Entrepreneurship | INSEAD Knowledge

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INSEAD Insights: September 2023 Research Picks

Lily Fang

Recent findings on online marketplace dynamics, new market creation, trust in AI, diversity in corporate boards and consumer choices.

Entrepreneurship

How Founding Conditions Impact Start-Up Success

D. C. Motley, C. E. Eesley, W. W. Koo

Diverse founding teams formed in unpredictable environments tend to perform better in similar subsequent conditions.

Career

Pursuing Purpose After Early Retirement

W. Jiang, C. Harbour, A. Tirard

Individuals who achieve financial independence seek greater purpose and meaningful work to enrich their lives.

Career

The Psychological Strategies of Influencers

Manfred F. R. Kets de Vries

Understanding the psychology behind why influencer marketing works.

Entrepreneurship

What All Tech Start-Ups Need to Succeed

T. Evgeniou, L. Van der Heyden, Y. Lechelle

Governance exists to help tech entrepreneurs prevent value destruction from day one.

Entrepreneurship

The Power of Governance for Tech Start-Up Success

T. Evgeniou, L. Van der Heyden, Y. Lechelle

Lessons from a serial entrepreneur on why good governance is crucial for tech start-ups to succeed.

Paper clip leading the way - Photo by Getty/Magnetic-Mcc

Entrepreneurship

Local Innovation as a Driver of Global Development

Prashant Yadav

To achieve critical development goals, we need to champion local, innovative solutions to social problems.

Strategy

Demystifying China’s Internet Giants

Guoli Chen

A behind-the-scenes look at what makes or breaks China’s Big Tech flagbearers and their foreign exploits.

Entrepreneurship

China’s Internet Giants: The Nuts and Bolts of Going Global

G. Chen, J. Li

The lowdown on how ByteDance, Shein and Xiaomi succeeded outside of China while WeChat failed.

Entrepreneurship

Solving Grand Societal Challenges Through Creative Organisation Design

A. Szerb, I. Kivleniece, V. A. Aggarwal

Combining for-profit entrepreneurship with a non-profit social mission through novel organisation design can achieve scale and impact.

Entrepreneurship

Crypto 3.0 Will Be More Human

Jason P. Davis

At a recent INSEAD event, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin revealed technologies to manage online identities, preserve privacy and ensure the responsible use of AI.

Strategy

Will China’s Internet Giants Conquer the World?

G. Chen, J. Li

Dissecting the success and strategies of Chinese internet firms as more of them venture overseas.

Entrepreneurship

Corporate VC Is Booming, but Is It What Your Start-Up Needs?

N. Sauvage, C. Zeisberger, M. Varadan

A guide to choosing the right corporate investment for entrepreneurs.

Career

How to Find Fulfilment by Taking a Step Down

W. Jiang, C. Harbour, A. Tirard

Three stories of professionals who bucked the trend and found greater meaning in their work life.

Leadership & Organisations

Finding Meaning in Life

Manfred F. R. Kets de Vries

Create a compelling self-narrative based on the five pillars that influence the way we experience meaning.

Strategy

Why the Customer Isn’t Always Right

Alixandra Barasch

Consumer behaviour on food-logging tools reveals initial expectations don’t match actual experience.

Entrepreneurship

Venture Capital Crucial to Push for ‘Ethical’ AI and Tech Standards

T. Evgeniou, C. Zeisberger

Venture capitalists’ role as funding source and mentor of tech start-ups makes them uniquely placed to press for more responsible use of technology.

Entrepreneurship

Escaping the Survival Trap

Martin Gargiulo

Why expanding your network is crucial for long-term creative success.

Entrepreneurship

The Start-Up Blind Spot That Trips New Ventures

Phanish Puranam

Having a great business plan is not enough. Start-ups also need good organisation design.

Entrepreneurship

A Foot in the Door: Strategies to Connect With Investors

Balagopal Vissa

Even modestly connected entrepreneurs are six times more likely to succeed in accessing early-stage investors – if they push the right buttons.

Entrepreneurship

What to Do With Contrarians?

H. Piezunka, V. Aggarwal, H. Posen

Even when they are wrong, those who think differently add value to an organisation.

