Prerequisites
Participants are expected to have basic knowledge of entrepreneurship, innovation theory, economics, and quantitative research methods such as econometrics and experiments. A basic understanding of core theories of organizations, strategic management, and the economic theory of the firm will be helpful but not mandatory. This is one of the specialized courses offered to SI doctoral students at CBS and is open to all Ph.D. students outside the department.
Aim
The main goal of the course is to increase familiarity with and develop an in-depth understanding of the key themes and empirical research methods of entrepreneurship. Emphasis will be put on empirical applications to test theories. Most of the course will be devoted to teaching how to do empirical research in the domain of entrepreneurship, broadly defined. Focus will be on the contributions making use of quantitative methods and data including experiments. Theories, frameworks, concepts, and controversies that collectively form the foundation for entrepreneurship research will be discussed.
The course will aim to build capabilities in critically discussing and developing research questions/projects in entrepreneurship. Students will get acquainted with various methodological approaches employed in the field and learn to analytically review and evaluate academic articles from a diverse body of literature relevant to entrepreneurship research.
Course content
Entrepreneurship is a multidisciplinary research area with contributions from economics, psychology, sociology, geography, and management, just to mention a few. No other subject has attracted more scholarly, managerial, and policy attention than the phenomenon of entrepreneurship in recent years. From macro- and microeconomics to demography and organizational sociology, from finance and business studies to cognitive psychology, the quest for understanding its antecedents, sources, processes, and consequences has produced a large, vibrant, eclectic field. And with the growing advent of cross-disciplinary, multi-level work employing specialized panel data sets and more rigorous econometric techniques, initial concerns that the field lacked “a professional identity defined by a unifying theory” have abated.
The magnitude of academic interest in entrepreneurship is not surprising given its centrality for several key outcomes. Entrepreneurship has long been considered an engine of economic growth and regional development. Entrepreneurs have been shown to destroy established organizational competencies, shape evolutionary trajectories of technologies, cause substantial regulatory changes and create, enact and obliterate social topologies, organizational forms, markets, and industries. They have been placed at the heart of the theories of income inequality, social mobility, social welfare, and ethnic absorption, and they have been acknowledged to be a critical driver of the flow and distribution of resources across physical space. Research has also associated entrepreneurial acts with firm growth and performance, organizational revival, and global corporate expansion.
Foundations of Entrepreneurship is designed to offer an integrative view of how to do research to better understand why only some individuals but not others choose to become entrepreneurs, why only some persons but not others discover opportunities and exploit them, and why and how eventually only some ventures succeed and have a positive impact in society. The course has a focus on quantitative methodologies, including methods for analyzing large administrative datasets, publicly available business registers, and experimental methods.
Teaching style
Lectures, student presentations, paper discussions, literature critiques.
Depending on who signs up for the course besides the PhD cohort at the Department of Strategy and Innovation, it is the intention to live-stream the sessions, so that remote participation will be possible.
Lecture plan
Feb 13 (9 am - 12 pm) – Reading and Writing Scholarly Papers in Entrepreneurship (JM)
Feb 13 (1 pm - 4 pm) – Entrepreneurship: Key Discussions and Concepts (NJF)
Feb 20 (9 am - 12 pm) – Founders and Founding Conditions (JM)
Feb 20 (1 pm - 4 pm) – Organizational Heritage and Entrepreneurs (TR)
Feb 27 (9 am - 12 pm) – Field Experiments in Entrepreneurship (MvP)
Feb 27 (1 pm - 4 pm) – Entrepreneurial Finance (AM)
Mar 6 (9 am - 12 pm) – Entrepreneurship and Personnel (VR)
Mar 6 (1 pm - 4 pm) – Entrepreneurship and Established Firms (NJF)
Mar 13 ---------- (no lectures)
Mar 20 (9 am - 12 pm) – High-frequency data and entrepreneurship research (UK)
Mar 20 (1 pm - 4 pm) – Presentation and discussion of term papers (TBD)
Learning objectives
The course is organized around interactive lectures on specific topics. Professors will primarily discuss their own research to emphasize research strategies and challenges. Students are expected to prepare presentations and to actively participate in class discussion. Altogether, we make sure that a set of important topics is discussed and that classic contributions to the literature around these focal themes are included in the course as well. This course aims at developing the students’ ability to write research papers in the field of entrepreneurship.
