Innovation plays a very important role in economic development, and entrepreneurship is the concentrated embodiment of innovation. New ventures have problems such as new entry defect and too small scale, and are severely constrained in obtaining resource information from the outside. The entrepreneurial team has a greater pool of relevant information resources and a shared commitment to start a business. Team implicit heterogeneity describes the degree of knowledge and experience possessed by team members, which is an important source of information and resources for entrepreneurial teams. The existing research show that there are inconsistencies in the effects of entrepreneurial team heterogeneity on team innovation performance. Some scholars believe that team innovation performance does not directly benefit from team heterogeneity, but promotes the in-depth integration of various information and knowledge perspectives, thus promoting team innovation and decision-making quality. The process of exchange, discussion and integration of views, knowledge and opinions related to team tasks is regarded as the core process in which heterogeneity affects team innovation performance. In exploring the influence of team heterogeneity on innovation performance, this study focuses on two characteristics of team dynamics: strategic consensus and team cohesion, which will influence the process of team utilization of resources and information.

Strategic consensus and team cohesion reflect different dimensions of team dynamics. Strategic consensus belongs to task performance dimension, which involves the interaction in the process of team task completion. Team cohesiveness belongs to interpersonal dimension, which involves interpersonal communication and interaction among team members. Strategic consensus refers to the extent to which team members can reach consensus on the understanding of the strategic objectives and the means and methods adopted in the process of realizing the strategic objectives. Team cohesion reflects the dynamic process of cohesion and consistency in the pursuit of common goals and members′ emotional satisfaction.

Considering the high entrepreneurial activity index in the Yangtze River Delta region of China, this paper selects the entrepreneurial enterprises in the Yangtze River Delta region as the research object. Based on the analysis of 97 collected questionnaires, the paper validates the hypotheses: (1) strategic consensus positively moderates the relationship between team heterogeneity and  innovation performance; (2) team cohesion positively moderates the relationship between team heterogeneity and innovation performance;（3）strategic consensus and team cohesion have a joint moderating effect on the relationship between team heterogeneity and innovation performance, when both of strategic consensus and team cohesion are high, the positive influence effect of team heterogeneity on innovation performance is enhanced.

This study has three theoretical contributions. First, this study contributes to team heterogeneity research. This study finds that there is no significant correlation between entrepreneurial team heterogeneity and innovation performance. It indicates that entrepreneurial team heterogeneity cannot directly promote team innovation performance, and only those teams that advocate and insist on integration and learning can benefit from team heterogeneity. Second, this study contributes to the influence mechanism of team heterogeneity on innovation performance. The entrepreneurial team lacks long-term cooperation, and the high strategic consensus enables the team to focus on relevant resources and information, while ensuring that these resources and information fit the team strategy. High cohesive teams can share resources and information more quickly and accurately, promote the effective integration and utilization of information resources. Third, this study contributes to the research on the relationship between strategic consensus and team cohesion. This study finds that strategic consensus and team cohesion have joint moderating effects on the relationship between team heterogeneity and innovation performance. Strategic consensus helps the team clarify the needs and what resources and information need to be invested in the enterprise innovation activities, and team cohesion promotes the efficiency of collective action, so that the entrepreneurial team can more effectively obtain and use the key resources and information need to be invested in the team innovation activities.