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Bercovitz, Janet

The Deming Professor of Entrepreneurship

Positions

Research Areas research areas

Research

research overview

  • My research program consists of two main research streams. The first concentrates on extending understanding of academic entrepreneurship and university-industry technology transfer. The second stream focuses on issues of organizational structure and inter-organizational contractual relationships.

keywords

  • organizational economics, contractual relationships, university-industry technology-transfer, entrepreneurship, high growth ventures, innovation strategy, and franchising

Teaching

courses taught

  • BPOL 7530 - Doctoral Seminar: Special Topics in Innovation
    Primary Instructor - Spring 2024
    Focuses on the management of innovation and technology in organizations. The course provides an introduction to the theoretical foundations of, and contemporary empirical research in, this area. The examination of the literature is organized around several broad topics including the nature and timing of technological innovations, the manner in which technological innovations alter the competitive landscape, the links between organizational structure and innovation, the role of alliances and collaboration in supporting innovation activities, innovation, intellectual property and markets for technology, and issues of knowledge search and recombination. In addition to reviewing this broad literature, the course will also seek to identify gaps and promising areas for future research. May be repeated up to 6 total credit hours.
  • BPOL 7560 - Doctoral Seminar - Special Topics in Entrepreneurship
    Primary Instructor - Spring 2021 / Spring 2022
    Provides an introduction to the theoretical foundations of, and empirical research on, entrepreneurship. Our initial examination of the literature is organized around several broad topics associated with the identification, evaluation, and exploitation of opportunities and the creation of new organizations. Special topics in entrepreneurship that highlight recent advances in the field will also be addressed. The course will focus on the main questions that currently define the field and attempt to critically examine how, using a range of theoretical lens and methodologies, researchers have approached these questions.
  • BUSM 4001 - Professional Business Plan Development
    Primary Instructor - Spring 2018
    Using a business plan development model, this capstone course integrates the accounting, finance, management and marketing principles learned previously and incorporates social reasonability and values driven leadership. Objectives focus on the development of professional skills, e.g., time management, career management, team building, through a combination of classroom and experiential learning.
  • MBAX 6160 - Entrepreneurship: High Growth Companies
    Primary Instructor - Spring 2019 / Fall 2019 / Fall 2020 / Spring 2021 / Spring 2022 / Fall 2022 / Fall 2023 / Fall 2024
    Explores the initial decisions that set a foundation for business growth, the pros and cons of alternative growth strategies, organizational scaling tactics, and the keys to realizing value. Studying �adolescent� firms that are past the initial start-up stage but haven't evolved into mature businesses, we will focus on key choices founders face in scaling their businesses, investigating growth-related stumbling blocks and discussing alternative strategies that may be used to overcome these obstacles.
  • MGMT 4160 - Managing Growth: Entrepreneurship and High Growth Ventures
    Primary Instructor - Spring 2022 / Fall 2022 / Fall 2023
    This is a course about how to grow a business beyond the start-up stage. The course will focus on businesses that are not small by design, but on those businesses that with hard work and good luck can be expected to develop into complex enterprises. We will discuss the initial decisions that set a foundation for growth, the pros and cons of alternative growth strategies, organizational scaling tactics, and the keys to realizing value.
  • MGMT 4825 - Experimental Seminar
    Primary Instructor - Spring 2021
    Offered irregularly to provide opportunity for investigation of new frontiers in Management.
  • MGMT 4850 - Senior Seminar in Management
    Primary Instructor - Spring 2023 / Fall 2023
    Covers the issues and challenges of running a firm in a competitive environment. It integrates and builds upon coursework in other functional areas. Discusses principles, frameworks, and techniques that helps understand how to analyze the competitive environment; firm sources of competitive advantage; competitive dynamics; and, specific types of strategies to promote firm performance. Focuses on specific company examples. Formerly MGMT 4000.
  • ORMG 7320 - Doctoral Seminar: Organization Theory
    Primary Instructor - Spring 2020
    Critically investigates major issues in organization theory and provides students with experience in comprehensively surveying literature in subject areas such as organization design, power, culture, innovation, technology, environment, size, and strategy. Instructor consent required.
  • ORMG 7800 - Doctoral Proseminar: Management
    Primary Instructor - Spring 2019
    Provides an orientation to doctoral level study for all students in management. Through critical analysis of articles and student and faculty presentations, students learn about reading and writing research articles and gain an overview of the management discipline.

Background

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