Does Neurodiversity in Founding Teams Enhance Performance? Investigating a New Type Of Diversity in New Venture Teams

Recent entrepreneurship literature highlights the adaptive benefits of neurological differences for lone entrepreneurs. However, is not known how neurological diversity plays out within new venture teams (NVT). This paper adopts a strengths-based lens to define neurodiversity and empirically test our neurodiversity model by analysing more than 5,452 Danish NVTs over a nine-year period.

Our findings reveal that the inclusion of a neurodiverse founding member enhances team performance; this effect is enhanced for founders who have undergone treatment. This study contributes to entrepreneurship theory by empirically showing the adaptive benefits of multiple neurodiversity conditions and the positive benefits for founding teams composed of neurodiverse entrepreneurs.