Understanding Entrepreneurial Process and Performance: A Cross-National Comparison of Alumni Entrepreneurship Between MIT and Tsinghua University

This paper analyzes the major comparisons and contrasts in entrepreneurship among technology-based university alumni over multiple decades from Tsinghua University in China and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the United States. In doing so, we ask two related research questions: (1) Who enters entrepreneurship and with what types of ideas and founding teams? (2) How do the innovation and other firm performance outcomes compare? We find that the sources of venture ideas and the composition of founding teams differ as well as the initial capital levels and revenues. This research provides a step toward a better understanding of high-tech entrepreneurship in developing vs. developed institutional environments. Furthermore, while MIT and Tsinghua University are unique in the programs they offer and in their historical cultures of entrepreneurship, both Tsinghua University and MIT provide benchmarks by which other institutions can gauge their alumni entrepreneurs and the types of ventures that they create.