An Exploratory Quantitative Comparison of Direct Reports

December 3, 2025

An Exploratory Quantitative Comparison of Direct Reports’ Perceptions of Entrepreneurial Leadership of Biotechnology Founders Versus Nonbiotechnology Founders

Lawrence Jones II | 2018

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to test for empirical evidence to distinguish the entrepreneurial leadership behaviors of the biotech entrepreneur. A review of the literature showed that Shimasaki (2014) proffered that the biotechnology (biotech) entrepreneur is unique from all other entrepreneurs because the biotech entrepreneur not only has entrepreneurial skills but additional characteristics, such as being an accomplished life science business person, scientist, bioengineer, or physician. Unfortunately, no empirical data support exists for whether these additional characteristics would affect entrepreneur leadership behavior. The study methodology closely followed Thornberry (2006) who developed an Entrepreneurial Leadership Questionnaire (ELQ) to assess the various behaviors that each founder must have. The statistical software GPower 3.0 was used to determine that a minimum of 70 survey participants would be needed for each of the groups to achieve the 90% confidence interval. There was complete confidentiality and anonymity for the responses and names of the organizations. Data were collected via an online SurveyMonkey survey and then uploaded and analyzed with SPSS software. T tests were conducted on the data to confirm hypotheses. Four alternative hypotheses showed statistically significant differences at the 90% confidence level. The explorer importance, accelerator importance, miner importance, and miner frequency were identified as variables where the results were higher for biotech founders than nonbiotech founders. The research contributions for this study may initiate and expand the importance of understanding what founders of biotech firms may need to consider in entrepreneurial training and development.

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