Faculty
Serden Ozcan, Associate Professor, Department of Innovation and Organizational Economics, e-mail: soz.ino@cbs.dk. Toke Reichstein, Associate Professor, Department of Innovation and Organizational Economics, e-mail: tr.ino@cbs.dk

Course Coordinator
Serden Ozcan

Participants should have basic knowledge of entrepreneurship and innovation theory, theory of social embeddedness, location theory and the theory of cognition. Basic understanding of core theories of organizations and strategic management and the economic theory of the firm will be helpful.

The main goal of the course is to increase familiarity with and develop an in-depth understanding of the key theories, frameworks, concepts, threads and controversies that collectively form the foundation for entrepreneurship research.

Secondary objectives are to learn what it takes to make a theoretical contribution to the study of entrepreneurship and entrepreneurs, to get acquainted with various methodological approaches employed in the field, to learn to analytically review and evaluate academic articles from a diverse body of literature including sociology of labour and demography, industry evolution, theory of inter-organizational networks, economics of geography, and social psychology, to obtain comprehensive knowledge about publicly available data sets for entrepreneurship studies, their strengths and shortcomings, and to learn to design and build quantitative and qualitative data for research in this field.

Finally, this course aims to provide you with an understanding of the publishing policy of top academic journals.

No other subject has attracted more scholarly, managerial and policy attention than the phenomenon of entrepreneurship in recent years. From macro- and microeconomics to demography and organizational sociology, from finance and business studies to cognitive psychology, the quest for understanding its antecedents, sources, processes and consequences has produced a large, vibrant, eclectic field. And with the growing advent of cross-disciplinary, multi-level work employing specialized panel data sets and more rigorous econometric techniques, initial concerns that the field lacked “a professional identity defined by a unifying theory” (Thorntorn, 1999; Shane & Venkatmaran, 2000), and “systematic efforts to assemble the fragmentary pieces of knowledge” (Shane, 2003: 2) have abated.

The magnitude of academic interest in entrepreneurship is not surprising given the vitality of it for several key outcomes. Entrepreneurship has long been considered as an engine of economic growth and regional development (Schumpeter, 1934; Baumann, 1968; Saxenian, 1994). Entrepreneurs have been shown to destroy established organizational competencies (Tushman & Anderson, 1986), shape evolutionary trajectories of technologies (Nelson & Winter, 1982), cause substantial regulatory changes (Dobbin & Dowd, 1997) and create, enact and obliterate social topologies, organizational forms, markets and industries (Nelson & Winter, 1982; Burt, 1992; Carroll & Hannan, 2000). They have been placed at the heart of the theories of income inequality, social mobility and social welfare (Sorensen, 1996) and ethnic absorption (Waldinger, Aldrich & Ward, 1990) and have been acknowledged to be a critical driver of the flow and distribution of resources across physical space (Audretsch & Feldman, 1996; Sorenson & Stuart, 2001). Research has also associated entrepreneurial acts with firm growth and performance (Evans, 1988), organizational revival (Burgelman, 1983; March, 1991; Zajac, Golden & Shortell, 1991), diversification (XX), and global corporate expansion (Birkinshaw, 1997).

Foundations of Entrepreneurship is designed to offer an integrative view of why only some individuals but not others choose to become entrepreneurs, why only some persons but not others discover opportunities and exploit them by successfully securing and marshalling resources and why eventually only some ventures succeed.
This course is organized in three modules. Please see: Module Overview

There is a 3 hour open book written exam at the end of the course. Participation in class is required. Exam is scheduled to take place at 07/04/2011.

Lectures, student presentations, paper discussions, and literature critiques.

Please be aware that the registration is binding, and you have to cancel the course two weeks before start.
The students outside of CBS will receive an invoice regarding payment.

Applications should be sent as e-mail to:
Tuyala Bernardo Rasmussen
Department of Innovation and Organizational Economics E-mail: tbr.ino@cbs.dk

Please remember to state your name, email, Department and University and if outside of CBS then your schools EAN number.