I am a Doctoral Student in Entrepreneurship, and have finished all coursework in June 2020. In August 2023, I handed in my cumulative dissertation, preliminary titled “Uncertainty and Effectuation in Corporate and Policy Entrepreneurship”. It is concerned with uncertainty as a boundary condition for entrepreneurship, as well as with effectuation as a mode of action and a method for policy change.
Current projects
Late to the Party: Implications of the Role of Uncertainty for the Field of Entrepreneurship 100 Years After Knight’s “Risk, Uncertainty & Profit”
For 20 years, the center of the entrepreneurship research universe has been the concept of opportunity, even though uncertainty and many other concepts have shared some of the attention (e.g. Shane & Venka-taraman, 2000; Shepherd, 2015). Today, the central concern of the entrepreneurship field, and management research in general, seems to be shifting towards the concept of uncertainty (e.g. Alvarez & Porac, 2020b; Ramoglou, 2021; Townsend et al., 2018). Hence, this paper asks: A century after Knight’s seminal piece, how do management and economics scholars frame uncertainty? What is different today? What might we learn from this for the field of entrepreneurship?
in collaboration with Nick Dew, René Mauer, and Yi Dragon Jiang
Market of Makers – How to Promote Corporate Entrepreneurship with an Effectuation Intervention
Corporate entrepreneurship is a challenge for organizations and their employees, for example because of structural rigidities or inertia. A promising approach of how to spark corporate entrepreneurship lies in effectuation research. Effectuation is a mode of action or decision-making logic that is based on empirical evidence from expert entrepreneurs. Following a Design Science Research (DSR) methodology, we develop and implement an effectuation intervention at a German multinational corporation. The intervention consists of two basic parts: The Market of Makers, an event that leads participants through the effectual process, and the Speedboat Regatta, a 3-months long project development phase. The intervention successfully generated 23 projects that identified opportunities for process innovation.
in collaboration with René Mauer
Entrepreneurs and Policy: Modes of Worldmaking, Networking, Planning, and Outmaneuvering
Entrepreneurs interact with their wider social environment to create social and policy change. To understand entrepreneurial behavior in this context, multi-level approaches become increasingly important. They are crucial to explain the interdependencies of individual entrepreneurs, immediate stakeholders such as team members, and their wider context. Scholars focus on specific links, such as between entrepreneurs and their local community. Studies that take a holistic approach are largely missing, even though studying how entrepreneurs interact with multiple levels of stakeholders over time has the potential to better explain entrepreneurial processes. By following a qualitative research approach using two case studies of policy entrepreneurs in Bolivia and Germany, we show that entrepreneurs employ different modes of action over time when interacting with their immediate and wider contexts in attempting to foster policy change. Our results suggest that entrepreneurs and policymakers co-create in order to shape their ecosystems and society at large.
This chapter is part of a larger book project preliminary titled “Cases of Effectuation”, which is co-created by scholars from the Society for Effectual Action and edited by Saras Sarasvathy.
in collaboration with Patricia Cabero Tapia
Publications
Braun, S., Dew, N., Jiang, Y., & Mauer, R. (2023). Late to the Party: Who Could Have Predicted the 100th Anniversary of Knight’s True Uncertainty? Academy of Management Proceedings, 2023(1), 12980. https://doi.org/10.5465/AMPROC.2023.12980abstract
Braun, S.M., Mauer, R. (2022). Market of Makers – How to Promote Corporate Entrepreneurship with an Effectuation Intervention. In: Drechsler, A., Gerber, A., Hevner, A. (eds) The Transdisciplinary Reach of Design Science Research. DESRIST 2022. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 13229. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-06516-3_19
Braun, S., Codreanu, S.-C., Jiang, Y., & Taghvaee, S. (2021). Effectuating Effectively: Exploring Processes and Boundary Conditions. Academy of Management Proceedings, 2021(1), 13153. https://doi.org/10.5465/AMBPP.2021.13153symposium
Braun, S.: Coca Cola – Ein innovatives Distributionskonzept für Afrika (“Coca Cola – An innovative distribution concept for Africa”), in: von Carlowitz, Philipp & Röndigs, Alexander (2016): Distribution in Afrika – Distributionslogistik in Westafrika als Beispiel. Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden, 79-81. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-10585-3
Braun, S.: Die Finanzierung und das Kapitalgebermanagement von Sozialunternehmen (“The financing and capital provider management of social enterprises”), in: FASE (ed.) (2015)
Conferences
Presentations
Braun, S., Dew, N., Jiang, Y., & Mauer, R. (2023). Late to the Party: Who Could Have Predicted the 100th Anniversary of Knight’s True Uncertainty? 83rd Annual Meeting of the Academy of Management, 4-8 August 2023
Braun, S., Mauer, R., Zabel, C. (2023). Action-based Techniques as a Means to Teach Effectuation, 3E 2023 – ECSB Entrepreneurship Education Conference, 10-12 May 2023
Braun, S., Cabero Tapia, P., Mauer, R. (2022): Effectual Laws? How Institutional Entrepreneurs Shape Lawmaking, 7th Effectuation Conference, November 14-15, 2022
Braun, S., Mauer, R. (2022): Market of Makers – How to Promote Corporate Entrepreneurship with an Effectuation Intervention, G-Forum Conference 2022, September 22-23, 2022
Braun, S., Cabero Tapia, P., Mauer, R. (2022): Effectual Laws? How Institutional Entrepreneurs Shape Lawmaking, G-Forum Conference 2022, September 22-23, 2022
Braun, S., Mauer, R. (2022): Market of Makers – How to Promote Corporate Entrepreneurship with an Effectuation Intervention, 17th International Conference on Design Science Research in Information Systems and Technology DESRIST, June 1-3, 2022.
Braun, S., Mauer, R. (2021): How to Effectuate: Uncovering the Details of Effectuation as a Process, 81st Annual Meeting of the Academy of Management, 29 July – 4 August, 2021
Braun, S., Mauer, R. (2020): Putting effectuation into practice – A design science perspective, G-Forum Konferenz 2020, Virtual Edition, September 28 – October 2, 2020
Participation
7th Effectuation Conference, November 14-15, 2022
G-Forum Conference 2022, September 22-23, 2022
Science Communication Summer School by Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes, Neudietendorf, Germany, August 15-20, 2022
17th International Conference on Design Science Research in Information Systems and Technology DESRIST, June 1-3, 2022
2020 Virtual Academy of Management Annual Meeting, August 7-11, 2020
Effectuation Conference, Berlin, Germany, November 24-26, 2019
RENT Conference XXXIII, November 28-29, 2019
Summer Academy by Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes, Working Group “Big Data Analytics”, St. Johann, Italy, August 20 – September 2, 2017
Summer Academy by Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes, Working Group “Exhibition Formats & Communication”, Greifswald, Germany, August 21 – September 3, 2016
Summer Academy by Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes, Working Group “Sustainability in the Globalized Economy“, La Villa, Italy, August 24 – September 5, 2014
Current advisors
Professor for Innovation and Entrepreneurship at ESCP Business School, Berlin, Germany
Paul M. Hammaker Professor in Business Administration, Darden School of Business, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, USA
Jamuna Raghavan Chair Professor in Entrepreneurship, Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore, India
Past advisors
Professor for Innovation Economics, Technical University Berlin, Berlin, Germany
Former Head of Web Science Research Group, University of Potsdam, Potsdam, Germany
Professor for Corporate Finance and Risk Management, Reutlingen University, Reutlingen, Germany