Assistant Professor, Stanford University, Dept. of Management Science & Engineering (MS&E)
Academic CV
I am an Assistant Professor at Stanford University in the Department of Management Science and Engineering (MS&E). My research and teaching interests focus on strategy and technology entrepreneurship. In the broadest sense, I am interested in the "ideas sector" of the economy. I want to find out which individual attributes, strategies and institutional arrangements optimally drive the rate of innovation, high growth entrepreneurship, and ultimately economic growth.
In particular, my research focuses on the determinants of high-growth, innovative firm creation across institutional contexts. I examine the role of two different but critical factors in shaping entrepreneurial outcomes: individual level career history and the institutional context. My work spans two outcomes in particular: individual decisions to choose high-tech entrepreneurial activities and the strategies and outcomes of the entrepreneurial firms that are established. I received the 2010 Best Dissertation Award in the Business Policy and Strategy Division of the Academy of Management and am recipient of the 2007 Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation’s Dissertation Fellowship award. My work has been generously funded by Sequoia Capital, the Kauffman Foundation, the MIT Entrepreneurship Center and Stanford Technology Ventures Program (STVP).
Prior to returning to school, I worked as a research assistant at the Duke University Medical Center, publishing in medical journals and textbooks on cognition in schizophrenia and fMRI neuro-imaging studies.
Education
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan
School of Management, 2005-2009
Ph.D.,
Behavioral and Policy Sciences Technological Innovation and Entrepreneurship (June 2009)
Duke University, 1998-2002 Durham, North Carolina
B.S., Major: Biological Basis of Behavior (Individualized)
School for International Training - Fall 2000 Study Abroad. North India.
- Winner, National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) 2012 Research Fund for International Young Scientists
- Lillie Award, Research grant. Stanford University, 2011.
- Winner, 2010 Best Dissertation Award in the Business Policy and Strategy Division (BPS) at the Academy of Management.
- Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation Dissertation Fellowship Award in 2007
- The Best Student Paper award from the Society for the Advancement of Socio-Economics in 2008
- Batten Institute Fellowship, 2010 (University of Virginia, Darden School of Business)
- MIT Sloan School of Management
- Fellowship, J.B. Duke Fellowship
- Academy of Management Conference Best Paper Proceedings (include only the top 10% of presented papers), 2005-2006, 2010
- 1st Prize: Duke Startup Challenge
Who has 'The Right Stuff'? Educational Elites, Entrepreneurship and Institutional Change in China. (Appendix). R&R.
Abstract: Our understanding of the connection between institutions and entrepreneurship is limited. Through their impact on barriers to entry and to growth in entrepreneurship, institutions will influence the types of individuals (specifically their level of human and social capital) who choose to engage in entrepreneurial activities. This paper shows that when barriers to the growth of entrepreneurial firms are reduced, elite individuals with higher social and human capital become entrepreneurs. By exploiting a natural experiment – embodied in the 1999 Chinese constitutional amendment – it is possible to implement a differences-in-differences approach to analyze the causal impact of institutional change on entrepreneurship. Unique data were collected through survey responses from 2,966 alumni who graduated from a leading technical university in China between 1947 and 2007. The results show that the greatest increase in the transition to entrepreneurship was generated by elite individuals (those belonging to the top quartiles of a human and social capital distribution).
Eesley, Charles E.; Yang, Delin. Changing Entrepreneurial Strategies to Developing Capitalist Institutions: A Look at Chinese Technology Entrepreneurs.
Eesley, Charles E.; Hsu, David; Roberts, Edward B. Focus or Diversify? Aligning Founding Teams with Strategy and Environment. (under review) [slides here]
Abstract: We examine how innovation strategy and commercialization environment impact the performance of varying configurations of founding teams. While prior work on the characteristics of top management teams has typically found that diverse teams are more highly performing, we advance a view of founding team alignment with new venture strategy and environment. Using unique data from a novel survey of 2,067 firms founded over five decades, we show the conditions within which technology-focused versus diverse founding teams outperform. Our contribution is identifying the performance implications of founding team alignment with concrete strategies – i.e., innovation v. imitation, and competition v. cooperation. Strategy and environment significantly influence optimal founding team composition. These results cast doubt on predictions of the life-cycle perspective that ventures can professionalize over time to fit their strategy.