During the course, students will have the opportunity to develop a short research paper (or a research proposal) on a topic of their choice within the field of entrepreneurship. In any of the cases, there should be developed a brief conceptual part (introduction, theory, and hypotheses). The (tentative) data and the methodology should also be discussed. The difference between a paper and a research proposal is that in the research proposal, the actual empirical application has not been done yet. Consequently, in the latter, the discussion and presentation of results will not be included. As a guideline, the final assignment should be about 5-6 pages long. The last session of the course will be run as a series of parallel workshops in which students will have the opportunity to present their papers/proposals, which will then be discussed by fellow students and by a faculty member.
Exam
Assessment will be “pass/no-pass” based on the paper/proposal submitted and presented at the end of the course.
Other
Course Literature
Session 1 - Feb 13 (9 am - 12 pm) – Writing scholarly papers in entrepreneurship (JM)
At the end of your Ph.D., you should be able to communicate your research through written papers to be published in peer-review journals. Ideally, you also want your papers to be read and, if possible, make an impact and be cited in subsequent articles.
In this session, we will discuss several steps towards that goal. We discuss how to read scientific articles efficiently, and this discussion should provide insights on what you should pay attention to when writing your own articles. We discuss the importance of writing at an early stage, what a finished paper should look like, and the process by which initial ideas develop into a finished paper. Most of the ideas are general and hold in different scientific fields, not only in entrepreneurship.
How to Read and Review a Scientific Journal Article: Writing Summaries and Critiques, Writing Studio, Duke University
Larry McEnerney 2013 The problem of the problem, the University of Chicago writing program
Shepherd, D.A. and Wiklund, J., 2020. Simple rules, templates, and heuristics! An attempt to deconstruct the craft of writing an entrepreneurship paper, Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, 44(3) 371–390
Further Readings
Bacq, S., Drover, W. and Kim, P.H., 2021. Writing bold, broad, and rigorous review articles in entrepreneurship. Journal of Business Venturing, 36(6), p.106147.
Wennberg, K. and Anderson, B.S., 2020. Enhancing the exploration and communication of quantitative entrepreneurship research. Journal of Business Venturing, 35(3), p.105938.
Not all research on entrepreneurship will be published in field journals. Although most of the essential goals and techniques for writing scientific articles are the same across many disciplines, conventions for writing and publishing scholarly research are somewhat different in different disciplines. Below you find some guidelines for different disciplines concerned with entrepreneurship.
Economics
Bellemarey, Marc F. 2020, How to Write Applied Papers in Economics, mimeo
Dudenhefer, P. 2014 A Guide to Writing in Economics, Duke University
Sociology
Jones, J., Quinn, S. and Brown, H., 2011. Writing Guide for Sociology. University of California at Berkeley
Sociology Class Supplement: Writing Your Sociology Research Paper
Psychology
A Brief Guide to Writing the Psychology Paper, Writing Center Brief Guide Series, Harvard College, Harvard University
Writing a literature review in Psychology, University of Washington Psychology Writing Center, 2017
Geography
Geography Essay Writing Guidelines, University of Adelaide Publishing in Geography A Guide for New Researchers, Royal Geographical
Society
Management
A few years ago, the Academy of Management Journal published a series of notes titled “FROM THE EDITORS: PUBLISHING IN AMJ". The insights in these notes are relevant for management research in general, including that in the field of entrepreneurship. The complete list of notes are as follows:
Colquitt and George (2011), Vol. 54, No. 3, pp. 432-435; Bono and McNamara (2011) Vol. 54, No. 4, pp. 657-660; Grant and (2011) Vol. 54, No. 5, pp. 873-879; Sparrowe and Mayer, (2011) Vol. 54, No. 6, pp. 1098-1102; Zhang and Shaw, (2012) Vol. 55, No. 1, pp. 8-12; Geletkanycz and Tepper, (2012) Vol. 55, No. 2, pp. 256-260; Bansal and Corley, (2012) Vol. 55, No. 3, pp. 509-513; George (2012) Vol. 55, No. 5, pp. 1023-1026
Session 2 - Feb 13 (1 pm - 4 pm) – Entrepreneurship: Key Discussions and Concepts (NJF)
Over the last three decades, entrepreneurship has emerged as an essential and expanding part of management research. In this lecture, we survey and discuss various contemporary approaches to entrepreneurship in management research, focusing on issues such as: What is the proper unit of analysis for entrepreneurship research? Is entrepreneurship best thought of as the discovery of opportunities or rather creating new business plans dedicated to meeting customer preferences under uncertainty? Is entrepreneurship a behaviour or an occupation? Is it uniquely related to start-ups, or can we think of entrepreneurship in established firms? Etc.
