Page - III - in Motive und unternehmerische Kompetenzen von GründerInnen technologie-orientierter Unternehmen

III Abstract Start-ups contribute decisively to the further development of the economy through competition effects or through a general structural change based on innovations and technical developments. These effects have been increasingly observed with technology- based start-ups. It can be assumed that companies from technology-based industry sectors have higher productivity than companies in other industries and effectuate large employment effects because they are mostly growth-oriented. In their founding process technology-based companies are often supported by incubators, in Austria the AplusB Centers of the FFG. Founders of these companies often come from an academic environment or have a background with professional experience. Especially in the first phase in life of a young company, the early stage phase, the company founders or the founding team is in the focus and therefore (jointly) responsible for success or failure of the company. The competencies of the founders or the founding team play a decisive role. The knowledge of the motives of a company foundation is also of great importance in order to be able to effectively support the establishment of technology-oriented companies. This research tackles this issue and addresses the most important motives for technology- based start-ups as well as the most central entrepreneurial competencies for founders of these companies. To this end, founding motivations and entrepreneurial competencies were identified in the literature and empirically validated among founders from the AplusB program. As theoretical approaches various motivation theories, the person-environment fit theory and the competence-based view were used. The results of this work, on the one hand, highlight the most important motives for forming a start-up and, on the other hand, the essential entrepreneurial competencies for founders in technology-oriented industry sectors. In addition, they provide a basis for the possible design of entrepreneurship degree programs at universities. The measures for the promotion of entrepreneurship at universities, which are derived from this work, also make it possible to strengthen the role of universities in the important sensitization phase for start-ups.