DISSERTATION OVERVIEW
Entrepreneurial firms—particularly high-tech startups—hold the extraordinary potential to scale at unprecedented speeds. Yet, transforming this potential into reality requires navigating a complex challenge: rapidly mobilizing and integrating critical resources, including cutting-edge technologies, top talent, and significant capital investments.
My research delves into this fascinating tension at the heart of entrepreneurial strategy, exploring how startups successfully orchestrate rapid resource mobilization and capability development. This inquiry is particularly timely, as contemporary startup practices—such as blitzscaling, innovative use of equity-based incentives, and data-driven venture capital—continuously challenge central assumptions in the traditional strategic management literature:
Blitzscaling (Accelerated Growth) – How do startups achieve hyper-fast growth despite the need to develop capabilities from the ground up, defying established theory on time compression diseconomies?
Employee Stock Options – How does equity-based compensation in resource-constrained startups serves not to mitigate agency costs—as in mature firms to align incentives according to agency theory—but to strategically defer short-term compensation (i.e., substituting cash compensation) for talent acquisition?
Data-Driven Venture Capital – How does the proliferation of data-driven tools for startup discovery challenge the main theories about the origin of entrepreneurial opportunities, which were developed at a time when information was a scarce resource?
WORKING PAPERS
OTHER RESEARCH IN PROGRESS
Bhatia A.: Fanning the Flames of Burn: Investors Growth Orientation, Board Control, and Startups Cash Burn
Presented in Strategic Management Society Conference 2023, DRUID Society Conference 2023; European Scaleup Institute Conference 2023; Trans-Atlantic Doctoral Conference, LBS, 2023
Bhatia A, Nandkumar A, Sharma R: Data-Driven Approach for Segregating Venture Capital Strategies
Analysis in Progress