Faculty and Research

Founder Frustrations

Noam's research focuses on top management team (TMT) dynamics within entrepreneurial firms, with particular emphasis on the roles played by founders, top executives, outside investors, and board members. His paper entitled 'Founder-CEO Succession and the Paradox of Entrepreneurial Success' was published in Organization Science in March-April 2003, and won Harvard's 2003 Aage Sorensen Memorial Award for sociological research. His paper on entrepreneurial compensation, 'Stewards, Agents, and the Founder Discount: Executive Compensation in New Ventures,' is forthcoming in the Academy of Management Journal and was named a Best Paper at the 2004 Academy of Management meeting. Noam's current working papers include 'Mentoring and Monitoring: Boards of Directors in New Ventures' (co-authored with Warren Boeker) and 'Rich versus King: The Entrepreneur's Dilemma.'

The Venture Capitalist as Entrepreneur

Noam's dissertation, entitled “The Venture Capitalist as Entrepreneur,” won Harvard’s George S. Dively award for dissertation research. In the dissertation, Noam examined the organizational dynamics and characteristics within venture capital firms themselves, viewing the general partners within VC firms as a TMT that has to found its own (venture) firm, craft a strategy, structure its activities and internal organization, and negotiate with its own investors and other external parties. A chapter from the dissertation was included in Research in the Sociology of Work: Entrepreneurship in 2005, and a current working paper examines the linkage between structure, strategy, and performance within VC firms. Future work in this area includes examinations of careers patterns within and across VC firms, and of the impact of inter-firm syndication networks on internal firm structures.