limitations of prior research that relied on a single-dimensional founder metric. Second, it expands the research perspective on the moderating effect of top management team diversity, highlighting its differentiated impact across distinct founder backgrounds and enriching relevant theoretical connotations and extensions. Third, by combining granular project-level data with qualitative interviews, the study enhances both the explanatory power and external validity of its empirical analysis, offering a paradigm and foundation for future research. Overall, this study enriches the theoretical understanding of the relationship between founder background and R&D efficiency in the field of management and organizational behavior, while also providing empirical reference and decision-making guidance for biotechnology firms in top management team building and for investors in due diligence. The research thus holds significant theoretical and practical implications.

Date of Award	26 May 2025
Original language	Chinese (Simplified)
Awarding Institution	China Europe International Business School
Supervisor	Yan Gong (Supervisor) & Taiyuan Wang (Supervisor)