Readings
Shane, S., & Venkataraman, S. (2000). The Promise of Entrepreneurship as a Field of Research. Academy of Management Review, 25: 217-226.
McMullen, J., & Shepherd, D.A. (2006). Entrepreneurial Action and the Role of Uncertainty in the Theory of the Entrepreneur. Academy of Management Review
Foss, N.J. & Klein, P.G. (2005). Entrepreneurship and the Theory of the Firm: Any Gains From Trade?, in Agarwal, R., Alvarez, S.A., & Sorenson, O. eds., Handbook of Entrepreneurship: Disciplinary Perspectives, Berlin: Springer.
Further Readings
Knight, F.H. (1921). Risk, Uncertainty and Profit. New York: Augustus M Kelley.
Kirzner, I.M. (1973). Competition and Entrepreneurship. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Foss, N.J. & Klein, P.G. (2012). Entrepreneurial Judgment and the Theory of the Firm. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Session 3 - Feb 20 (9 am - 12 pm) – Founders and Founding Conditions (JM)
The conditions in which firms are founded lead to some initial decisions which may profoundly affect the characteristics of the firms. These conditions may imprint firms and the influence of initial conditions may persist even if the conditions are subsequently changed. An essential element of these founding conditions is the founder or the founding team. This session discusses the influence of founders and environmental founding conditions and the changes in these conditions upon the performance of firms.
Cabral, L. and J. Mata, 2003 “On the Evolution of the Firm Size Distribution: Facts and Theory” American Economic Review, 93 (4), 1075–1090, 2003.
Geroski, P. A., J. Mata and P. Portugal 2010 “Founding Conditions and the Survival of New Firms”, Strategic Management Journal, 31, 510–529, 2010.
Aoun, A., J. Mata and A. Schatt 2022 Founder CEOs in R&D alliances, mimeo
Further Readings
Choi, J.; N. Goldschlag; J. C. Haltiwanger; and J. D. Kim 2021 “Founding Teams and Startup Performance”, NBER, Working Paper 28417
Tzabbar, D. and J. Margolis 2021 “Beyond the Startup Stage: The Founding Team’s Human Capital, New Venture’s Stage of Life, Founder–CEO Duality, and Breakthrough Innovation, Organization Science 28(5):857-872.
https://doi.org/10.1287/orsc.2017.1152
Session 4 - Feb 20 (1 pm - 4 pm) – Organizational Heritage and Entrepreneurs (TR)
Entrepreneurship research is growingly giving more attention to the behaviours and practices installed in the newly started firms. Decisions about such management practicalities may or may not be taken consciously. Regardless of how these decisions are made, there is an underlying assumption that newly established firms are fonts of their parent firms. Entrepreneurs are assumed to draw heavily on their experience when deciding on the organizational practices that will be installed in their start-up. Organizational heritage has implications for our understanding of why specific practices tend to be adopted broadly in a particular context and not so much in others, why the variations in organizational practices are relatively limited, and our knowledge on the operations and performances of startups. The session on organizational heritage will discuss the mechanisms that precipitate organizational heritage, provide an account of the theoretical contributions on the topic, list challenges in studying organizational heritage, and itemize the implications of the organizational heritage hypothesis.
Readings
Feldman, M. P., Ozcan, S., & Reichstein, T. (2019). Falling Not Far from the Tree: Entrepreneurs and Organizational Heritage. Organization Science, 30(2), 337-360.
