Dr. Stevenson studies the psychology of entrepreneurship and innovation. His research explores the early-stage challenges that entrepreneurs and strategic innovators face when launching and scaling up new initiatives. Dr. Stevenson’s contributions to scholarship can be divided into three related areas: (1) the behavioral foundations of resource acquisition, (2) entrepreneurial cognition and action, and (3) advancing experimental methodologies for entrepreneurship and strategy scholars. He enjoys teaching action-based entrepreneurship and strategy classes and currently teaches in flagship Kelley programs at both the MBA and undergraduate levels.
Dr. Stevenson is currently open to working with new doctoral students for the upcoming academic year. Although his research spans several areas, he is most interested in admitting students who have an interest in studying the psychological (micro) aspects of entrepreneurship. Prior experience or interest in experiments, behavioral research, or psychology (any area) would be an asset, but not required. Dr. Stevenson is open to working with grad students on several topics including (but not limited) to individual resourcefulness, positive psychology in entrepreneurship, entrepreneur physiology/health, lean startup behaviors, coachability, resilience, entrepreneur-investor interactions, field experiments and training interventions. Interested students for the Kelley Doctoral Program or Pre-Doctoral Program in Entrepreneurship & Management should feel free to contact Dr. Stevenson by email. Please introduce yourself, state your specific research interests, prior research experience (if any), propose research questions/ideas, and feel free to ask questions.
Entrepreneur psychology, resourcefulness, resource acquisition, venture capital, behavioral strategy, and experimental methods. Dr. Stevenson's research has been published in several top tier journals and featured in Forbes, Financial Times, Entrepreneur.com, Inc. Magazine, The NY Post, MSN, The Oxford Review, and The U.S. Chamber of Commerce
Awards, Honors & Certificates
Academy of Management Entrepreneurship Division Emerging Scholar Award
Indiana University Trustee Teaching Award
Kelley Direct MBA Teaching Excellence Award
Best Undergraduate Professors (Poets & Quants Top 50)
Kelley School of Business Innovative Teaching Award
John and Donna Shoemaker Faculty Fellowship in Entrepreneurship
Selected Publications
Stevenson, R., Guarana, C., Lee, J., Conder, S., Bonani, C., and Arvate, P. (2024). Entrepreneurial identity and entrepreneurial action: A within-person field study. Personnel Psychology, 77(1), 197-224. View Full Text
Abstract
Entrepreneurial action theory establishes that effective entrepreneurship requires daily action. Yet, empirical research on the daily antecedents of entrepreneurial action is relatively absent from the literature. We develop an entrepreneurial identity intervention and a theoretical model which integrates entrepreneurial identity theory with integrative self-control theory (ISCT). We theorize that an entrepreneurial identity intervention administered in the morning will increase entrepreneurial action throughout the day. Further, we develop and test hypotheses regarding two mediating pathways, a motivation-based pathway that relies on the felt passion of the entrepreneur and a control capacity-based pathway that is connected to the entrepreneur's cognitive flexibility. We conducted two studies to validate the effectiveness of our intervention (Studies 1a and 1b) and four studies to test the validity and effectiveness of our experimental materials and measures (Studies A1a, A1b, A1c, and 2a). Our main study investigates the daily antecedents and mechanisms of entrepreneurial action using a within-individual field experiment with 201 entrepreneurs (1458 daily observations). Overall, we find more within-person than between-person variance in entrepreneurial identity, daily action, and hypothesized meditators. We discuss the theoretical and practical implications of our findings for the entrepreneurship and organizational behavior literatures.
Burnell, D. S., Stevenson, R., and Fisher, G. (2023). Early-stage business model experimentation and pivoting. Journal of Business Venturing, 38(4), 106314. View Full Text
Abstract
Recent literature suggests entrepreneurs struggle to pivot—or fundamentally change aspects of their venture—due to identity-based resistance to change. Yet, when entrepreneurs receive negative feedback, overcoming this resistance may be important to pivoting their business model. We adopt a convergent, mixed methods research design to explore when and why some entrepreneurs overcome resistance to change in response to negative feedback during early-stage business model experimentation. Building upon qualitative data that we gathered and analyzed, we theorize entrepreneurs may resist pivoting their value proposition relative to other business model components despite receiving negative feedback on this aspect of their business model. However, we find three factors – entrepreneurial experience, startup mentoring, and team size – may enable entrepreneurs to pivot in response to negative feedback. We theorize that these factors broaden a startup team's perspective, enabling value proposition pivoting during early-stage business model experimentation. We test these relationships with quantitative data from 80 startups engaged in business model experimentation and find support across hypotheses. We contribute to understanding when and why entrepreneurs pivot aspects of their business models in response to negative feedback during early-stage business model experimentation.