Abstract: We know ventures in developed countries acquire resources either through networks or institutions. However, economic transitions inside emerging economies lead networks and institutions to interact in unclear ways. Therefore, how ventures in emerging economies navigate this interplay between networks and institutions to acquire resources and what are the performance implications of such processes remains unclear. We propose ventures acquire resources through two equally possible two-step pathways. If ventures have personal ties to important network contacts, we argue venture resource acquisition is bottom-up where the direct relationship a venture has with the contact facilitates an indirect relationship between the venture and the resource-holding institution the contact represents. If ventures do not have personal ties, we argue venture resource acquisition is top-down where government-supported institutions (GSI), such as science parks, serve as network intermediaries between the venture and the external institution holding the desired resource. Because entrepreneurs acquire resources only if both steps in each two-step process are successfully completed, we argue the capture of the desired resource entirely mediates the relationship between the venture and the venture’s performance. Using a novel quasi-experimental treatment-control research design generating a matched sample of 94 science park and non-science park ventures in Beijing’s Haidian District, we find support for our assertions.
Eesley, Charles E.; Hsu, David; Roberts, Edward B. Bringing Entrepreneurial Ideas to Life. (under review)
Abstract: Organizational design in the context of new venture development is particularly challenging due to initially severe resource constraints. Deepening our understanding of differential productivity in the startup resource assembly process is therefore important. We address the twin questions of what assets are important to venture performance, and under what conditions are those assets especially important? We do so by considering initial venture idea assets and founder contracting experience. The resource-based view of the firm stresses developing the right assets, which accords with idea assets. Firm boundary theories of the firm emphasize structuring relationships in the right way given a set of organizational assets, which accords with founder contracting experience. Using unique survey data, we find that neither view by itself is as important as both theories taken together. We therefore advance an integrated perspective by showing that new ventures perform better when they both identify valuable resources and also assemble human assets with expertise in structuring organizational arrangements to commercialize those ideas. An important implication is that organizational resources have a range of potential values, and that realizing the upper range of value capture involves the additional ability to structure organizational relationships.
Eesley, Charles E. Entrepreneurial Ventures from Technology-Based Universities: A Cross-National Comparison
Abstract: We compare U.S. (MIT alumni) and Chinese (Tsinghua Univ. alumni) founders and their entrepreneurial outcomes. We find that much is similar in terms of the characteristics of entrepreneurs and the start-up process factors between the MIT and Tsinghua alumni. Nonetheless, there are some relatively subtle differences that in combination with the differences in the environment for entrepreneurial firms and the institutional history of China have led to vastly different outcomes for the entrepreneurial firms from MIT and Tsinghua. The shorter time frame in which entrepreneurial activity has been occurring in China resulted in a younger, smaller set of entrepreneurial firms. Similarly, the younger age of Tsinghua entrepreneurs contributes to a different mix of idea and team sources (fewer from work experience) that might also partially explain the differences in firm outcomes. The mix of funding sources and proportions of firms relying on technological innovation are strikingly similar. While firm size in terms of employees is roughly similar, the MIT firms are much larger in terms of revenues than the Tsinghua firms. It is clear that the broader environment exerts a strong impact on the outcomes of entrepreneurs, their processes, and their firm outcomes.Eesley, Charles E.; Jamber Li; Delin Yang. Does public funding of university R&D influence high-tech entrepreneurship?: Evidence from China’s Project 985
Abstract: In contrast to the long line of literature on venture capital or liquidity constraints and innovation, the relationship between public R&D expenditures and innovation in entrepreneurial firms has not been systematically scrutinized. We address this gap in our understanding using data from China, where expenditures in the public sector on R&D have increased significantly. We exploit Project 985, which gave significant additional research funding to certain universities in China and not others. Using a differences-in-differences methodology, we seek to isolate the causal impact of this additional funding on the career and entrepreneurship decisions of the alumni. We also seek to understand whether this additional basic R&D funding resulted in a change in the quality of the ventures created by alumni.Abstract: Do bankruptcy changes in the institutional environment affect the rate of founding by particular types of founders and the performance of their ventures? We take advantage of a natural experiment in Japan where during the last decade Japan implemented legal reforms to revive Japan’s economic fortunes by changes to bankruptcy laws that reduced the consequences of closing a firm. We argue that lowered costs of exit may have attracted individuals with greater human capital and social networks thus positively affecting new firm performance. We argue and test whether making it easier to fail will attract more founders and higher human capital founders resulting in improved firm performance. Our findings are: as expected the bankruptcy rate increases but at a higher rate for high human capital individuals, the rate of startup firms increases for older and elite educated entrepreneurs, and these groups of entrepreneurs are more likely to found higher performing firms. Overall, while prior research emphasizes the lowering of entry barriers, our work shows that reducing the costs of failure can also stimulate venture formation among certain groups, and lead to forming higher performing firms.
Institutional Flexibility and Training for Employment vs. Entrepreneurship?: Evidence from China
. (R&R)Eesley, Charles E. Entrepreneurship and China: History of Policy Reforms and Institutional Development.
