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The characteristics of bioentrepreneurs in the Australian biotechnology industry: A pilot study

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 February 2015

Julian W Yim  and
Rae Weston
Julian W Yim
Affiliation:
Macquarie Graduate School of Management, Macquarie University, Sydney NSW, Australia
Rae Weston
Affiliation:
School of Enterprise, University of Melbourne, Melbourne VIC, Australia
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Abstract

In order to understand the characteristics of bioentrepreneurs, this paper seeks to identify the entrepreneurial types present in the Australian biotechnology industry by using the four-way psychological typology (Miner 2000) and identifying linkages between the four-way psychological typology and the Big Five model of personality traits. We believe this is a new approach to using psychological typology in the study of entrepreneurship by mapping with the Big Five model of personality traits. Miner's four typological types are ‘personal achievers’ (PA), ‘super sales people’ (SS), ‘expert idea generators’ (EI) and ‘real managers’ (RM). The Big Five factors are extraversion (Ex), stability/emotion stability (Es), agreeableness (Ag), conscientiousness (Co), and openness to experience (Op). By combining the entrepreneurial types and the five-factor personality traits, we can map the linkage relationships as PA-ExEsCoOp; SS-ExAgCoOp; EI-ExEsOp and RM-ExEsCoOp.

In this pilot study, we find there are more ‘personal achiever’ and ‘expert idea generator’ bioentrepreneurs in the biotech industry with the linkage relationships of PA-ExEsCoOp and EI-Ex EsOp, which lead us to conclude there are strong demands for bioentrepreneurs with managerial skills, sales and marketing skills, skills in forming strategic alliance with partners and skills in securing the public and private capitals through finance channels such as public listing and venture capital. This implies that if PA entrepreneurs acquired more agreeableness personality traits and EI entrepreneurs also acquired more agreeableness and conscientiousness personality traits they would improve the ability of their businesses to attract more financial investments and form sustainable strategic alliance with partners in the Australian biotechnology industry.

Keywords

biotechnologyentrepreneurshipBig Five factor modelpsychological typologyuniversity spin-offsAustralia
Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Management & Organization , Volume 13 , Issue 4 , November 2007 , pp. 383 - 406
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press and Australian and New Zealand Academy of Management 2007

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