IFI Professor serves as Opponent at PhD Defense at Aalto University

IFI professor Matthias Fink had the honor to serve as the opponent at the defense of Kirsi Snellman’s PhD theses on ‘The Role of Emotions in New Venture Creation’ which took place at Aalto University in Helsinki on September 22nd, 2017.

The excellent thesis comprised three outstanding papers focused on different aspects of emotions relevant in the entrepreneurial journey. Each of the papers highlights different examples of emotions of different actors and their specific impact in distinct phases of the entrepreneurial process. As a result the thesis provides detailed insights into important aspects of why and how emotions steer the entrepreneurial journey in certain directions. These insights provide novel knowledge to the scientific conversation in entrepreneurship and the discourse on the role of emotions in business life more generally.

One of the papers was co-authored by IFI fellow Isabella Hatak, who spent a research visit at Aalto University Business School before joining University of Twente. The paper, which was published in the highly ranked International Small Business Journal highlights the crucial role of the emotion of anticipated regret in the process of the formation of intentions to start a new venture.