Entrepreneurship

The World’s Most Innovative Countries, 2021

Bruno Lanvin

Tracking innovation around the globe in the face of the Covid-19 crisis.

Entrepreneurship

How Entrepreneurs Solve the Big Fish vs. Big Pond Dilemma

Henning Piezunka

Collaboration with a partner is not strictly a two-way affair; instead, prospective partners take the entire competitive landscape into account when forming ties.

Entrepreneurship

The Hidden Hazards of Smart Device Medical Advice

B. Babic, T. Evgeniou, S. Gerke, G. Cohen

Diagnostic mobile medical apps call for increased regulatory intervention, even if they do not dispense advice or treatment.

Leadership & Organisations

Mixing Business and Pleasure for Competitive Advantage

E. Miron-Spektor, M. Lazar

A recent study shows how entrepreneurial team formation can be improved by combining two established strategies.

Entrepreneurship

How Should Humans Collaborate With AI?

Phanish Puranam

When bringing algorithms and employees together, businesses should respect rather than ignore human preferences.

Entrepreneurship

The New Normal for Innovation

Quy Huy

We’re entering a deglocalised world where firms must ceaselessly innovate in order to survive.

Entrepreneurship

How to Tell the Age of an Innovation

H. Greve, I. Naumovska, V. Gaba

All innovations make the journey from “eureka” to “meh”. But they don’t do so according to fixed rules.

Entrepreneurship

How Silicon Valley Ate Itself – and What Comes Next

A Madhavji, S Hasija, M Grandinetti

The Valley’s pre-eminence isn’t going anywhere, but its special gloss has faded. And that’s a good thing, for both society and the future of innovation.

Entrepreneurship

Who’s Afraid of the Experience Economy?

Benjamin Kessler

Great brand experiences drive better business outcomes, during the pandemic and beyond.

Entrepreneurship

Using Science to Enhance the Customer Experience

Chiara Spina

Hypotheses and experimentation are helping the Saudi government transform the way it serves customs users.

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Entrepreneurship

How the Rural-Urban Divide Plays Out on Digital Platforms

Wesley Wu-Yi Koo

Urban entrepreneurs on digital platforms have access to better offline information, which gives them an edge over rural entrepreneurs.

Entrepreneurship

Regulating the ‘Wild West’ of Token-Based Business

A Madhavji, M Massa, M Madhavji

Evolving standards of crypto regulation may actually result in sharper oversight than is common in the non-token world.

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Entrepreneurship

Why Firms Should Care About the Career Stage of China’s Officials

X. R. Luo, D. Wang

Tasked with a broad range of objectives, government officials will prioritise different ones depending on their career stage and mobilise firms accordingly.

Entrepreneurship

Is There a Scientific Formula For Start-up Success?

Chiara Spina

Founders make fewer mistakes and pivot in the right direction when they learn to challenge their own assumptions and experiment continuously.

Entrepreneurship

How Start-ups in Emerging Markets Succeed Despite Scarcity

Balagopal Vissa

When the going gets tough, bring on improvisation and learning.

Entrepreneurship

The New Business Models (and Jobs) in Blockchain

From finance to smart cities, distributed ledger technology is beginning to deliver on its vaunted potential in several key sectors.

Entrepreneurship

Entrepreneurship Frameworks That Work

A recent book narrates a variety of productive and powerful paths forward for all kinds of entrepreneurs.

Entrepreneurship

Illogical Truths: The Paradoxes of Silicon Valley

Gopi Rangan & James So

The Valley’s most valuable product is the contrarian thinking that fuels its innovation culture.

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Entrepreneurship

Big Tech’s Global Strategy in the Cloud

Jason P. Davis

Amazon, Microsoft, Google and Alibaba are fighting tooth and nail in the cloud market, using strategies heavily influenced by their respective histories.

Entrepreneurship

The World’s Most Innovative Countries, 2020

Bruno Lanvin

Who will finance innovation beyond Covid-19?

Entrepreneurship

Reconceiving Innovation for Covid-19

Manuel Sosa

Covid-19 is an opportunity for businesses to build a new normal that is more human-centric, imaginative and agile.

