Closing the Gap: Developing Research Communities in Emerging Regions and Nations (Part 2)

Tomorrow is the day we have been planning for - for a long while… it started with a discussion, then a conference, then more discussions, then coffees and dinners and then an idea – why don’t we bring this to the AOM? (If you are looking for something to do tomorrow at the conference it is on Saturday, Aug 4 2012 12:30PM - 2:45PM at Boston Hynes Convention Center in Room 204)

So here we are, looking forward to a rewarding workshop with scholars from around the world to listen to the experience of senior academics from the BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India & China) as well as the Middle East – to learn from each other on what are the best practices for building a research ecosystem in emerging market countries.

But our goal isn’t just to talk – it is to come up with ideas as a group of what we can do on an institutional and regional level to promote this development… also, the organizing team intend to write a paper on the “findings” of the workshop – how does it fit with what the “literature” says, where are the gaps, what roadmap do we suggest…

Of course the ultimate goal is to promote a community of scholars interested in developing this community and ecosystem in the Middle East (where less than 1% of published papers originate from).

So what are our panel of experts going to talk about? Well here are the ideas which will guide them and their discussions:

·         Defining excellence & gaps: What is “excellence” and is it the same as in the West?

·         Local perspective: What are the local challenges to building a research community?

·         Bridge between local and global: Once the research community is built, how do we connect the local with the global?

·         Legitimacy in the global research community: Is research from “new” research communities considered “legitimate”? How can we make it more “accepted”?

·         KPIs: Which KPIs should we use or target to measure our success?

·         Young scholar’s careers: How can scholars from emerging markets “make it” in the global community? Are there opportunities for “Western” educated scholars in these emerging scholarly communities? (Or is it a career killer?)

Then we are going to get feedback from the audience about the barriers or challenges to publishing research in top-tier journals… and ways that global academic institutions like the AOM can do to improve this situation….

Exciting – interesting – valuable!

Do not worry – I will let you know what happens!

IDRC paper development workshop or "Nerds at work to find solutions for some big problems" Day 5

Before I begin the last blog post (which is a little late I know) I want to thank the tireless coordinator, cheerleader and “research guide” Thomas Schott – he was the first to arrive and the last to leave – gave extra hours in the evening to ensure those of us who wanted to learn how to use Amos had the knowledge we needed to continue at home. Of course I use we in the sense of the group – I corrected an entire thesis once that used structural equation modelling, and so really had to understand it to make the right English edits, and that was enough for this lifetime J So that you Thomas for your efforts, your kind nature and your undying enthusiasm for the GEM project, MENA and your quest to be part of the bigger process of gaining understanding about entrepreneurship and the role of networks in this most important phenomenon.

We started the last day as we also did, with a group presentation (this time group 8 of 8) of their paper and preliminary results and then a discussion of the entire group with questions, recommendations and one or two nerd fights (which always ended with laughs and very good humour). Group 8 presented the role of networks on job growth – well the perception on the part of the entrepreneur on how many jobs he or she expects to create. Of course networks has an impact on this…

An entrepreneur’s network can roughly be defined as his or her “social capital” – which I tell students is like self-earned “wasta”. I came to the UAE almost three years ago knowing no one – and now I know a lot of people, in different industries and walks of life – through attending community events, volunteering, work, students, friends, etc. I have built my network which I use to learn about the environment in which I live and work – entrepreneurs do the same thing.

Back to the role of networks in expected job growth – use of professional (colleagues, etc.) and international (people living abroad or from abroad) seem to positively impact an entrepreneur’s expectation of job growth – why is another question and the team will work on that in the next while (manuscript due in September 2012!).

We also talked as a group about policy recommendations and how best to make them. Remember, we are all working on our respective GEM 2011 reports – these were the team leaders and members who attended the workshop – and our “sponsors” want/expect/need policy recommendations. One senior team leader reminded us that to write good policy we have to think like policy makers – what is the strategy, what is the vision, what is possible, what doesn’t cost an arm and a leg (ok, he didn’t mention the last item, but I know it is true in the MENA region especially).

We then did more spss training and I might have answered some student email while this was going on J

After our final delicious lunch (darn you Jordan and your excellent food, I gained weight last week!) each team presented a road map towards article completion in September. This represents our “contract” amongst the team members and with the larger group (and IDRC who funded this project). Because we need to publish our papers or it would be like we sang into the wind, it may be the most beautiful song every sung – but if it is not recorded it will have a very limited impact (e.g. none) on the world.

It was really nice that two of the people who mentioned on day 1 their lack of confidence in their English speaking skills, spoke for their groups. Smile and courage in action! It made me happy that the environment of the group and its positive atmosphere had allowed their confidence to grow …

Second to last we talked about forming a task force – made up of MENA researchers working in the MENA region on the subject of research into entrepreneurship. I hope something comes of it – but of course sustaining any taskforce requires funds – funds we lack. We will see though J And of course I will keep you all updated through this blog.

