How can businesses turn good intentions into real impact on the Sustainable Development Goals? That is the question at the heart of Martyna Anna Jurek’s PhD thesis, which explores how organizations can bridge the gap between environmental complexity and their internal capacity to respond.
In Martyna Anna Jurek's PhD thesis “From systems thinking to entrepreneurial cognition: Uncovering how organizations bridge the complexity gap to address grand challenges", she studies how businesses can move from good intentions to actual positive impact on the SDGs. By combining systems thinking with entrepreneurial cognition across three studies, she investigates the process of business models design in complex, uncertain environments, which advances the sustainable future.
Ahead of her upcoming PhD defence shares insights from her research and how she believes they could benefit society.
Too many SDG efforts are fragmented and short-term. Organizations often lack the tools and the cognitive capacity to act systemically because of complexity differential – the gap between external environmental complexity and their internal capacity to respond. Martina has aimed to solve this problem in her research and her main findings are:
- Many SDG toolkits only partially use systems thinking – missing interdependencies and long-term dynamics. A plausible explanation lies in decision-makers' cognitive capacity.
- We identify a typology of sustainable entrepreneur identities, where each type perceives and prioritizes barriers differently, shaping responses and business-model choices
- Impact uncertainty is a distinct uncertainty, characteristic of sustainable founders, who not only deal with the effect that the environment has on their venture, but also the reverse effect that they have on the system.
- Entrepreneurs pair cognitive responses with business-model responses to turn uncertainty into a generative force for innovation and impact.
Practical value for scholars, entrepreneurs and policy makers
Martyna's research offers practical value across sectors and could benefit scholars, entrepreneurs and policy makers:
- Scholars: introducing a bridge between systems thinking and entrepreneurial cognition, useful for investigating business model innovation under uncertainty
- Entrepreneurs: a process model for designing and innovating impactful entrepreneurial business models despite environmental complexity
- Policy makers: guidance to support programs led by the system-level impact vision and aligned with distinct sustainable entrepreneur typologies
A vision for the future
Ultimately, the aim of Martyna's research is to accelerate SDG-aligned innovation with clearer accountability and fewer unintended harms and by helping organizations to close the complexity differential and treat uncertainty as generative.
PhD defence
Martyna Anna Jurek will defend her PhD project on 26 August 2025.
See location, summary and other details of Martyna's defence here
Reach out to Martyna on LinkedIn
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