💡 Background
Your thesis will be part of a research project focused on “predicting start-up success”. Especially in the early phases of start-up creation, there are no objective criteria for evaluating start-ups. Although there is consensus that team dynamics and personality are predictors for start-up success in these early phases, there is only little empirical research that has studied these factors as predictors for start-up success.
🦾Who We Are
The Chair for Strategy and Organization is focused on research with impact. This means we do not want to repeat old ideas and base our research solely on the research people did 10 years ago. Instead, we currently research topics that will shape the future. Topics such as Agile Organizations and Digital Disruption, Blockchain Technology, Creativity and Innovation, Digital Transformation and Business Model Innovation, Diversity, Education: Education Technology and Performance Management, HRTech, Leadership, and Teams. We are always early in noticing trends, technologies, strategies, and organizations that shape the future, which has its ups and downs.
🎯 Goals
The goal is to analyze founding teams and their individual personality types based on trace data (e.g., LinkedIn). The work should include an approach to encoding indicators (e.g., picture, activity, number of languages, etc.) and attributing them to personality dimensions. Depending on academic background (economics vs. IT) a web crawler / scraper could be developed for this purpose. As part of the thesis / project study a methodological overview as well as a critical reflection, on how well data can be leveraged as signal for personality, is to be created.
Explicit deliverables will include:
- Overview of all scientific personality theories (~within 1. month)
- Overview of current literature on personality identification based on trace data / social media behaviour (~ within 1. month)
- List of secondary and trace data sources to measure personality (~within 1. month)
- Encoding of start-up founders’ trace data (for a relevant sample size) and attribution to personality type (~within 2.-3. month)
- Depending on academic background: Code for sample crawler / scraper
The scope of the thesis will be determined based on your background and type of thesis / project study.
🧠 Topics of Interest
- Trace data analysis
- Interest in personality types
- Start-ups / entrepreneurship
- Venture capitalists / investors
- Signaling theory
🎓 Profile
- Reliable and self-driven
- Enthusiasm for start-ups
- Ability to do internet and desk research as well as connect with practitioners
- Passion to learn more about the future and do research with impact
📚 Further Reading
- McCrae, R. R.; John, O. P. (1992): An introduction to the five-factor model and its applications. In Journal of Personality 60 (2), pp. 175–215. DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-6494.1992.tb00970.x
- Roulin, Nicolas; Levashina, Julia (2019): LinkedIn as a new selection method: Psychometric properties and assessment approach. In Personnel Psychology 72 (2), pp. 187–211. DOI: 10.1111/peps.12296
- van de Ven, Niels; Bogaert, Aniek; Serlie, Alec; Brandt, Mark J.; Denissen, Jaap J.A. (2017): Personality perception based on LinkedIn profiles. In JMP 32 (6), pp. 418–429. DOI: 10.1108/JMP-07-2016-0220
- Fernandez, Sébastien; Stöcklin, Marie; Terrier, Lohyd; Kim, Sowon (2021): Using available signals on LinkedIn for personality assessment. In Journal of Research in Personality 93, p. 104122. DOI: 10.1016/j.jrp.2021.104122
- Youyou, W., Kosinski, M., & Stillwell, D. (2015). Computer-based personality judgments are more accurate than those made by humans. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 112(4), 1036–1040. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1418680112
📄 Requirements to any Work
We do not want your research to gather dust in some corner of bookshelf but make it accessible to the world. Thus, we warmly encourage you to create some or all of the following:
- Infograph - visually represent some of your work (find examples here)
- Slide Deck - summarize your research and possibly present it
- Extract most important sequences from podcasts, videos, and other media
- 3-4 Tweets about the most important findings and summarizing the topic
- optional: Medium Article - let people outside the university know about your research and start your personal brand
📬 How to Apply
If you are interested, please contact Riccarda Joas (e-mail below) by submitting your CV and grade report. Please also briefly outline your experience/knowledge and - if applicable - your tentative research idea (research question, methods and data, possible outcomes with a tentative outline all in word as *.docx)
We're greatly looking forward to hearing more about you!
👉 riccarda.joas@tum.de