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Top1. Introduction
The entrepreneurial function need not be embodied in a physical person and in particular in a single physical person. Every social environment has its own ways of filling the entrepreneurial function. (Schumpeter, 1965, p. 51 cited in Harper, 2008)
A considerable portion of innovation, new product development, employment and economic development has been undertaken by entrepreneurial ventures and small enterprises (Salamzadeh and Kirby, 2017; Emami and Talebi, 2011). Especially in knowledge-intensive industries, entrepreneurial firms outperform single entrepreneurs (Lechler, 2001, p.265) and take advantage over large organizations for their innovativeness (Eliasson and Eliasson, 2005; Khajeheian and Tadayoni, 2016). When perform in an entrepreneurial team, individual entrepreneurs experience higher rates of success (Wu et al, 2010), because working in a team lowers entrepreneurial stress because of trust and support among team members (Lechter, 2001; Labafi, 2017). Thus, entrepreneurial teams react faster to the changes and complicate environment and have a greater capacity of opportunity identification, development and utilization (Wu et al, 2010, p. 857; Salamzadeh et al., 2017).
Considering these, understanding of entrepreneurial teams and how they might perform in optimum level has an importance in the economic success; and study of the interaction processes among these teams is part of this knowledge (Chowdhury, 2005; Saud Khan et al, 2014).
Vyakarnam et al (1997, p.2) define an entrepreneurial team as “the top team of individuals who is responsible for the establishment and management of business. Watson et al (1995, p.393) define it more specifically by inclusion of financial interest and size of enterprise: “A venture team is two or more individuals who jointly establish and actively participate in a business in which they have an equity (financial) interest”. Cooney defines entrepreneurial teams as “two or more individuals who have a significant financial interest and participate actively in the development of the enterprise” (2005, p.229). Harper (2008) in his theory of entrepreneurial teams characterizes these teams as entities that operate effectively by profit-seeking, problem-solving process under conditions of structural uncertainty. Respectively, and Implying on their effectiveness, Jariwala et al (2012) show that communication, coordination, structure, and leadership are important factors in team performance. Among these factors, nature of communication in entrepreneurial teams is a complicated one. As Lichter (2001) shows, teams carry the potential of inefficient communication, complex long-lasting decision processes and personal conflicts, and thereby, dysfunctions such as group losses, social loafing, group think, risk-shifting have been documented and seen in these teams frequently.