Sørensen, J. B., & Fassiotto, M. A. (2011). Organizations as fonts of entrepreneurship. Organization Science, 22(5), 1322-1331.
Dencker JC, Gruber M, Shah S (2009) Pre-entry knowledge, learning, and the survival of new firms. Organ. Sci. 20(3):516–537.
Further Readings
Agarwal R, Campbell BA, Franco AM, Ganco M (2016) What do I take with me? The mediating effect of spin-out team size and tenure on the founder–firm performance relationship. Acad. Management J. 59(3):1060–1087.
Chatterji AK (2009) Spawned with a silver spoon. Strategic Management J. 30(2):185–206.
Ruef M. (2005) Origins of organizations: The entrepreneurial process. Res. Sociol. Work 15:63–100.
Session 5 - Mar 7 (9 am – 12 am) – Field Experiments in Entrepreneurship (MvP)
In this session, we discuss various field experiments in entrepreneurship. Huber et al, (2020), Lindquist et al. (2015) and Karlan et al. (2015) are related to the question: Can entrepreneurship be taught? This question has been subject to heated debate for many years. The sharp increase in the number of entrepreneurship education programs offered suggests that the consensus has become that entrepreneurship can indeed be taught. From a policy perspective, this is an appealing thought. The possibility that entrepreneurship can be taught creates a window of opportunity for (educational) policies to enhance entrepreneurship. Two more field experiments in entrepreneurship are discussed in this session: one about risk and loss attitudes of entrepreneurs (Koudstaal et al., 2016) and one about the valuation of earlier entrepreneurial failure by investors (Zunino et al., 2022).
Readings
Rosendahl Huber, L., Sloof, R. & van Praag, C.M. (2014), The Effect of Early Entrepreneurship Education: Evidence from a Field Experiment The European Economic Review, Vol. 72, 11.2014, pp. 76-97
Lindquist, M., Sol, J. & van Praag, C.M. (2015), Why do Entrepreneurial Parents Have Entrepreneurial Children? Journal of Labor Economics, Vol. 33, No. 2, 4.2015, pp. 269-296
Fairlie, R., D. Karlan and J. Zinman, Behind the GATE Experiment: Evidence on Effects of and Rationales for Subsidized Entrepreneurship Training, American Economic Journal: Economic Policy 7(2), 125-161
Koudstaal, M., Sloof, R. & van Praag, M. (2016), Risk, Uncertainty and Entrepreneurship: Evidence from a Lab-in-the-Field Experiment Management Science, Vol. 62, No. 10, pp. 2897-2915
Zunino, D., G. Duschnitsky & M. van Praag (2022) How do investors evaluate past entrepreneurial failure? Unpacking failure due to lack of skill versus bad luck in the context of equity crowdfunding, forthcoming Academy of Management Journal.
Session 6 - Feb 21 (1 pm - 4 pm) – Entrepreneurial Finance (AM)
Start-ups face “financing constraints” and financial decisions may profoundly influence future options and choices. In this session, we first focus on theoretical differences between entrepreneurial finance and corporate finance in general. We then dive into different sources of financing (i.e., Venture capital and crowdfunding) and their impact on entrepreneurial ventures.
References
McKenzie, David. "Identifying and Spurring High-Growth Entrepreneurship: Experimental Evidence from a Business Plan Competition." American Economic Review, 107 (8): 2278-2307.
Amit, Brander, Zott, 1998: “Why do Venture Capital Firms Exist? Theory and Canadian Evidence,” Journal of Business Venturing 13, 441-466.
Shai Bernstein, Xavier Giroud, Richard R. Townsend, 2016. The Impact of Venture Capital Monitoring, Journal of Finance. 71( 4): 1591-1622.
Song Ma, The Life Cycle of Corporate Venture Capital, The Review of Financial Studies, , hhz042, https://doi.org/10.1093/rfs/hhz042
Further Readings
Kaplan, S. N., & Stromberg, P. 2003. Financial contracting theory meets the real world: An empirical analysis of venture capital contracts. Review of Economic Studies, 70(2): 281-315.