Guarana, C., Stevenson, R., Ryu, J., Crawley, R., and Gish, J. (2022). Owls, larks, or investment sharks? The role of circadian process in early-stage investment decisions. Journal of Business Venturing, 37(1), 106165. View Full Text
Abstract
Investors in early-stage companies want to detect and select high-potential opportunities to maximize their long-term returns. However, in uncertain and risky early-stage investment contexts, company information is often opaque, and decision-making timeframes are compressed. Although there is an abundance of prior work on how investors make structured decisions based on their experience and expertise, there is a very limited understanding of how time-based factors can sway investment decisions. The circadian process is the 24-hour sequence that serves as an individual's internal timer influencing not only sleep cycles, but also attention and performance on a wide range of cognitive tasks. Understanding how the circadian process impacts early-stage investment holds implications for optimal investment decisions. We build on social cognitive theory and propose that investor-level factors (i.e., chronotypes) and environmental factors (time of the day) interact to influence the amount of information investors search for, and consequently, their investment decisions. We hypothesize and find that investors are influenced by the time of day they make early-stage investment decisions. Lark investors make better investment decisions in the morning, whereas owl investors make better decisions in the evening. Information search effort mediates this relationship.
Stevenson, R., Allen, J., and Wang, T. (2022). Failed but Validated? The Effect of Market Validation on Persistence and Performance after a Crowdfunding Failure. Journal of Business Venturing, 37(2), 106175. View Full Text
Abstract
We investigate the impact of market validation on persistence and subsequent performance following a specific type of failure (crowdfunding failure). We leverage a mixed methods design, employing a controlled lab experiment with entrepreneurs (Study 1) and a four-year lagged longitudinal field study which combines two archival databases (Study 2). In our experiment, we f ind that market validation encourages entrepreneur persistence through affective activation and cognition-based action intentions (specifically search and knowledge integration). We also find that another form of validation, expert validation, strengthens this relationship. In our field study, market validation is shown to be a stronger predictor of performance after a crowdfunding failure in comparison to expert validation. We draw from the social proof and wisdom of the crowd perspectives to develop our theoretical model and explain the implications of our findings.
Bolinger, M., Josefy, M., Stevenson, R., and Hitt, M. (2022). Experiments in Strategy Research: A Critical Review and Future Research Opportunities. Journal of Management, 48(1), 77–113. View Full Text
Abstract
We review extant experimental work in strategic management and argue that experiments constitute an underused methodology that has significant potential. We examine and categorize 179 experiments from 119 published articles over a 20-year period, delineating the contributions of these experiments to the strategic management literature. In doing so, we identify topic areas in which experiments have been effectively deployed, as well as several literature streams that have a limited amount of prior experimental research. We discuss specific challenges of using experiments in strategy research, especially given its strong focus on the firm-level of analysis. We also emphasize approaches for how experiments can be instrumental in extending management theories and accelerating behavioral microfoundations of strategy research. In light of past contributions and gaps, we discuss specific opportunities and means of designing innovative experiments, propose novel potential research questions, and provide a best practices methodological guide which scholars can use when considering experimental designs. Overall, our work documents experimental research and provides a methodological practicum, thereby offering a platform for future experiment-based research in strategic management. Supplemental best practice guide for conducting strategy experiments can be found here - https://sites.google.com/view/researchguides
Allen, J., Stevenson, R., O'Boyle, E., and Seibert, S. (2021). What matters more for entrepreneurship success? A meta-analysis comparing general mental ability and emotional intelligence in entrepreneurial settings. Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal, 15(3), 352-376. View Full Text
Abstract
While previous studies have shown General Mental Ability (GMA, cognitive intelligence) to be more important for success compared to Emotional Intelligence (EI) in traditional workplace settings, we theorize that EI will be more important in entrepreneurial contexts. Entrepreneurship is an extreme setting with distinct emotional and social demands relative to many other organizational settings. Moreover, managing an entrepreneurial business has been described as an “emotional rollercoaster.” Thus, on a relative basis we expected EI to matter more in entrepreneurial contexts and explore this assumption using a meta-analysis of 65,826 observations. We find that both GMA and EI matter for entrepreneurial success, but that the size of the relationship is more than twice as large for EI.
Stevenson, R. M., Josefy, M., McMullen, J., and Shepherd, D. (2020). Organizational and management theorizing using experiment-based entrepreneurship research: Covered terrain and the next frontiers. Academy of Management Annals,14(2), 759–796. View Full Text
Abstract
The entrepreneurship setting—an extreme organizational context—provides fertile ground for organizationally relevant theory testing and development. In this paper, we propose that randomized entrepreneurship experiments have considerable potential to advance theory in entrepreneurship as well as other areas of organization science using a full-cycle approach. We ground this proposition in a multipronged review of randomized experiments in entrepreneurship (REE). Based on this review of prior work and emerging trends, respectively, we provide illustrative examples of innovative theory-driven experiments and motivate future research to consider randomized experiments in the entrepreneurial context both for testing boundary conditions and enhancing organizational theorizing broadly.