Entrepreneurship

The Central Conundrum of Covid-19 Entrepreneurship

Vikas A. Aggarwal

A recently released report reveals how one entrepreneurial ecosystem is responding to the pandemic.

Entrepreneurship

The Innovator’s Imitation Dilemma: TikTok and Facebook in Context

J. Davis, V. Aggarwal

Even with a backer like Microsoft, innovators must outrace copycats like Facebook and others who share the spoils of imitation among themselves.

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Entrepreneurship

The State of AI-Driven Digital Transformation

Joerg Niessing & Marcus Ho

With a holistic transformation strategy, AI can create wonders.

Entrepreneurship

How Consumer Nudging Can Solve the Plastic Packaging Waste Crisis

M. Peshkam, D. Dubois

Until there is a major change in consumers’ behaviour towards plastic packaging waste, the widespread and tangible shifts the situation calls for are unlikely.

Entrepreneurship

The Secret to Successful Crowdsourcing Contests? More Prizes

Your prize money goes further when it’s distributed among a larger group of winners.

Entrepreneurship

The Six Roles You Need on Your AI Team

Can you build new technological capacities during a global crisis? Yes – if you make the right decisions regarding your people.

Entrepreneurship

The Apps That Brought China Back to Life

Ruby Mu & Xiao Zhixing

The nation where COVID-19 began is carefully returning to normal, thanks to controversial technologies that may put safety before privacy.

Entrepreneurship

Safeguarding Privacy in a Pandemic

Andrea Canidio

Speeding up the adoption of blockchain and other digitised ledger technologies (DLT) can help society reconcile security and privacy.

Entrepreneurship

Big Tech Is Rewiring Healthcare in the Platform Revolution

The healthcare industry will consolidate around a small number of platforms.

Entrepreneurship

Speed, Power and Flow: Use Surf Criteria to Rate Start-ups

Rony Stefano & Horacio Falcão

A novel method to predict start-up success.

Entrepreneurship

How Leaders Should Navigate Long-Term Uncertainty

Quy Huy

Entrepreneurs and change managers may ultimately be selling a dream, but that’s not what stakeholders are buying.

Entrepreneurship

Disruption and Anti-disruption in the Streaming Economy

N. Askin, B. Kessler, A. Batey

For established industry players in entertainment and elsewhere, the ascent of blockchain is a double-edged sword.

Leadership & Organisations

Start-ups: The Founding Team Is a Real Magic Bullet

M. Lazar, E. Miron-Spektor

Studies show that the entrepreneurial team may impact a start-up’s long-term success more than its product.

Entrepreneurship

Seven Behaviours for Boosting Change Readiness

Resistance to change is baked into our biology, but the ability to overcome it can be strengthened with the right regimen.

Entrepreneurship

Blockchain: Finding the Value Proposition

Peter Zemsky

Open-sourced collaborative projects like Hyperledger are helping companies find the value of blockchain technology.

Entrepreneurship

A Start-up’s Evolution from AI Lab to AI Business

Pavel Kireyev

For Preferred Networks, building tech for self-driving cars and smart factories is the daily routine. One of its biggest opportunities is to devise a business model that complements its technology.

Entrepreneurship

Are Venture Capitalists Hopelessly Biased, or Deceptively Rational?

Bala Vissa & Kim Claes

Close scrutiny of VC deal terms in India reveals a nuanced pattern of objectivity and discrimination.

Entrepreneurship

‘Pink Silos’ in Start-up Funding and How to Avoid Them

Isabelle Solal

Female entrepreneurs and female investors risk being boxed in if they seek only each other’s company.

Entrepreneurship

SCALE: A Growth Toolkit for Mature Market Start-Ups

How a new programme increased start-ups’ chance of success.

Entrepreneurship

Social Media Strategy for David and Goliath

Jamie Seoyeon Song & Martin Gargiulo

When leveraging online influence, the identity of your audience should dictate how you engage with them.

Entrepreneurship

Why New Ventures Should Think Twice Before Building Political Connections

Xiaowei Rose Luo

In emerging markets, B2B start-ups’ closeness to local government can scare away potential customers.

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Entrepreneurship

Meet the Algorithms Planning Your Next Online Purchase

Pavel Kireyev

AI and machine learning are changing global consumption habits, and companies are playing catch-up.

