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:
Bsc in
Bachelor in Management
- International Entrepreneurship
- Principled Leadership
PhD
Programme Berlin
- Designing Research for Publication
- Design Science in Entrepreneurship and Innovation
Executive Master in
Digital Innovation and Entrepreneurial Leadership
- Research methods
- Academic Director
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.
Publications
Find an overview
Journal Article
2025
The Human Side of Digital Transformation: A Tool for Identifying Innovation Promotors
TECHNOVATION, 2025, vol. 140, pp. 103161
Contribution on blogs and Social Networks
2025
The key to success is an error-management culture
2025, The Choice
Other contribution
2025
Tools In Entrepreneurship Symposium
2025, ESCP Business School
Journal Article
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), 2025, pp. 5020-5030
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
Guest Speaker in a Conference
2024
Design Science In Entrepreneurship And Its Implications For Business Models for Sustainability
2024, International Conference on New Business Models (NBM), San Sebastian, Spain
Conference Proceedings
2024
Design-oriented Research in Entrepreneurship: A Methodological Review
in 84th Annual Meeting of the Academy of Management (AOM 2024), Academy of Management (AoM), 2024, United States
Debate; Point of view; Editorial,…
2024
Designing the Future: A Design Science Methodology for Exploration Projects
2024, Working Paper
Contribution on blogs and Social Networks
2024
Feature: Menschen und Muster - Wie uns Demut resilienter macht
2024, rbb
Contribution on blogs and Social Networks
2024
Feature: Schöner scheitern
2024, t3n
Team and contact
Julian Kirchherr