Stevenson, R. M., Ciuchta, M. P., Letwin, C., Dinger, J., and Vancouver, J. (2019). Out of control or right on the money? Funder self-efficacy and crowd bias in equity crowdfunding. Journal of Business Venturing,34(2), 348-367. View Full Text.
Abstract
Drawing on control theory, we demonstrate that investor self-efficacy is negatively related to crowdfunder decision-making performance via reduced investor effort. Our research also indicates that investors with high self-efficacy tend to exhibit a “crowd bias” whereby they are more likely to select poor quality investment options that are favored by the crowd. We test our model using two complementary experimental lab studies and a third quasi-experimental field study. Our findings extend the entrepreneurship literature by highlighting the mechanism through which self-efficacy can hinder rather than enhance individual performance in entrepreneurial settings. We also contribute to the organizational psychology literature by demonstrating how social indicators (i.e., crowd cues) can exasperate the negative effect of self-efficacy.
Stevenson, R M.., & Josefy, M. (2019). Knocking at the gate: The path to publication for entrepreneurship experiments through the lens of gatekeeping theory. Journal of Business Venturing, 34(2), 242-260. View Full Text
Abstract
We draw on gatekeeping theory to explore the individual and routine-level criticisms that entrepreneurship experimentalists receive during the review process. Using a multi-study approach, we categorize common gatekeeping themes and present illustrative critiques derived from a unique sample of decision letters and a supplemental survey of entrepreneurship editors. In combination, we extend gatekeeping theory by considering how it applies to the scholarly domain, contribute to the literature by exploring an alternative theoretical explanation as to why entrepreneurship experiments might fail to survive the review process, and finally, provide contextualized recommendations for authors and reviewers of experimental research.
Stevenson, R. M., Kuratko, D. F., and Eutsler, J. (2019). Unleashing main street entrepreneurship: Crowdfunding, venture capital, and the democratization of new venture investments. Small Business Economics, 52(2), 375-393. View Full Text
Abstract
Over the past several decades, U.S. venture capital (VC) firms have focused their attention and investment dollars in specialized regional hubs where high-tech entrepreneurship tends to flourish. As a result, “main street” businesses such as retail stores, consumer services, and other non-tech businesses typically find it incredibly difficult to secure equity funding. Yet, in recent years, crowdfunding (CF) has become a viable new source of funding for entrepreneurs. Using a longitudinal assessment of VC and CF at the national, regional, and sector levels in the USA, we demonstrate how the emergence of CF has unlocked new growth opportunities for main street entrepreneurs, particularly those located in underserviced funding regions. Likewise, we expose how CF augments national and regional funding patterns by re-allocating funding to industries that VCs typically do not fund. Lastly, we discuss the practical and theoretical implications of what appears to be a shifting venture funding regime, and shed light on CF’s potential role in enhancing the resurgence of main street entrepreneurship across the USA.
Ciuchta, M. P., Letwin, C., Stevenson, R. M., McMahon, S. & Huvaj, N. (2018). Betting on the coachable entrepreneur: Signaling and social exchange in entrepreneurial pitches. Entrepreneurship Theory & Practice, 42(6), 860-885. View Full Text
Abstract
Given that stakeholders often commit more than capital to a startup, they commonly stress how important it is for entrepreneurs to be “coachable.” To date, however, coachability has received little attention in entrepreneurship research. We address this gap by first establishing the entrepreneurial coachability construct and validating a measurement scale. Then, drawing on social exchange and signaling theories, we develop and test a novel framework in which coachability influences a potential investor’s willingness to invest. We find that entrepreneurial coachability functions as a viable signal in a pitch setting, but this impact is conditional on the investor’s prior coaching experience.
Anglin, A. H., Short, J. C., Stevenson, R. M., Drover, W., McKenny, A. F., and Allison, T. H. (2018). The power of positivity? The influence of positive psychological capital language on IPO and crowdfunding outcomes. Journal of Business Venturing, 33(4), 470-492. View Full Text
Abstract
We extend the entrepreneurship literature to include positive psychological capital — an individual or organization's level of psychological resources consisting of hope, optimism, resilience, and confidence — as a salient signal in crowdfunding. We draw from the costless signaling literature to argue that positive psychological capital language usage enhances crowdfunding performance. We examine 1726 crowdfunding campaigns from Kickstarter, finding that entrepreneurs conveying positive psychological capital experience superior fundraising performance. Human capital moderates this relationship while social capital does not, suggesting that costly signals may, at times, enhance the influence of costless signals. Post hoc analyses suggest findings generalize across crowdfunding types, but not to IPOs.
