💡 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. Social networks are known to have a high impact on a person’s creativity and capability to become an entrepreneur, however, several dynamics are not yet fully understood and new data sources open room for new areas of research.
🦾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 team dynamics based on data. How does team conflict predict relationship quality and subsequent new venture performance? In many ways there are similarities between a founding team and a marriage, hence the underlying basis to the analysis should come from marriage research. The objective will be to gather communication (e.g., whatsapp, mail) and interaction data (e.g., interviews, shark tank) from start-up team, encode it and draw findings whether their team dynamics can predict start-up success or not.
Explicit deliverables will include:
- Overview of current research on social networks in the context of entrepreneurship (~within 1. month)
- Potential sources and methodology to analyze founder networks (~within 1. month)
- Collection of data to conduct analysis (~within 1.-2. month)
- Interpretation of results (~within 2.-4. month)
The scope of the thesis will be determined based on your background and type of thesis / project study.
🧠 Topics of Interest
- Social network analysis
- Trace data analysis
- Start-ups / entrepreneurship
- Venture capitalists / investors
Please also note further active topics supervised by me.
🎓 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
- Birley, Sue (1985): The role of networks in the entrepreneurial process. In Journal of Business Venturing 1 (1), pp. 107–117. DOI: 10.1016/0883-9026(85)90010-2.
- Burt, Ronald S.; Kilduff, Martin; Tasselli, Stefano (2013): Social network analysis: foundations and frontiers on advantage. In Annual review of psychology 64, pp. 527–547. DOI: 10.1146/annurev-psych-113011-143828.
- Greve, Arent; Salaff, Janet W. (2003): Social Networks and Entrepreneurship. In Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice 28 (1), pp. 1–22. DOI: 10.1111/1540-8520.00029.
- Milanov, Hana; Shepherd, Dean A. (2013): The importance of the first relationship: The ongoing influence of initial network on future status. In Strat. Mgmt. J. 34 (6), pp. 727–750. DOI: 10.1002/smj.2109 .
📄 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!
👉 malin.fiedler@tum.de