Eesley, Charles E. Institutions and Innovation: A Literature Review of the Impact of Public R&D and Financial Institutions on Firm Innovation.
Eesley, Charles; Lenox, Michael. Secondary Stakeholder Actions and the Selection of Firm Targets. (R&R) Also Best Paper Proceedings of the 2006 Academy of Management Conference (include only the top 10% of
presented papers)
Eesley, Charles E. Alumni Surveys as a Data Collection Methodology.
Publications
Abstract: In this paper, we explore the conditions when entrepreneurial experience or skill drives the performance of new ventures. We use novel data from a survey of 2,111 entrepreneurs where we have detailed data on their entire career of founding attempts allowing us to control time-invariant individual effects. Our findings show that both entrepreneurial experience and selection on skill matter. When the current market or technology is more similar to the past, then entrepreneurial experience is more important. This reverses and underlying entrepreneurial skill becomes a stronger factor than experience when the industry is changing, undergoes a disruption or when the firm’s technology is more innovative. These findings contribute to our understanding of congenital learning and the recent work on how previous industry experience influences new venture performance.
Eesley, Charles; Lenox, Michael. 2006. Firm Responses to Secondary Stakeholder Action. Strategic Management Journal, 27(8):765-781.
Lenox, M. and Eesley, C. 2009. Private Environmental Activism and the Selection and Response of Firm Targets. Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, 18(1), 45-73.
Edward B. Roberts and Charles E. Eesley (2011) "Entrepreneurial Impact: The Role of MIT - An Updated Report", Foundations and Trends® in Entrepreneurship: Vol. 7: No 1-2, pp 1-149.
Edward B. Roberts and Charles E. Eesley. (2009) "Entrepreneurial Impact: The Role of MIT", Kauffman Foundation. Available at http://www.kauffman.org/newsroom/mit-entrepreneurs.aspx
Eesley, Charles E.; Hsu, David; Roberts, Edward B. Focus or Diversify? Aligning Founding Teams with Strategy and Environment. Copenhagen Business School, Dec. 20th, 2011. [slides here]
The Impact of Alumni Entrepreneurship: Evidence from MIT and Tsinghua University. National University of Singapore (NUS). June 21st, 2011.
The Future of Technology Entrepreneurship Research. Invited presentation at MIT's TIES group 50th anniversary. April 1st, 2011.
Entrepreneurial Performance in a Developing Economy: Evidence from China
- Wharton Strategy and the Business Environment Conference, May 9th, 2011. U. Penn.
- Stanford University, Networks and Organizations Seminar, March 11, 2011.
- University of Virginia, Darden School of Business, Batten Institute Innovation and Entrepreneurship Conference, Charlottesville, VA, May 1-2nd, 2010.
- Sixth Annual Smith Entrepreneurship Research Conference. Univ. of Maryland, April 9-10th, 2010.
- STVP Research Day, Stanford University, Dec. 9th, 2009
Bringing Entrepreneurial Ideas to Life (with David Hsu and Edward B. Roberts)
- London Business School Ghoshal Strategy Conference, London, May 15-16th, 2010
- SIEPR Seminar, Stanford University, Sept. 23rd, 2009
- Organization Science Winter Conference. Steamboat Springs, CO, Feb. 4-7th, 2010
- BYU-Utah Winter Strategy Conference, Salt Lake City, Utah, Feb. 25-27th, 2010
Who has 'The Right Stuff'? Human Capital, Entrepreneurship and Institutional Change in China.
- Carnegie Mellon University, SETChange Seminar. Nov. 10th, 2011
- Duke University, Fuqua School of Business, Durham, NC. Nov. 2nd, 2011
- Academy of International Business (AIB), Nagoya, Japan, June 27th, 2011
- Rice University Conference on Strategy in Emerging Markets, April 30th, 2010
- World Bank - Entrepreneurship and Growth Conference. Washington, DC. Nov. 19-20th, 2009
- Stanford University Graduate School of Business, Organizational Behavior seminar, Nov. 4th, 2009
- Washington University, Oct. 7, 2009
- National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) Productivity Lunch, Fall, 2008
- Annual CCC Doctoral Colloquium. Carnegie Mellon. April 11-13th, 2008
- SASE Student Paper Award, Costa Rica, June, 2008.
