Exploring Social network Embeddedness and Engagement as Antecedents to Success of Both Individual Firms and Entrepreneurship Ecosystems

Principal Investigator: Jeff Pollack

Sponsor: Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation

Award Period: 10/1/2018 - 12/15/2021

Amount: $440,594

Description: This two year, interdisciplinary, research project combines an entrepreneurship focus with a social network perspective to address the following, critically important, research question – how does an entrepreneur’s social network embeddedness and engagement affect subsequent venture success and, furthermore, how does this impact an entrepreneurship ecosystem? Accordingly, the goal of this research is to develop and validate two new metrics—the social network embeddedness index and the social network engagement index—that will enable the visualization of an individual entrepreneur’s social network as well as aggregation of the network to the zip code, Statistical Metropolitan Area, and regional levels to provide insight into how social networks affect key entrepreneurship outcomes both at the individual and geographic levels.