This was an amazing experience for me as a young professor (OK, not so young in age, but young in career) and I know that we all benefitted from it. It would be wonderful to repeat it – with PhD students and not necessarily on entrepreneurs’ networks, but on research in entrepreneurship in the MENA region. We need more understanding of it – we really do. On the last evening we went for coffee on a very nice street downtown and we saw a small scuffle of local teenagers (or young men) – of course I thought they wouldn’t be doing this if they were busy doing something else – but they might not feel prepared or able to do anything else – why? What can we do to help? What skills are they lacking? How can we best motivate them? What industries interest them most? See, there are way more questions than hours in a day – that is why we need to work together to come up with some understanding based on sound scientific research – kind of like building our house on stone and not sand.

I will keep you updated with paper links as they happen – and if you would like to donate money to start the task force I will put you in touch with the right people J 

P.S. - Thank you Nadia and the IDRC - without your funding and efforts this would not have happened - thank you for setting an example of what rich countries need to do to create sustainable solutions for the great challenges the MENA region faces.

IDRC paper development workshop or "Nerds at work to find solutions for some big problems" Day 2

Today we started the day talking about culture – and of course, when we talk about management and we talk about culture we also talk about - Geert Hofstede – a researcher who “defined” culture per country a million years ago (OK, maybe his book Culture’s Consequences was published in 1980, not a million years ago). Since that time people have been simultaneously criticizing his work and using it as a framework – because although it is imperfect – it seems to provide a solid enough theoretical framework to build interesting results.

We are all still getting to know one another, and the discussion could seem heated to “non-nerds”, but it isn’t. We all have the same vision – solid research to robustly explain the phenomena under study to arrive at an understanding that will hopefully lead to solid policy recommendations. I feel that we have a distinct understanding of what each other is dealing with, as a researcher and as a researcher in MENA.

We talked about the researcher as author – the stuff we publish (en’shallah) has to be interesting and readable and tell a story that is compelling and based on the questions being posed in the literature now – I liked how Bettina explained it as well though “observed patterns are not causal relationships” (this is my pet peeve in almost all the “research” published by newspapers in the UAE – but that is another blogpost, one that will most likely never be written).

Back to the day – I circulated an important recent paper from one of the most famous researchers in entrepreneurship, this region and in absorptive capacity (the main reason I love the guy – his paper with George changed how I looked at the world).  Shaker Zahra wrote “Doing Research in the (New) Middle East: Sailing with the Wind” and it was published just this past November (2011). It really outlines the directions that he feels really need to be studied – and I thought it might be important for us to place our work in his “world” so to speak – I am sending a lot of email with the blog posts and everything, I hope I don’t start ending up in the spam box!

We had a lot of discussion about what we are asking of the data – and we haven’t solved that issue yet – but it is and will continue to be an interesting debate.

There is also a debate on treating MENA as a single entity – and there are strong reasons to do that and equally strong reasons not to – I think it depends (really I do, it’s not a cope out). It depends on the question and what the data is trying to tell us.

(An aside – men DO NOT like taking direction J But then again, neither do I – I just pretend to listen and then do my own thing!)

After another excellent lunch, Dr. Victor (my research buddy from ZU) presented – and he presented a whole course work of literature on entrepreneurship networks in like 25 minutes – my head was spinning! But he brought up some interesting things. First, there are three main questions that guide the “science/art” of entrepreneurship:

1. Why, when and how opportunities for the creation of good and services come into existence?
2. Why, when and how some people and not others discover and exploit these opportunities?
3. Why, when and how different modes of actions are used to exploit entrepreneurial opportunities?

And then he spoke about the guiding principles in our global research:

1. Network ties are contingent upon relationships between individuals
2. The social structure can affect entrepreneurship
3. Role of social networks in business start-ups

Finally, (OK, this was not the end of the day, but at this point I had reached my saturation point for note taking – there was loads of SPSS training after and even this evening the hard-core researchers (e.g. not me) are being introduced to AMOS by Thomas) I finally got the definition of network I was looking for. Like I said, I like to know the rules and then might ignire them, but I wanted to know what was our guide.

So, this is network defined by Thomas Schott to us (based on loads of researchers, but he explained it well). Networks are the  relationships that each entrepreneur as an individual is involved in that provides resources – in our case knowledge/information/advice – one resource common across all phases. A network is the “set” of contacts (individuals, organisations,  around an entrepreneur who provide a resource (advice) to an entrepreneur.

I have studied networks before , and used slightly different definitions – but really, I like this one.

So, Day 2 is a wrap. I am very happy to have this opportunity to meet and learn from such smart, funny and stubborn people – many kind of remind me of all the people I did my PhD with (many from MENA) and it makes me happy (and tired, but a happy tired).

À demain!