When, who and where
- Instructors: Michael S. Dahl, Nicolai J. Foss, Bram Timmermans, Peter G. Klein & Lasse B. Lien
- Course responsible: Peter G. Klein and Lasse B. Lien
- ECTS credits: 5
- Dates: June 16th – 20th 2025
- Where: ORG21 is offered online
About
If you are interested in research at the intersection of entrepreneurship and strategy NHH has a PhD course that might be right up your alley.
The purpose of this course is to introduce PhD-students to key theories and empirical findings regarding performance differences from entrepreneurship. It is located at the intersection of the entrepreneurship- and strategy literatures, where the strategy literature offers a general understanding of performance differences across firms, while the entrepreneurship literature contributes specifics for the entrepreneurial firm and the entrepreneurial setting. The course will start out with general theories of value creation, competitiveness and performance differences, and connect this to the literature on how entrepreneurial opportunities are discovered, created and exploited.
Next we move to a spatial view of entrepreneurship, asking where entrepreneurship takes place, and why entrepreneurs make the location decisions they make.
Following this, we will examine the role of fundamental inputs such as finance, human capital and intellectual property in the entrepreneurial firm, and the challenges with respect to accumulating such resources.
We then turn our attention to innovation. We have singled out two complementary topics of particular interest in the context of entrepreneurship. One is that entrepreneurial innovation is increasingly about creating and innovating on business models rather than (or in addition to) product and process innovation. The other topic we will address under the innovation heading is the role of intellectual property in and for entrepreneurship.
Although the first part of the course will mostly equate entrepreneurship with startups or young firms, entrepreneurship is also a phenomenon that takes place in established firms. We will therefore also include a part where we examine issues related to entrepreneurship in established firms, and how this contrasts with challenges for startups.
Finally, we turn to the broader institutional context for entrepreneurship and focus on how and why this shapes entrepreneurial behavior and the outcomes from entrepreneurship.
In addition to this we want course participants to be able to present and discuss their own PhD-work, and we want to retain some flexibility to address topics not listed here that might come up along the way.
- Link to sign up page at NHH for external participants (note that the 1 February application deadline you’ll see here doesn’t apply to this course):
- For further questions contact: lasse.lien@nhh.no