Research focus entrepreneurship

Our research bases on a process perspective on entrepreneurship and focuses on creating, identifying, evaluating, and exploiting entrepreneurial opportunities. Further, it is theory-driven, evidence-based, and published in high-ranked scientific entrepreneurship and management journals. We cooperate with leading experts of the research field and provide key implications for students, researches, entrepreneurs, and companies.

Based on an entrepreneurial decision-making perspective, our center does research on Entrepreneurial Finance, Entrepreneurial Strategy, Experimental Entrepreneurship, Technology Entrepreneurship, Social Entrepreneurship, and Corporate Entrepreneurship. At this, we maintain manifold co-operations with international leading business schools, universities, and technical universities.

Current research projects in collaborations with our partners are

SNF research project - "Antecendents, Processes, and Consequences of Business Model Design in Technology Ventures" - in cooperation with EPFL Lausanne
The Swiss Start-up Monitor - an initiative with the University of Basel and ETH Zurich to quantify and monitor the Swiss start-up landscape.

Building on our research insights, we teach entrepreneurial thinking and promote entrepreneurial action. We base our work on international standards in research and education, further the state-of-the-art in the research domain and foster start-ups at the University of St.Gallen. Through our ongoing cooperations with practitioners we refer to the entrepreneurial reality in all fieds of activities.

Representative publications

Baierl, R., Anokhin, S., & Grichnik, D. (2016). Coopetition in corporate venture capital: The relationship between network attributes, corporate innovativeness, and financial performance. International Journal of Technology Management, 71(1-2), 58-80.

Brinckmann, J., Dew, N., Grichnik, D., Mayer-Haug, K. & Read, S. (2018). Of Those Who Plan: A Meta-Analysis of the Relationship between Human Capital and Business Planning in SMEs. Long Range Planning, [forthcoming].

Brinckmann, J., Grichnik, D., & Kapsa, D. (2010). Should entrepreneurs plan or just storm the castle? A meta-analysis on contextual factors impacting the business planning-performance relationship in small firms. Journal of Business Venturing, 25(1), 24-40.

Dew, N., Grichnik, D., Mayer‐Haug, K., Read, S., & Brinckmann, J. (2015). Situated entrepreneurial cognition. International Journal of Management Reviews, 17(2), 143-164.

Fang He, V., Sirén, C., Singh, S., Solomon, G., & von Krogh, G. (2017). Keep calm and carry on: Emotion regulation in entrepreneurs’ learning from failure. Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, doi: 10.1111/etap.12273.

Freiburg, M. & Grichnik, D. (2012). Institutional investments in private equity funds: Social ties and the reduction of information asymmetry. Venture Capital, 14(1), 1-26.

Grichnik, D., Brinckmann, J., Singh, L., & Manigart, S. (2014). Beyond environmental scarcity: Human and social capital as driving forces of bootstrapping activities. Journal of Business Venturing, 29(2), 310-326.

Grichnik, D., Smeja, A., & Welpe, I. (2010). The importance of being emotional: How do emotions affect entrepreneurial opportunity evaluation and exploitation?. Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, 76(1), 15-29.

Haug, K., Read, S., Brinckmann, J., Dew, N., & Grichnik, D. (2013). Entrepreneurial talent and venture performance: A Meta-analytic investigation in SMEs. Research Policy, 42(6-7), 1251-1273.

Markowska, M., Grichnik, D., Brinckmann, J. & Kapsa, D. (2018). Strategic Orientations of Nascent Entrepreneurs: Antecedents of Prediction an Risk Orientation. Small Business Economics, [forthcoming].

Palmié, M., Huerzeler, P., Grichnik, D., Keupp, M.M., & Gassmann, O. (forthcoming). Some principles are more equal than others: Promotion- vs. prevention-focused effectuation principles and their disparate relationships with entrepreneurial orientation. Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal. doi: https://doi.org/10.1002/sej.1305

Sirén, C., Hakala, H., Wincent, J., & Grichnik, D. (2017). Breaking the routines: Entrepreneurial orientation, strategic learning, firm size, and age. Long Range Planning, 50(2), 145-167.

Thiess, D., Sirén, C., & Grichnik, D. (2016). How does heterogeneity in experience influence the performance of nascent venture teams?: Insights from the US PSED II study. Journal of Business Venturing Insights, 5, 55-62.

Thorgren, S., Sirén, C., Nordström, C., & Wincent, J. (2016). Hybrid entrepreneurs' second-step choice: The nonlinear relationship between age and intention to enter full-time entrepreneurship. Journal of Business Venturing Insights, 5, 14-18.

Welpe, I., Spörrle, M., Grichnik, D., Michl, T., & Audretsch, D. (2012). Emotions and opportunities: The interplay of opportunity evaluation, fear, joy, and anger as antecedent of entrepreneurial exploitation. Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, 36(1), 69-96.