Entrepreneurship is widely portrayed as a key mechanism for tackling societal challenges such as climate change, inequality, and public health. Yet academic research has traditionally focused on economic outcomes, leaving broader forms of impact underexplored.
Giorgia Scartozzi’s PhD thesis "Beyond economic impact: Technology entrepreneurship as transformative force for people, organizations, and society" aims to address this gap by examining how, and under what conditions, technology entrepreneurship enables and shapes impact beyond economic outcomes.
Ahead of her upcoming PhD defence she shares insights from her research and how she believes they could benefit society.
Giorgia's research mainly shows that entrepreneurial impact is multidimensional and multilevel, and it depends on:
- how impact is conceptualized and measured,
- how engagement in entrepreneurship is experienced and negotiated at the individual level, and
- how institutional environments support or limit the entrepreneurial processes.
Valuable insights for researchers, entrepreneurs, universities, and policymakers
The findings offer valuable insights for researchers, entrepreneurs, universities, and policymakers. For scholars, Giorgia’s thesis repositions impact as a core theoretical concern and provides a framework for studying entrepreneurship beyond economic indicators. For entrepreneurs and managers, it shows how entrepreneurial engagement reshapes identity and well-being, encouraging more sustainable and reflective leadership practices. For universities and ecosystem actors, it stresses the need to align institutional narratives with lived experiences to strengthen impact. For policy makers, it calls for evaluation and support systems that recognize social and environmental dimensions alongside economic growth.
Entrepreneurship as a socially embedded, multi-actor, and transformative process
The thesis challenges growth-centric paradigms and invites a reconceptualization of entrepreneurship as a socially embedded, multi-actor, and transformative process. By placing greater emphasis on processes, contexts, and lived experiences alongside economic outcomes, the research supports a future in which technology entrepreneurship is better positioned to address complex societal challenges.
PhD defence
Giorgia Scartozzi will defend her PhD project on 20 March 2026.
See location, summary and other details of Giorgia's defence here
Reach out to Giorgia on LinkedIn