Chair for
Entrepreneurial Strategy

 Professor Dr. Christoph Seckler, Owner of the Chair  Entrepreneurial Strategy, Berlin campus, ESCP

Professor Dr. Christoph Seckler

Entrepreneurship is not just about starting companies; it’s about creating value, challenging the status quo, and shaping the future

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

Logo of the Jean-Baptiste Say website, Campus Berlin, ESCP

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.

Website

INSPIRE: 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.

Website

Teaching
We offer the following courses:

MBA in
International Management

  • Creativity, Entrepreneurship and Innovation
Go to the programme

MSc in
Strategy and Digital Business

  • StartupSchool
  • Hackathon
Go to the programme

Bsc in
Bachelor in Management

  • International Entrepreneurship
  • Principled Leadership
Go to the programme

PhD
Programme Berlin

  • Designing Research for Publication
  • Design Science in Entrepreneurship and Innovation
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Executive Master in
Digital Innovation and Entrepreneurial Leadership

  • Research methods
  • Academic Director
Go to the programme

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

SECKLER, C., S. FISCHER, K. ROSING (2021) Who Adopts an Error Management Orientation? Discovering the Role of Humility ACADEMY OF MANAGEMENT DISCOVERIES

Journal Article

HABERSANG S., J. KUEBERLING-JOST, M. REIHLEN, C. SECKLER (2019)
A Process Perspective on Organizational Failure JOURNAL OF MANAGEMENT STUDIES, 56(1), 19-56

Journal Article

SECKLER, C., U.GRONEWOLD, M.REIHLEN (2017) An error management perspective on audit quality
ACCOUNTING, ORGANIZATIONS AND SOCIETY, 62, 21-42

Publications
Find an overview

Display :
129 publications

Journal Article

2019

SECKLER, C., S. FISCHER, K. ROSING

Auch Berater machen Fehler

HARVARD BUSINESS MANAGER, 2019, vol. December, pp. 10-12

Contribution on blogs and Social Networks

2019

SECKLER, C.

Major corporate failures have more in common than you’d think, and can be avoided

2019, THE CONVERSATION

Contribution on blogs and Social Networks

2019

SECKLER, C.

Mit diesen drei Strategien etablierst du ein erfolgreiches Fehlermanagement in deinem Start-up

2019, Basic Thinking

Journal Article

2019

HABERSANG, S., J. KUEBERLING-JOST, M. REIHLEN, C. SECKLER

Warum Unternehmen scheitern: Pfade des Niedergangs frühzeitig erkennen

ZEITSCHRIFT FUHRUNG + ORGANISATION (ZFO), 2019, vol. 88, pp. 216-220

Chapter

2018

REIHLEN, M., A. WERR, C. SECKLER

Entrepreneurship and Professional Service Firms: The Team, the Firm, the Ecosystem, and the Field

in Professions and Professional Service Firms: Private and Public Sector Enterprises in the Global Economy., Mike Saks and Daniel Muzio Ed., Routledge, pp. 110-133, 2018

Journal Article

2017

SECKLER, C., U. GRONEWOLD, M. REIHLEN

An error management perspective on audit quality

ACCOUNTING, ORGANIZATIONS AND SOCIETY, 2017, vol. 62, pp. 21-42

Journal Article

2017

REIHLEN, M., C. SECKLER, A. WERR

Entrepreneurial Ecosystems: A Conceptual Framework and Research Agenda for the Professional Service Field

ACADEMY OF MANAGEMENT PROCEEDINGS, 2017

Chapter

2017

SECKLER, C., R. FUNKEN, M. GIELNIK

Learning from Entrepreneurial Failure: Integrating Emotional, Motivational, and Cognitive Factors

in Autonomous learning in the workplace., J. Ellingson and R. A. Noe Ed., SIOP Organizational Frontiers book series, 2017

PhD Dissertation

2014

SECKLER, C.

Quality Management in Accounting Firms

2014, Leuphana University

Team and contact

Junior Professor Dr. Christoph Seckler, Owner of the Chair  Entrepreneurial Strategy, Berlin campus, ESCP

Professor Dr. Christoph Seckler

Professor of Entrepreneurial Strategy
cseckler@escpeurope.eu
Peter Borchers

Peter Borchers

Affiliate Professor, Berlin
pborchers@escp.eu
Marc Sasserath

Marc Sasserath

Affiliate Professor, Berlin
msasserath@escp.eu
Julian Kirchherr

Julian Kirchherr

Associate Professor, Roskilde University, Denmark; Visiting Professor
juliank@ruc.dk
Bugra Kilinc

Bugra Kilinc

Research Assistant and PhD Student, Berlin
bkilinc@escp.eu
Renate Griessel-Duminy

Renate Griessel-Duminy

PhD Student, Paris
renate.griessel_duminy@edu.escp.eu
Mona Ghazi

Mona Ghazi

PhD Student, Berlin
mghazi@escp.eu
Anselm Ohme

Anselm Ohme

PhD Student, Berlin
aohme@escp.eu
Merlin Schirmer

Merlin Schirmer

PhD Student, Berlin
mschirmer@escp.eu
Joachim Vandaele

Joachim Vandaele

Executive PhD Student, Paris
joachim.vandaele@edu.escp.eu
Marc Kratz

Marc Kratz

PhD Alumnus, Berlin
mkratz@escp.eu
Hanna Buyssens

Hanna Buyssens

Postdoctoral Researcher, Berlin
hbuyssens@escp.eu