Professor Dr. Marco Bade

About me

I am a Professor and Head of the Research Group Digital Entrepreneurship & Finance at the German University of Digital Science, where I also served as Program Coordinator of the MBA Digital Transformation and the MBA Financial Technology.

Prior to this, I held positions as professor and researcher at several German and French institutions, including ICN Business School, CEREFIGE, University of Lorraine, TU Berlin, and University of Potsdam. I hold a doctoral degree in economics and a Habilitation in business administration.

Research Interests

My research examines entrepreneurial behavior and outcomes as products of interaction between entrepreneurs and the ecosystems that surround them, both physical and digital. How entrepreneurs communicate, where they operate, and what support structures they encounter all feed back into the decisions they make and the outcomes they achieve. I investigate this interplay across several dimensions, including digital visibility, cross-platform discourse, the framing of entrepreneurial missions, and the design of support organizations (e.g., startup accelerators) and public policy. I treat each of these as a setting where entrepreneurial strategy meets external response, and where that response in turn feeds back into strategy. I complement my empirical work with formal modeling of the intermediaries entrepreneurs depend on, showing that dynamics of resource allocation and information production govern decisions on both sides of the entrepreneur-ecosystem relationship. Common to all my work is that it treats entrepreneurial behavior as inseparable from the ecosystems in which it takes place, and asks how the structures and dynamics of those ecosystems influence what entrepreneurs do and what results.

Selected Papers

Ecosystem conditions and the efficacy of entrepreneurial support organizations: Moderating effects on venture entry. Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal, 2026, forthcoming.

Entrepreneurial narratives, digital community discussion, and crowdfunding success (with F. Reichenbach). Research Policy, 2026, 55 (2), 1–17.

Conversion and contagion in entrepreneurship: A cross-country analysis. Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal, 2022, 16 (1), 207–239.

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