Entrepreneurship

The World’s Most Innovative Countries, 2019

R.Noyes, B. Lanvin

Continuing innovations in health and medicine have led to economic growth and a better quality of life for many around the world. But inequalities could grow rapidly.

Entrepreneurship

How Blockchain Can Win the War Against Plastic Waste

M. Peshkam. D. Dubois

Start-ups are making incremental use of blockchain to reduce plastic waste, but the technology’s power to drive real change is yet to be realised.

Entrepreneurship

Y Combinator Accelerates the Hunt for Unicorns

Faced with increasing competition, the leading accelerator is making start-up know-how widely available as it searches for the next Airbnb.

Entrepreneurship

Oiling the Wheels of Change in Traditional Business: The Marico Story

Vinika D. Rao

How a traditional family business built on spice became a multinational giant of consumer goods.

Entrepreneurship

The TikTok Strategy: Using AI Platforms to Take Over the World

A curious combination of prediction technology and human censors enables ByteDance to create a dynamic global video ecosystem.

Entrepreneurship

A Three-Part Formula for Fueling Start-Ups

Securing the necessary resources involves much more than just getting a VC to say yes.

Strategy

Global Open Innovation in the Silicon Valley of Sport

L. Felipe Monteiro

One of the world’s biggest football clubs has set out a pioneering collaborative strategy of innovation.

Entrepreneurship

Five Lessons from a VC with a Long-Term Focus

INSEAD alum Oren Zeev’s people-based philosophy of investing is one of the secrets of his remarkable success.

Entrepreneurship

Women Are Risk-Takers, Too: Busting Gender Myths in the Start-up Space

C. Lin, D. Gurcu

A tissue of stereotypes and pseudo-science forms the “rational” basis for gender bias in entrepreneurship.

Entrepreneurship

The Multinational Fuelled by Thousands of Entrepreneurs

Felipe Monteiro

Haier’s business model has created a worldwide entrepreneurship movement.

Entrepreneurship

In Crowdsourcing, You Have to Know How to Say “No Thanks”

Henning Piezunka & Linus Dahlander

Rejection can actually strengthen relationships between companies and the crowd.

Entrepreneurship

How Alibaba Uses Blockchain to Compete in the Cloud

Jason P. Davis

Foreign companies can use emerging tech to build a reputation as a strategic partner in solving local problems.

Entrepreneurship

The Four Most Prevalent Myths About Electric Cars

Boris Liedtke, Stefan Krause

Breaking down the myths that hinder acceptance of electric vehicles.

Entrepreneurship

Two Characteristics of Digital World Conquerors

Why some digital businesses easily take the world by storm, and others get lost in translation.

Entrepreneurship

The Real Story Behind Uber’s Exit from Southeast Asia

Uber, Grab and Go-Jek embody emerging strategies in international platform competition.

Entrepreneurship

The Rise of the Red Unicorn

Ian Potter & Claudia Zeisberger

China is on track to absorb more venture capital than the U.S. this year.

Entrepreneurship

The World’s Most Innovative Countries, 2018

Solving the energy/environment equation requires a significant innovation push.

Entrepreneurship

Life in Start-up Nation: Two Young French Entrepreneurs Speak Out

James Costantini & Dawn Jarisch

In a frantic-paced start-up scene, the primary challenge is building and managing talented teams.

Entrepreneurship

Neuroscience-Based Product Innovation: Hype or Hope?

H. Plassmann, A. Ling

AI and Big Data allow innovators to leverage neuroscientific knowledge at scale to untapped markets.

Entrepreneurship

ZhongAn’s Micropremium Model: The Future of Insurance?

K. Cool, C. Angoulvant, B. Rogers

With scale, Chinese online insurer ZhongAn has created a market where there was none before.

Entrepreneurship

Data Security for the Internet of Things

Machine-to-machine transactions entail risks as well as an opportunity to create a digital blue ocean.

Entrepreneurship

The Journey of the Activist-Entrepreneur

M. Lee, T. Ramus, A. Vaccaro

A group of Sicilian anti-Mafia activists-turned-entrepreneurs encountered tensions between the demands of the market and the values of their social movement.