The Technology Entrepreneurship PhD Specialization at the University of Washington, Foster School of Business “addresses the critical areas of research and education in technology development, commercialization and licensing, and the new venture creation process and hopes to produce the next generation of entrepreneurship faculty focused on high technology ventures”.
Areas of faculty research
- Technology and innovation strategy
- Emergence of trust in new ventures
- Knowledge-spillovers and entrepreneurship
- Corporate entrepreneurship
- Entrepreneurial beacons
- Corporate venture capital investments
- Entrepreneurial orientation
- Entrepreneurship in the informal economy
- University startups
- Venture capital syndicates
- Innovation and product introduction
Clearly, the Entrepreneurship PhD program at the University of Washington is technology-centric. Thus, it has more of a ‘startup’ orientation instead of a ‘small business’ one. Moreover, research into technology-driven entrepreneurship tends to include angel investing, venture capital, hyper-growth, and other concepts which may not be as relevant to entrepreneurship in general. Nevertheless, there is much to learn about research findings related to entrepreneurial mindset, skills, and leadership in technology ventures and apply it to non-technology businesses as well.
From an entrepreneurship scholar’s point of view, it is encouraging that there is a rich pool of data available for empirical research into technology ventures. A variety of startup funding databases, analyst reports on angel and venture capital funding, and technology or sector deep-dives are available for researchers to mine.