New PhD research reveals how relationships, institutions, and ecosystem actors help founders turn ideas into ventures.
Founders are at the heart of entrepreneurship, turning ideas into new ventures that can tackle societal challenges and drive economic growth. But this journey is fragile and uncertain. Founders have to navigate uncharted waters, facing risks and challenges that are often beyond their experience and knowledge. Such challenges call for support that provides founders with the knowledge, relationships, and resources needed to build and grow their ventures. Yet, prior research has focused on the antecedents and outcomes associated with founders receiving entrepreneurial support, while how this support is actually constructed has received far less attention.
In Dorothea Georgiadou’s PhD thesis “Helping entrepreneurs help themselves: How entrepreneurial actors construct relational and institutional support for new venture creation” she aims to address this gap by examining how this process unfolds at two levels: the relational level, focusing on the people who support founders directly, and the institutional level, focusing on the organizations that build the infrastructure enabling commercialization and new venture creation.
Across her research, Dorothea shows that entrepreneurial support, regardless of its form or level, is not simply provided but actively constructed. This shifts the focus from what support provides to who builds it, how, and under what conditions. Specifically, this construction is shaped by:
At the relational level:
- the dynamics between the people involved
- the context and environment in which they operate
At the institutional level:
- the practices through which innovation professionals actively build support and legitimacy for commercialization
Rethinking support: What Dorothea's findings mean for scholars, entrepreneurs, universities, and policymakers
Dorothea's PhD offers valuable insights for a range of audiences and can move the needle forward in how we understand and support entrepreneurship, in both theory and practice. For scholars, it repositions entrepreneurial support as a constructed and dynamic process, providing a foundation for studying how relational and institutional mechanisms take shape across different actors, contexts, and conditions. For entrepreneurs, it offers a more realistic understanding of what seeking and building support actually involves, highlighting that these are not passive processes but complex relational journeys that require awareness and ongoing engagement. For universities and ecosystem actors, it highlights that building the conditions for entrepreneurial support to emerge requires deliberate effort, legitimacy, and collaboration across multiple levels. For policymakers, it calls for funding and evaluation frameworks that move beyond standardized metrics and recognize the complexity and diversity of the pathways through which entrepreneurial support is built and sustained.
PhD defence
Dorothea Georgiadou will defend her PhD project on 2 October 2026.
See location, summary and other details of Dorothea’s defence here
Reach out to Dorothea on LinkedIn