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Studying Entrepreneurship in a Social Science PhD

Andrea Contigiani
10 min readApr 25, 2020

I put together some thoughts for people who 1) are considering starting or recently started a social science PhD and 2) are interested in entrepreneurship. I write about: why do it, what it is, topics, methods, coursework, conferences, and the aftermath. What I write here is essentially what I wish I knew when I started my PhD. Naturally, this is just my view, and it’ s always best to get advice from different people. This post was published on April 25th 2020, and is going through numerous iterations. If you have any feedback, I‘d love to hear from you at andreacontigiani2019@gmail.com.

1—First of all, why?

Why study people starting companies rather than start companies? That’s a fair question.

You might be a nerd, maybe you like to play with data. (But these days you do a lot of data in startups too.) You might be terribly risk-averse. (But a PhD is quite a risky asset.) You might be lazy. (But doing a PhD is a lot of work, probably more than you imagine.) So, no obvious answer.

I like to think that doing research in entrepreneurship combines stimulating intellectual activity with possibly having some impact on the real world. This is not the case of all academic fields. (Speaking of impact in academia, I highly recommend this and this.)

Plus, studying entrepreneurship and being an entrepreneur are not mutually exclusive — for example, see Karl Ulrich. (More broadly, being an academic in whatever field and starting a company are not mutually exclusive. Here is a famous example.)

For the rest of this blog, I’ll make two assumptions: 1) you are at years [-1, 3] of a PhD in social science, 2) you want to do research in entrepreneurship. If both apply, (I hope) this information is useful to you.

Picasso, Guernica, 1937, Image from en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:PicassoGuernica.jpg

2 — Now, what is it?

You can study (i.e. write a dissertation on) entrepreneurship from many social science PhDs, especially PhDs in business-related fields. (Abhishek Nagaraj offers an excellent guide on how to apply to business PhDs, so make sure to read that.) In particular, studying entrepreneurship is common in PhDs in Strategy, Organizational Behavior, Finance, Operations Management, Information Systems, Economics, and Sociology. (Probably more, but this is what I have seen so far.)

Whichever field\discipline you come from, what does entrepreneurship actually mean? Fundamentally, creating an organization to do something. Lots of people have stricter\broader perspectives though.

Here is a list of classic books lots of entrepreneurs have read.

Here is a list of classic books providing some broad perspectives on entrepreneurship research.

And here is a list of classic papers providing broad perspectives on entrepreneurship from the research viewpoint.

3 — What does one actually study?

As I think about questions, I find it helpful to start from what entrepreneurs think\write\do. While obviously not a comprehensive list, here are some sources I particularly like:

Going into research, here is a list of classic papers touching upon (what I think are) some fundamental topics:

And here is a list of recent papers that (in my view) look at some of the topics at the center of the current debate:

Naturally, this is just a small sample— there are lots of great papers I did not list. The best way to keep an eye on the work being published is to follow the generalist journals in related disciplines (Management Science, Research Policy, Strategic Management Journal, Strategy Science, Organization Science, Academy of Management Review, Administrative Science Quarterly, Journal of Finance, MIS Quarterly, American Economic Review, American Sociological Review, etc) and the journals specific for entrepreneurship (Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal, Journal of Business Venturing, Entrepreneurship Theory & Practice).

4 — How to study it?

Entrepreneurship is a broad phenomenon that can be looked at from a variety of angles. The way you study it partly depends on the angle you take. Still, there is a common ground of concepts\tools that matters to most researchers in this area. If we follow some version of the scientific method, we typically come up with a theory and then test it. I list a series of papers that illustrate different ways to do each.

Picture from Wikipedia

The first step to come up with a theory. I have seen few good discussions of what a theory is, but here is a classic one on what theory is not. There are different approaches to theory building. (Here is a nice discussion on the advantages of formal theory.)

Verbal Theorizing

Formal Theorizing via analytical models

Formal Theorizing via simulation

Once you have a theory, you have to test it. Testing a theory typically requires identifying a population, selecting a sample, collecting data, and running some sort of empirical analysis. Here is a list of common methodologies that help for some of these steps.

Survey

Lab Experiments

Field Experiments

Regression Analysis (especially for causal inference)

Matching (sometimes coupled with regression analysis)

Text Analysis

Machine Learning (especially in terms of predictive modeling)

Yes — this is a lot of stuff. Naturally, you have make some choices. Harbir Singh teaches a (historical) Corporate Strategy class in the Wharton Management PhD. One thing he often says is that research is about three things — theory, methods, phenomenon — and it’s smart to focus on two. If you are reading this, you probably like entrepreneurship as a phenomenon. So, the advice is to pick just one more: theory or methods.

5 — Coursework In-House and Elsewhere

Typically, a PhD program in social science starts with a two-year coursework-intensive period. Your program will offer a variety of courses, including core courses within your field (Strategy, Org Behavior, Corporate Finance, Operations Management, etc), discipline-based courses (Economics, Sociology, Psychology, etc), methods courses (Research Design, Verbal Theorizing, Formal Modeling, Statistics, Qualitative Research, etc), and elective courses (Entrepreneurship, Innovation, etc).

Here is a list courses that I would make sure to take:

  • A course on entrepreneurship (from whichever angle — strategy, organizational theory, economics, etc)
  • A course on technology (especially covering technology strategy, R&D, intellectual property, etc)
  • A course on strategy (especially covering the core theories in Strategic Management, such as Resource Based View, Transaction Cost Economics, Value Based Strategy, etc)
  • A course on organizational behavior (especially covering creativity, teams, organizational structure, organization design, etc)
  • A course on venture financing (especially covering venture capital)
  • Lots of methodological courses (again, it’s probably useful to focus on developing one skill, theory-building or empirical work, but you can obviously do more)

Something few PhD students do is to consider learning opportunities outside the in-house coursework. This is actually a good opportunity to expand your view and meet new people. Here is a list of coursework-type opportunities (more or less) related to entrepreneurship:

Here is a list of coursework-type opportunities focused on empirical work:

6 — Conferences & Social Events

It turns out conferences are really important (and occasionally fun). Each field has its own flagship conference (AOM, SMS, AFA, INFORMS, AEA, ASA, etc), and typically those conferences have entrepreneurship-related sessions. Plus, there are conferences specifically focused on entrepreneurship or related themes.

In general, a lot of great entrepreneurship-related events are organized by the Kauffman Foundation, the leading player in entrepreneurship research in the US and possibly worldwide. I’d recommend following their work closely and interacting with their community. (In fact, various of the events I list are funded and\or organized by Kauffman.)

Here is a list of great conferences:

7 — What Happens After?

The work you do during your program leads to a dissertation. Typically, you defend it in Spring of year 4, 5, or 6. The dissertation is a portfolio of 1 to 4 research papers, one of which is also your Job Market Paper.

Comic by xkcd

During the Summer before your dissertation defense and graduation, you might want to think about what to do next. There is a variety of options after a good PhD in social science — including data science, consulting, policy, or academia. If you do take the academic route, you go through the mythical process that some like to call Job Market. (I talk about it in this post!)

Thank you for reading all the way through here. I hope this information was helpful. If you have feedback, please reach out at andreacontigiani2019@gmail.com. Avanti tutta!

Research
Entrepreneurship
PhD
Social Science

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Andrea Contigiani

Written by Andrea Contigiani

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Stories about innovation, research, education, migration, and other random topics.

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