Successfully implementing creative ideas is critical for the establishment of new ventures. While highly creative ideas hold promise for new ventures’ success, more creative ideas are also harder to implement and are often met with failure. Integrating research on new ventures, creativity, and team motivation, we examine how the regulatory focus of new venture teams impacts collective strategic behaviors that can impact the successful implementation of creative ideas. We suggest that while, on average, more creative business ideas lead to early entrepreneurial success, this effect is bolstered when teams have a higher promotion focus, but not necessarily higher prevention focus. Using both a field experiment and an observational field study, we found that new ventures with higher promotion focus better actualize creative business ideas, evident in increased early sales of a minimum viable product developed by entrepreneurial teams in an educational setting (Study 1) and early funding secured by new ventures participating at TechCrunch Disrupt Battlefield (Study 2). Our research offers timely insights into creative idea implementation in new ventures.
