Chair for Entrepreneurial Strategy
Chair forEntrepreneurial Strategy
Professor Dr. Christoph Seckler
At the Chair of Entrepreneurial Strategy, we believe that entrepreneurship can be a force for good in society; one idea at a time. For us, entrepreneurship goes beyond starting a startup. It means to develop novel solutions for people’s needs. This can be anything from a novel search algorithm to make the world’s information universally accessible (Google) to a novel microcredit service to fight poverty (Grameen Bank). We foster entrepreneurship through all of our activities in research, education, and consulting. If you want to join our team, or cooperate with us, please do not hesitate to contact us.
- Prof. Dr. Christoph Seckler
Jean-Baptiste Say Institute
The Jean-Baptiste Say Institute for Entrepreneurship relies on a unique European network which was developed in 2007 by the Entrepreneurship Chair of ESCP and has today more than 50 researchers and teachers. Its goal is to train entrepreneurs and leaders around the world in entrepreneurship and, to prepare tomorrow’s managers for profound changes in the world of work.
WebsiteINSPIRE: The European Center for Innovation, Transformation, and Entrepreneurship
INSPIRE at ESCP Business School is dedicated to developing the most inspiring research ideas in innovation, transformation, and entrepreneurship. Our ambition is to push the frontiers of knowledge with bold, inspiring, and impactful research that shapes the future of business and society.
Center for Design Science in Entrepreneurship
At the DS:E, we believe that design science enables entrepreneurship scholars to combine cutting-edge research with real world impact. We enable entrepreneurship scholars to engage in design science research in three ways. First, we bring together design science experts from different disciplines to further develop the design science research paradigm for the entrepreneurship field. Second, we educate interested entrepreneurship scholars in doing high impact design science research . Third, we serve as a platform to match firms’ entrepreneurial practice challenges with design science scholars.
WebsiteTeaching
We offer the following courses:
MSc in
Strategy and Digital Business
- StartupSchool
- Hackathon
- International Entrepreneurship
- Principled Leadership
PhD
Programme Berlin
- Publication Seminar
- Qualitative Research Methods
- Design Science in Entrepreneurship and Innovation
Executive Master in
Digital Innovation and Entrepreneurial Leadership
- The course “Research methods”
Research
Research approach
Our research converges around the question of how to leverage adversity. This means we are interested in how individuals, teams, and organizations can overcome and benefit from challenging situations. We study, for example, how entrepreneurs can learn from failure, how teams are able to develop resilience in error-prone environments, or how firms develop capabilities to take advantage of quickly changing environments.
Previous research on these topics has been published in leading international journals such as Accounting Organizations and Society, Journal of Management Studies, and Academy of Management Discoveries. We are excited that previous research has received multiple international awards, for example, three "Best PaperAwards" at the Academy of Management.
Research topics
Learning from Failure
A topic that has attracted considerable attention in both theory and practice is: learning from failure. While learning from failure is widely considered a crucial learning mechanism for entrepreneurs, questions on who, when, why, what and how entrepreneurs learn from failure is of much debate. We contribute to these discussions by studying the learning from failure of individual entrepreneurs, entrepreneurial teams, as well as entrepreneurial organizations. We believe that properly understanding the phenomenon will help to eventually improve how entrepreneurs learn from failure, and thus promote successful entrepreneurship.
Entrepreneurial Ecosystems
A much used metaphor in media, practice, and academia is the one of an entrepreneurial ecosystem. While the metaphor seems to resonate with a lot of people, some fundamental questions need to be answered in the future. These questions include: what is actually an entrepreneurial ecosystem, how can we best study entrepreneurial ecosystems, and how can we design entrepreneurial ecosystems to be successful. We aim to contribute to these discussions by providing a realist (re-)conceptualization of what constitutes an entrepreneurial ecosystem, by empirically examining the entrepreneurial ecosystems in Europe, and by theorizing about their functioning. Based on these insights, we aim at developing ideas on how to design prosperous entrepreneurial ecosystems in Europe.
Design Science
Design science presents the entrepreneurship field with a promise. The promise is that entrepreneurship scholars can be at the vanguard of generating new knowledge, not only to report on ‘what is’ but to develop knowledge on how things ‘should be’. We engage in design science research to tackle some of the world's most pressing issues. Beyond doing design science research on pressing issues, we also work on developing the conceptual foundations of the design science approach.
Focus on:
Last Publications
Journal Article
Journal Article
A Process Perspective on Organizational Failure JOURNAL OF MANAGEMENT STUDIES, 56(1), 19-56
Journal Article
ACCOUNTING, ORGANIZATIONS AND SOCIETY, 62, 21-42
Publications
Find an overview
Academic Articles
2025
Trash to Treasure: Design Principles for Developing Cascading and Repurposing Business Models through Systemic Stakeholder Collaboration
PROCEEDINGS OF THE HAWAII INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON SYSTEM SCIENCES (HICSS), 5020-5030
Media
2025
Folge #140 Fehlertoleranz als Killer-Feature
Fast & Curious Podcast
Media
2025
Identifying the drivers of change: a tool for SME digital transformation
The Choice
Other Intellectual Contributions
2025
Rigorous research with demonstrable impact
AACSB LINK
Other Intellectual Contributions
2025
Fallstudie: Fürchtet euch nicht. Wie sollte sich der CEO verhalten?
HARVARD BUSINESS MANAGER
Other Intellectual Contributions
2025
The Human Side of Digital Transformation: A Tool for Identifying Innovation Promotors
TECHNOVATION, 140, 103161
Academic Articles
2024
An institutional perspective on fear of failure and its effects across three entrepreneurship stages
INTERNATIONAL ENTREPRENEURSHIP AND MANAGEMENT JOURNAL, 21(1), 34
Academic Articles
2024
Theorizing the Lean Startup Approach: Towards Well-Grounded Design Principles
LECTURE NOTES IN COMPUTER SCIENCE
Conference Presentations
2024
Scheitern – wie geht das?
Intersectoral School of Governance Baden-Württemberg
Conference Presentations
2024
Researching Forward: Design Science as a Research Approach
Stockholm School of Economics
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Team and contact
Julian Kirchherr
