The Babson College Entrepreneurship Research Conference (BCERC), with generous support from The Kauffman Foundation & SAMS, is tapping leading-edge research conducted by an elite group of doctoral students from top universities around the world. These 26 students have participated in the 2021 BCERC Doctoral Consortium.
We have published their practitioner translations that highlight important implications for entrepreneurs and others involved in the entrepreneurial ecosystem. These translations succinctly highlight key research findings and interpret what these findings mean for an entrepreneur starting or building their business. Please enjoy their short 2-4 page articles with direct practitioner implications in the areas of Communicating with Stakeholders, Critical Decisions, Entrepreneurial Characteristics, Overcoming Adversity, Entrepreneurial Resources, and Social Entrepreneurship.
*Award Winner - Kauffman Foundation Award for Best Research Translation*
Summary: Life in a startup can be an emotional roller-coaster, full of stress, frustration, and anxiety. In our research, we find that these emotions represent valuable information for startup teams, that allow team members to improve their routines and help each other out.
Summary: Stories of successful entrepreneurs whose parents got divorced during their childhood are plentiful. However, growing up in a divorced family is a double-edged sword with regard to entrepreneurship: it increases your chances of becoming an entrepreneur, but it does not necessarily make you a more successful entrepreneur.
Summary: Do nice entrepreneurs really finish last? A new study finds that dark personality traits can actually be of great benefit to individuals launching new businesses.
Summary: Feeling vulnerable is scary, but it can also support your well-being. This practical guide will show you how.
Summary: Marked by creativity and isolation, the field of entrepreneurship is the ideal breeding ground for impostor syndrome. However, entrepreneurs with impostor syndrome can prosper if they reflect on past achievements, reach out for help and understand that failure is not the opposite of success.
Summary: When pitching to investors, entrepreneurs use specific language representative of certain cognitive biases that significantly impact the amount of funding they receive from investors. However, this research finds that female entrepreneurs benefit more from this behavior, enabling them to receive more funding than their male competitors.
Summary: Tell a story! Crafting a narrative around your resourceful actions can be a valuable and effective tool during investment pitches.
Summary: Ever wonder why some social media entrepreneurs have millions of followers while others have 10? Following 488 entrepreneurs over 6 months, we find that building online relationships and connecting emotionally with other social media users increases not only entrepreneur’s number of followers, but how much others engage with them.
Summary: In today's digital world, entrepreneurs fight to attract social media attention and thereby may be tempted to follow their idols like Elon Musk, who continuously creates tremendous social media buzz on Twitter because of the controversial language in his tweets. But is posting confrontational tweets an advisable strategy for entrepreneurs and their nascent ventures, and if so, for whom?
Summary: Throughout the process of creating a new business, entrepreneurs encounter various challenges. To cope with these challenges, entrepreneurs need to adapt their decision-making strategies.
Summary: Making speedy decisions and leveraging quick entrepreneurial actions often do not end up increasing profits. Trying to systematically find evidence that is more scientific before act is sometimes needed in order to capture entrepreneurial profits, but the crucial question here is when and how?
.jpg "Manocha picture")
Summary: Entrepreneurs operate under conditions of uncertainty, including uncertainty related to policy responding to economic conditions. Therefore, it is important to ask: policy uncertainty provide elixir, or does it act as an obstacle to entrepreneurial activity?
Summary: Before you take the plunge in cofounding anything, be sure to consider these six key cofounder fit dimensions. Research shows you probably can’t have it all, but there are certain combinations associated with relationship quality.
Summary: Co-founders sometimes agree on a suboptimal equity split at founding of their venture, which can cause disruptions in founding team dynamics and consequently venture’s performance. Can a founder’s divorce roadmap in readiness be beneficial in successfully weathering these disruptions in non-family ventures in first years of venture’s existence?
Summary: Business incubators and accelerators are frequently hailed as crucial tools for improving new ventures’ performance. However, those programs are not a panacea. My research shows some myths surrounding those programs’ expected outcomes.
Summary: Every day thousands of entrepreneurs launch their own businesses. We show you what to watch out for to prevent you from neglecting the costs of sticking with an operating but not fully profitable part-time venture.
Summary: Growth in new firms seems like an “all or nothing” mechanism where a handful of winners reap almost all gains while most others never grow meaningfully. Our research shows that winners are neither the luckiest nor the richest or most talented but those that combine just enough of the three ingredients.
Summary: Informal entrepreneurs in Sub-Saharan Africa act in the shadow, hidden from national government authorities. However, they mobilize resources in very ingenious and cohesive ways, relying on local solidarity practices. Do we have anything to learn from them?
Summary: We provide an overview of the research on knowledge and entrepreneurship with a special focus on key resources and actions for entrepreneurial success.
Summary: As the Latino population continues to grow and shift in the United States, opportunities for Latino-owned businesses are also changing. I highlight how this changing demographic landscape affects the presence and growth of Latino businesses and future U.S. economic success.
Summary: A surge of incubators and entrepreneurship training programs in many African countries promise to address challenges of youth unemployment and economic decline, but can they deliver? An overview of entrepreneurship programs and incubators in Sub-Saharan Africa suggests the need to look beyond training to the wider entrepreneurial ecosystem itself.
Summary: Tech founders from underrepresented groups face many challenges in their entrepreneurial journeys, but they can also use their underdog status to their advantage. Based on ten life-stories of founders from underrepresented ethnic groups in the Dutch technology sector, we provide three best practices for underdogs to leverage their positions and gain access to entrepreneurial resources.
Summary: Running a financially sustainable microfinance institution without drifting away from the core mission of improving the lives of the underprivileged is a challenge. A right mix of the founding team and innovative business models can go a long way to addressing this!
Summary: Public organizations like fire departments, schools, and police departments are often treated as the best organizations to address social problems. But these organizations often need the help of entrepreneurs from private businesses and non-profit organizations.
Summary: Social and sustainable entrepreneurs want to contribute to more resilient communities, ecosystems and economies, but what if they are hit by a crisis and need to enact resilience themselves? We present three pathways for positive adaptation among social and sustainable entrepreneurs.
Summary: New research suggests that isolated workers who enact the behaviors of an entrepreneur can help to avoid a burgeoning mental health crisis. Ex-offenders share their entrepreneurial journeys from prison back into society.