In general, there is no single subject or study program necessary as precondition to writing a thesis at our chair. However, you need to show a profound interest, knowledge and motivation in the field of Entrepreneurship.

We prefer topic proposals that lie within our research fields - other topic suggestions are nevertheless fine but will be decided individually.

Make sure to check our proposed master thesis topics (see below)

Only master students can write their thesis at our chair!

We have a limit of theses we can supervise. Please be patient.

Please send all general proposals to 

a.bamberg@tu-berlin.de

Any proposals should include:

• a short reasoning of your interest, motivation and knowledge in entrepreneurship
• details to your person: a short CV
• and exposé or detailed descriptions of your research considerations and proposed master thesis structure

Supervisors: Karina Cagarman

Currently we do not have any topics open and due to capacity limitations we can only supervise additional master theses in exceptional cases.

If you still believe you want to write a master thesis on topics among well-being and psychology, you can submit your own topic proposals and an absolutely solid abstract (topic, research question/gap, methodology & data, expected results, time schedule - 2 pages max) to karina.cagarman(at)tu-berlin.de.

Note: Please be aware that handing in a proposal does not mean you are accepted for supervision. There is no guarantee your proposal will get accepted.

In recent years, crowdfunding has become an important tool for entrepreneurs and innovators. For instance, the global crowdfunding market has grown tremendously from $0.5 billion in 2009 to $34.4 billion in 2015, with now around 1250 platforms in more than 50 countries [3]. Using crowdfunding platforms, entrepreneurs can request required funds for realization of their creative work directly from supporters rather than traditional means of fund raising such as banks or foundations [1, 2].

Crowdfunding has been used among more in medical research [8]. And, a key challenge is to understand drivers of entrepreneurs’ success. Relevantly, a major research stream in crowdfunding has been devoted to examining the potential drivers of successful crowdfunding campaigns and have taken a factor-oriented approach [5]. However, entrepreneurial activities are prone to changes via the accumulation of experience, and therefore, dynamics of entrepreneurial processes over crowdfunding platforms appears to be under-studied (ibid).

In this master thesis, students use the extant management literature of “learning from failures” (see references in [6,7]), collect and analyse the dataset of crowdfunding campaigns at https://experiment.com/discover platform. The final goal is to understand “whether features of campaigns and innovators (e.g., university ranking, individual level) in medical or other sciences impact their success/failure likelihood?”

The thesis would ask for a comprehensive literature review into crowdfunding, the underlying organizational learning theories, and relevant models. This literature study should result in a number of specific research questions.

In a second step, the project require web scrape the textual data on https://experiment.com/discover which is a crowdfunding platform for medical research. Essentially, the student should download a large number of crowdfunding campaigns/photos/texts....

The master thesis research is based on a research cooperation between Eindhoven University of Technology (Dr. Mohsen Jafari Songhori) and TU Berlin. When you are interested in this topic please shortly draft on 2-3 pages an outline/essay along the lines given here and send this per email to Prof. Dr. Jan Kratzer (jan.kratzer(at)tu-berlin.de and in Cc m.jafari.songhori(at)tue.nl).

Engaging in this master thesis topic would be an endeavour into the analytics of big data and data science and current software around it.

References

1. E. M. Gerber, J. Hui, Crowdfunding: Motivations and deterrents for participation, ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction (TOCHI) 20 (6) (2013) 34.
2. P. Belleflamme, T. Lambert, A. Schwienbacher, Crowdfunding: Tapping the right crowd, Journal of Business Venturing 29 (5) (2014) 585 – 609.
3. Massolution, 2015, 2015 CF Crowdfunding Industry Report.
4. https://www.kickstarter.com/help/stats
5. Yang, Lusi, and Jungpil Hahn. "Learning from prior experience: an empirical study of serial entrepreneurs in IT-enabled crowdfunding." Available at SSRN 3006930 (2016).
6. Dillon, R. L., C. H. Tinsley, P. M. Madsen, and E. W. Rogers. 2016. Organizational correctives for improving recognition of near-miss events. Journal of Management 42 (3): 671697.
7. Azadegan, A., R. Srinivasan, C. Blome, and K. Tajeddini. 2019. Learning from near-miss events: An organizational learning perspective on supply chain disruption response. International Journal of Production Economics 216:215226.
8. Aleksina, Anna, Stanislau Akulenka, and Ágnes Lublóy. "Success factors of crowdfunding campaigns in medical research: perceptions and reality." Drug discovery today 24.7 (2019): 1413-1420.