Mohammadi, Ali and Shafi, Kourosh, How Wise Are Crowds? A Comparative Study of Crowds and Institutions in Peer-to-Business Online Lending Markets (August 15, 2016). Swedish House of Finance Research Paper No. 17-10; Available at SSRN:
https://ssrn.com/abstract=2752085
Chemmanur TJ, Loutskina E, Tian, X. 2014. Corporate venture capital, value creation, and innovation. Review of Financial Studies 27(8):2434 –
Xavier Walthoff-Borm, Armin Schwienbacher, Tom Vanacker, 2018, Equity crowdfunding: First resort or last resort?, Journal of Business Venturing,Volume 33, Issue 4,2018.
Kaplan, S. N., Sensoy, B. A. and Strömberg, P. (2009), Should Investors Bet on the Jockey or the Horse? Evidence from the Evolution of Firms from Early Business Plans to Public Companies. The Journal of Finance, 64: 75-115. doi:1111/j.1540-6261.2008.01429.x
Session 7 – Mar 6 (9 am - 12 pm) – Entrepreneurship and Personnel (VR)
Founders and startups get most of the coverage in academic, public, and policy debates. However, for every founder, one or several early employees often take nearly equal risks by joining an early-stage company. At the same time, hiring for startups is a particularly challenging process fraught with constraints and high uncertainty. This lecture will discuss some of the most recent research on the interplay between founders and joiners in new ventures, the selection of personnel for startups, and the career implications of working for a startup firm. Given the emergent nature of some of these questions, this session will also discuss potential research avenues in this area and the empirical challenges often faced when studying these questions, while having an overview of different methods that can tackle some of those issues.
Readings
Honoré, F., Ganco, M. (2020). “Entrepreneurial teams’ acquisition of talent: Evidence from technology manufacturing industries using a two-sided approach”, Strategic Management Journal, https://doi.org/10.1002/smj.3127
Rocha, V., van Praag, M. (2020), “Mind the gap: The role of gender in entrepreneurial career choice and social influence by founders”, Strategic Management Journal, 41(5), 841-866.
Sorenson, O., Dahl, M. S., Canales, R., Burton, M.D. (2021), “Do startup employees earn more in the long run?”, Organization Science, 32(3): 587-604.
Further Readings
Howell, T., Bingham, C., Hendricks, B. (2022), “Going alone or together? A configurational analysis of solo founding vs. cofounding”, Organization Science, doi: 10.1287/orsc.2021.1548.
Lazar, M., Miron-Spektor, E., Chen, G., Goldfarb, B., Erez, M., Agarwal, R. (2021), ”Forming entrepreneurial teams: Mixing business and friendship to create transactive memory systems for enhanced success”, Academy of Management Journal,
https://doi.org/10.5465/amj.2020.0393.
Kacperczyk, O., Younkin, P., Rocha, V. (2022), “Do employees work less for female leaders? A multi-method study of entrepreneurial firms”, Organization Science, doi: 10.1287/orsc.2022.1611.
Sauermann, H. (2018) “Fire in the belly? Employee motives and innovative performance in start-ups versus established firms.” Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal, 12(4): 423-454.
Session 8 - Mar 6 (1 pm - 4 pm) – Entrepreneurship and Established Firms (NJF)
Starting from the notion that entrepreneurship is a behaviour that is not limited to start-ups, we link entrepreneurship to the established firms and their organizational design. We will also consider the role of external knowledge sources in the entrepreneurial process, forging a link to the open innovation literature (Foss, Lyngsie & Zahra), and the role of gender in explaining entrepreneurial outcomes (Lyngsie & Foss). Finally, we consider the role of top management in the entrepreneurial process, linking to the literature on intrapreneurship, corporate venturing, etc. (Barney, Foss, & Lyngsie)
Readings
Foss, N.J., Lyngsie, J. & Zahra, S. (2013). The Role of External Knowledge Sources and Organizational Design in the Process of Opportunity Exploitation. Strategic Management Journal, 34: 1453–1471.
Lyngsie, J. & Foss, N.J. (2017). The More, the Merrier? Women in Top-management Teams and Entrepreneurship in Established Firms. Strategic Management Journal, 38: 487-515.
