PhD Defence by Dorothea Georgiadou: Helping entrepreneurs help themselves: How entrepreneurial actors construct relational and institutional support for new venture creation

Dorothea Georgiadou will defend her PhD project "Helping entrepreneurs help themselves: How entrepreneurial actors construct relational and institutional support for new venture creation".

Summary

Through entrepreneurship, founders give shape to ideas and turn them into new ventures that carry the potential to transform economies and societies. This is a fragile and uncertain process by nature, in which founders find themselves navigating uncharted waters, facing risks and challenges that are often beyond their experience and knowledge. Founders, therefore, cannot be expected to be lone heroes. They need support that can equip them with the knowledge, relationships, and resources needed to help themselves build and grow their ventures. 

While much is known about the antecedents and outcomes associated with founders receiving entrepreneurial support, the question of how this support is actually constructed has received far less attention. This gap is evident at two distinct levels. At the relational level, founders receive support from people who bring complementary skills and experience, either by becoming part of the founding team or by providing guidance and knowledge without taking ownership. Interestingly, how these relationships are formed and evolve over time has received relatively little attention. At the institutional level, where entrepreneurial support organizations build the infrastructure and provide support that enables commercialization and new venture creation, we know surprisingly little about how this support is constructed in contexts where the infrastructure and mechanisms needed for commercialization do not yet exist. 

To address this, my thesis asks: How entrepreneurial actors construct relational and institutional support mechanisms for new venture creation? Specifically, my thesis is built around three articles.

• Article A examines how co-founding relationships are established, drawing on an inductive longitudinal case study of seven start-ups to trace the matchmaking process as it unfolds, from the initial search for a co-founder to the eventual formation of a partnership.
• Article B draws on an integrative review and content analysis to examine how entrepreneurial mentoring unfolds as a dynamic, evolving process across different phases, shaped by the settings and socioeconomic environments in which it operates. It also identifies gaps that inform a future research agenda.
• Article C examines how entrepreneurial support organizations (ESOs) build the support and conditions needed to commercialize research in the social sciences, humanities, and arts for people, the environment, and the economy (SHAPE), a field whose pathways to commercialization remain largely underexplored. Based on an exploratory qualitative case study of a national science commercialization program, it reveals how innovation professionals build new infrastructure to support and legitimize this emerging activity.

Across the three articles, entrepreneurial support, regardless of its form or level, is never simply provided. It is constructed through the active engagement of the actors involved, shaped by the power dynamics between them (Article A), the context and environment in which they operate (Article B), and the conditions under which support needs to emerge (Article C). This shifts the focus from what support provides to who builds it, how, and under what conditions.

Supervisors

Associate Professor Argyro Nikiforou, DTU Entrepreneurship
Professor Jes Broeng, DTU Entrepreneurship/DTU Skylab
Professor Anna Brattström, University of St Andrews

Examiners

Associate Professor Francesco Rosati, DTU Entrepreneurship
Associate Professor Elisa Villani, University of Bologna
Professor Thomas Crispeels, Vrije Universiteit Brussel 

Master of ceremony