Featured Research
Strategic Entrepreneurial Orientation:
Configurations, Performance, and the Effects of Industry and Time
Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal
Most entrepreneurial orientation research examines either how overall entrepreneurial orientation, or each of its component dimensions influences firm outcomes. In this paper, my coauthors and I take a different approach. We examine how different patterns of the dimensions create various entrepreneurial orientation profiles. These profiles have different consequences for the performance of high tech firms.
The Power of Positivity?
The Influence of Positive Psychological Capital Language on Crowdfunding Performance
Journal of Business Venturing
What are you telling crowdfunding investors when you use positive language in your campaign? In this article, my coauthors and I examine how language that conveys positive psychological capital (optimism, hope, resilience and confidence) influences the performance of crowdfunding campaigns – and who benefits most from doing so.
What Doesn’t Get Measured Does Exist:
Improving the Accuracy of Computer-Aided Text Analysis
Journal of Management
Computer-Aided Text Analysis is gaining momentum in both management research and practice. However, we do not adequately understand how to maximize measure reliability when using this technique. In this article, my coauthors and I examine three common sources of measurement error in dictionary-based computer-aided text analyses and provide researchers with tools for how to improve measure reliability.
Teaching Portfolio
Entrepreneurship
To many, entrepreneurship involves the creation of new ventures. My entrepreneurship teaching takes a broader view, helping students understand how to identify entrepreneurial opportunities whether starting a new venture or in the context of growing existing ventures.
Strategic Management
A central goal of strategic management is to understand why some firms outperform others. My teaching in this area equips students with the tools to diagnose strategic issues faced by firms, identify strategic patterns to address these issues, and select among these alternatives to make their firm more likely to be the one outperforming their peers.
Research Methods
When people think about big data, they often think about big databases of clean, complete, quantified data. And there is some of that; however, much of big data is unstructured and difficult to systematically analyze. My research methods teaching has emphasized content analytic techniques to help students make sense of this unstructured data.
Testimonials
“I just wanted to say that your class of all my classes was the most valuable class to me. I plan on being an entrepreneur and the concepts from this class I know will be valuable as I plan to build my own businesses from the ground up.”
-Undergraduate business major
“Thank you so much for a great semester – I really enjoyed the class, and truly learned a lot! Additionally, I think your class helped smooth my transition from more tech-oriented toward more of the intersection between tech and business, so thank you for that.”
-Undergraduate non-business major
“Your attitude and environment in the class are respectful and professional. Thank you for treating us like the executives and busy people we are. I enjoy your class, even though it is challenging, because I feel you respect us as people.”
-Executive MBA student
“Aaron McKenny, needed practicing attorneys and CPAs who would be willing to be interviewed for his students in his Tuesday evening entrepreneurship class. I rounded up some of my posse to volunteer. [Colleague] is absolutely impossible to impress. She is incredibly judgmental, with standards of expected behavior that are unattainable. Yet, she is impressed with Aaron’s students. She has given three interviews so far. Good job, all of you.”
-Guest Speaker