Barney, J.B, Foss, N.J. & Lyngsie, J. (2018). The Role of Senior Management in Opportunity Formation: Direct Involvement or Reactive Selection? Strategic Management Journal, 39(5): 1325-49 (2018).
Further Readings
Baumol, W. (2010). The Microtheory of Innovative Entrepreneurship. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Mar 13 --- (no lectures) Research papers/proposals are due on this date
Session 9 - Mar 20 (9 am - 12 pm) – High-frequency data andn entrepreneurship research (UK)
This session will discuss recent advances in exploiting publicly available, real-time, high-frequency business register data for entrepreneurship research. Relatedly, we will discuss what the availability of such data implies for economic policy and strategic management. The work of Scott Stern’s group will be our point of departure and our journey will take us to three main applications: (i) the geography of entrepreneurship, (ii) performance forecasting and (iii) the Covid19 pandemic. In addition, ongoing research based on both Danish and Swiss business register data will be discussed in this session.
Readings
High-frequency data and entrepreneurship research
Guzman, J and S Stern. 2015. Where is Silicon Valley? Science. 347(6222): 606-609;https://science.sciencemag.org/content/347/6222/606
Application (i): High-frequency data and the geography of entrepreneurship
Andrews, RJ, C Fazio, Y Liu, J Guzman, and S Stern. 2020. The Startup Cartography Project: Measuring and Mapping Entrepreneurial Ecosystems;https://tinyurl.com/ddzmn8zx.
Application (ii): High-frequency data and performance forecasting
Kaiser, Uand Kuhn, JM. 2020. The value of publicly available, textual and non-textual information for startup performance prediction, Journal of Business Venturing Insights 14; https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbvi.2020.e00179.
Application (iii): High-frequency data and the Covid19 pandemic
Further readings
High-frequency data and entrepreneurship research
Bayard, K,Dinlersoz, E, Dunne, T, Haltiwanger, J, Miranda, J and Stevens, J. 2018. Early-Stage Business Formation: An Analysis of Applications for Employer Identification Numbers, NBER working paper; https://www.nber.org/papers/w24364.
Guzman, J and Stern, S. 2017.Nowcasting and Placecasting Entrepreneurial Quality and Performance; http://www.nber.org/chapters/c13493.
Application (i): High-frequency data and the geography of entrepreneurship
Guzman, J. 2018. Go West Young Firm: The Benefits of Startup Relocation to Silicon Valley;https://tinyurl.com/fxmp87xx.
Guzman, J and S Stern. 2020. The State of American Entrepreneurship? New Estimates of the Quantity and Quality of Entrepreneurship for 32 US States, 1988-2014, American Economic Journal: Economic Policy. 12 (4): 212-43;https://tinyurl.com/wd9fzwxr.
Application (ii): High-frequency data and performance forecasting
Guzman, J and Stern, S. 2019. Passive versus active growth: evidence from founder choices and venture capital investment;http://www.nber.org/papers/w26073.
Application (iii): High-frequency data and the Covid19 pandemic
Crane, LD, Decker, RA,Flaaen, A, Hamins-Puertolas, A and Kurz, C. 2021. Business Exit During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Non-Traditional Measures in Historical Context, Federal Reserve Bank discussion paper; https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/feds/files/2020089r1pap.pdf.
Fazio, C, J Guzman, Y Liu, and S Stern. 2021. How is COVID Changing the Geography of Entrepreneurship? Evidence from the Startup Cartography Project;https://www.nber.org/papers/w28787.
Zahra, SA. 2021. International entrepreneurship in the postCovid world, Journal of World Business 56(1); https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jwb.2020.101143.
Session 10 - Mar 20 (1 pm - 4 pm) – Workshop for paper development (TBD)
This last lecture will be run in parallel sessions with three students and a faculty member and will be devoted to discussing term papers/proposals. Papers/proposals are due on March 13. During the workshop, each student will make a 20-minute presentation of his/her own paper/proposal. On March 14 each student will receive the other papers to be presented in the same session and should be prepared to make a 5-minute discussion of each paper/proposal during the session. The faculty member will also provide feedback on the different papers.