Job description
Are you eager to contribute to Brainport entrepreneurial ecosystem? And are you interested in designing better support mechanisms to nascent entrepreneurs from the Eindhoven University of Technology? Then we are looking for you to support our team as a Postdoc for 1 year in a research project in collaboration with The Gate.
The Brainport region is in every respect the absolute number 1 deep-tech region in the world and its ecosystem one of the main drivers of successful entrepreneurship (Romme, 2022). Many of the startups in the Brainport region stem from academic research institutions and have the potential to drive substantial economic growth and societal impact. To realize and enhance this potential, the knowledge institutions in the Brainport region (i.e. Tu/e, Fontys and Summa College) along with BOM and Brainport Eindhoven have founded The Gate. The Gate serves as a single entry point for deep-tech startups and aims to boost the quantity and quality of academic spin-offs and student startups by leveraging the entrepreneurial ecosystem in the Brainport region.
Over the past year the number of business cases supported by The Gate has vastly grown, from over 60 in 2022 to 200 in 2023. As a result, The Gate seeks to enhance its efficiency in serving the needs of the nascent founders of these future spin-offs or student startups. Also, when considering the perspective of these nascent entrepreneurs, there is room for improvement. Initial talks with some founders indicate that they struggle to find their way on the current website, not knowing where to begin and what to focus on. This is nicely captured by the following quote:
'I would like to see a roadmap that helps me understand what to do first and who can help me with that' (Nascent entrepreneur, Eng.D program 2023).
Consequently, this project aims to set up a digital platform that assists nascent founders in their entrepreneurial journey by making available hands-on experiences, knowledge, and templates, which the founders can access, digest and apply at their own pace, independent of time and location. Such a platform would also create more transparency about the entrepreneurial journey leading to more realistic expectations and better prepared entrepreneurs. From the perspective of the business developers and Entrepreneurs-in-Residence at The Gate, the platform could reduce the workload and throughput time in handling the requests of the nascent founders.
Project execution and outcomes
To ensure that the developed platform addresses the needs and preferences of the different stakeholders involved (i.e. primarily the nascent entrepreneurs, the business developers and entrepreneurs-in-residence of The Gate and the web developers at TU/e), the project will be executed according to the following three phases: (1) research, (2) portal development and (3) launch, test and reiterate. The first phase is intended to develop a proper understanding of the current situation, and the hurdles and limitations nascent entrepreneurs and business developers face when working on their business cases. Moreover, in this phase, a pretest will be launched to measure the current situation in a quantitative way (i.e. survey measuring satisfaction, transparency, clarity, throughput time, etc.). Subsequently, the gathered input will be used to initiate the second phase of portal development. Besides the input of the nascent entrepreneurs and business developers, we also seek to leverage the best practices of other universities and incubators. In the final stage the portal will be launched, and a post-test will be administered to track the impact of the improved portal. This will eventually result in a set of recommendations for future development and maintenance. A more detailed project plan can be found in appendix A.
As a successful applicant, you will (1) manage the project, (2) co-design relevant solutions to improve the support of nascent entrepreneurs with your research team, and (3) interact closely with relevant stakeholders. You will apply various research methods to generate valuable insigths into the described topic and guide decision-making.
You will be located in the Innovation, Technology Entrepreneurship & Marketing (ITEM) group and will work closely with dr. Annelies Bobelyn, and The Gate as partner. In this setting, you will benefit from the strong industry relationships. These will facilitate interviews and access to stakeholders and data and help ensure the research's practical relevance.