The moderating role of efficacious board leadership in high tech startups

Firms not only need to access and mobilize external resources, but they also need to deploy them in a useful manner. Board leadership may enable such services from outside directors embedded in the wider entrepreneurial ecosystem. In the current study, we find that board interaction dynamics explain the lack of substantive relationships between outside directors and firm performance in past studies. Although we do not find a direct correlate from external directors on the effectiveness of venturing teams, we do find that efficacious board leadership interacting with external directors indeed impacts the performance of such teams.