- Babson Conference on Entrepreneurship Research (BCERC), June, 2008
- Duke Univ. Fuqua School of Business, Jan. 2008
- MIT Political Econ Breakfast; Development Lunch, Fall, 2008
- MIT Finance Lunch, Fall, 2008
- Georgia Tech Roundtable on Engineering and Entrepreneurship Research. Atlanta, GA. Nov. 2007
What Should Drive an Innovation Strategy? (with Edward B. Roberts and Delin Yang)
- Strategic Management Society. Washington DC. Oct. 13th, 2009
Cutting Your Teeth (with Edward B. Roberts)
- Organization Science Winter Conference. Steamboat Springs, CO, Feb. 4-7th, 2010.
- West Coast Research Symposium (WCRS) University of Washington. Seattle, WA. Sept. 10-12th, 2009
- Academy of Management Annual Meeting. Atlanta, GA. Aug. 11-16th, 2006.
- MIT Economics Department Theory Group, June, 2006.
Eesley, Charles & Lenox, Michael. Secondary Stakeholder Actions and the Selection of Firm Targets. Academy of Management Annual Meeting. Atlanta, GA. Aug. 11-16th, 2006. Conference Best Paper Proceedings (include only the top 10% of presented papers)
Eesley, Charles & Michael Lenox.Secondary Stakeholder Actions and the Selection of Firm Targets.Institutional Mechanisms of Industry Self-Regulation Conference.Dartmouth, Feb. 24-25th, 2006.
MIT Innovation and Entrepreneurship Seminar Series. Entrepreneurs from Technology-Based Universities: An Empirical First Look (co-presenter with Ed Roberts). Cambridge, MA. September 12, 2005.
Eesley,Charles; Lenox, Michael. Secondary Stakeholders and Firm Self-Regulation. Academy of Management Conference Best Paper Proceedings (include only the top 10% of presented papers), Honolulu, Hawaii. August 9, 2005.
Teaching Experience
Stanford University E145 - Technology Entrepreneurship
Stanford University MSE 372 - Entrepreneurial Firms, Strategy and Innovation, PhD seminar
MIT Sloan School of Management 15.024 - Applied Economics for Managers, Sloan Fellows class - Teaching Assistant for Thomas Stoker, Summer 2009.
MIT Sloan School of Management 15.354 - Innovation and Entrepreneurship: How to do it, Undergraduate class - Teaching Assistant for James M. Utterback, David J. McGrath Jr. Professor of Management of Innovation, Professor of Engineering Systems Spring 2008.
MIT Sloan School of Management 15.350 - Managing Technological Innovation and Entrepreneurship, Sloan Fellows class - Teaching
Assistant for Edward B. Roberts David Sarnoff Professor of the
Management of Technology; Chair, MIT Entrepreneurship Center
Fall 2007.
Professional and Service Activities
Additional Publications from Prior Experience
Keefe, Richard; Eesley, Charles. 2009. Neurocognition in Schizophrenia. in Kaplan and Sadock's Comprehensive Textbook of Psychiatry, Benjamin Sadock, M.D., Virginia A. Sadock, M.D., and Pedro Ruiz, M.D. Editors. Baltimore, MD: Lippincott, Williams, & Wilkins.
·Sloan, Frank A.; Eesley, Charles. 2007. Implementing a Public Subsidy for Vaccines. in Pharmaceutical Innovation: Incentives, Competition, and Cost-Benefit Analysis in International Perspective. edited by Frank A. Sloan and Chee-Ruey Hsieh. New York: Cambridge University Press.
·Sloan, Frank A; Eesley, Charles E. 2006. Governments as Insurers in Professional and Hospital Liability Insurance Markets. In William M. Sage and Rogan Kersh, eds., Medical Malpractice and the U.S. Health Care System--New Century, Different Issues. New York: Cambridge University Press.
·Keefe, Richard; Eesley, Charles; Poe, Meg. 2005. Defining A Cognitive Function Decrement in Schizophrenia. Biological Psychiatry, 57:688-691.
·Keefe, Richard; Eesley, Charles. Neurocognitive Impairments. in American Psychiatry Publishing Textbook of Schizophrenia. Edited by Jeffrey A. Lieberman, M.D., T. Scott Stroup, M.D., and Diana O. Perkins, M.D. American Psychiatric Publishing, Inc. 2005.
http://images.businessweek.com/ss/07/05/0531_grad_winners/index_01.htm
http://localtechwire.com/business/local_tech_wire/biotech/story/1149000/
http://www.businessweek.com/smallbiz/content/apr2003/sb20030422_9661_PG2_sb020.htm
http://dukechronicle.com/node/127240
http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fsb/fsb_archive/2003/02/01/336859/index.htm
Including a video: http://www.dukestartupchallenge.com/history/2001-2002
Additional Information
- Outside interests include: hiking, biking, reading, Duke basketball, jogging, swimming, cooking, wine, travel, and tennis.
Copyright (c)
Chuck Eesley