The topic is open for more than one master thesis. Therefore, it is rather broadly described with all steps and facets below. As the master thesis is an individual work all interested students are asked to narrow down the topic. The topic also allows for doing joint master thesis projects as long as the individual contributions can be clearly distinguished and graded as the examination regulations require:

Foremost in the last century systematic engineering design methods have been developing. Nowadays systematic design methods are generally used in new product development (NPD)/ Research & Development (R&D) endeavours and follow a simple and organized logic from breaking down the issue/technology into components and sub-components, systematically varying solutions to them up to the discursive/stage gate structure of the entire process. Systematic design methods can also be translated into dynamics of formal and informal social networks as prior studies show. The master theses should engage in these dynamics of social networks. The theoretical and empirical research should be executed within online forums as the source of data. The central research question is “do organized formal structures applying systematic engineering design methods resemble self-organized dynamics and structures of formal and informal social networks in online forums?”

The thesis would ask for a comprehensive literature review into social networks and the dynamics of social networks and systematic engineering design methods. This literature study should result in a number of specific research questions.

In addition, a comprehensive literature study to learn about the underlying theoretical perspectives is required. The study might encompass to read about evolutionary theory, behavioural group dynamics, social networks and collective good theories, management and design theories.

In a third step it would ask to search for suitable online forums, which allow to define, operationalize and measure of informal and formal network structures (open discussion forums in engineering/construction; specific professional engineering forums; crowdsourcing platforms or others).

The fourth step would be to use adequate network algorithm to measure the dynamic nature of formal and informal networks respectively formal and informal group structures. Taking this step might require to getting acquainted with the essential software for example R, condor, python, UCInet etc. as well as probably required text mining/analysing software such as Atlas ti or MAXQDA.

After collecting all data the dynamics of formal and informal social networks need to be analysed using classical statistical software as SPSS or R and special software on social networks as for example UCInet or SIENA.

The master thesis research is based on a research cooperation between Eindhoven University of Technology (Dr. Mohsen Jafari Songhori) and TU Berlin. When you are interested in this topic please shortly draft on 2-3 pages an outline/essay along the lines given here and send this per email to Prof. Dr. Jan Kratzer  and in Cc m.jafari.songhori(at)tue.nl.

Engaging in this master thesis topic would be an endeavour into the analytics of big data and data science and current software around it.

Relevant literature

• Le, Qize, and Jitesh H. Panchal. "Analysis of the interdependent co-evolution of product structures and community structures using dependency modelling techniques." Journal of Engineering Design 23.10-11 (2012): 807-828.
• Hasan, Sharique, and Rembrand Koning. "Designing social networks: joint tasks and the formation and endurance of network ties." Journal of Organization Design 9.1 (2020): 1-19.
• Kratzer, Jan, Hans G. Gemuenden, and Christopher Lettl. "Revealing dynamics and consequences of fit and misfit between formal and informal networks in multi-institutional product development collaborations." Research Policy 37.8 (2008): 1356-1370.
• Sosa, Manuel E., Steven D. Eppinger, and Craig M. Rowles. "The misalignment of product architecture and organizational structure in complex product development." Management science 50.12 (2004): 1674-1689.

In recent years, crowdfunding has become an important tool for entrepreneurs and innovators. For instance, the global crowdfunding market has grown tremendously from $0.5 billion in 2009 to $34.4 billion in 2015, with now around 1250 platforms in more than 50 countries [3]. Using crowdfunding platforms, entrepreneurs can request required funds for realization of their creative work directly from supporters rather than traditional means of fund raising such as banks or foundations [1, 2].

In 2020, more than 60% of projects have failed to secure their target goal on “kickstarter” one of the most popular crowdfunding platforms [4]. Therefore a key challenge is to understand drivers of entrepreneurs’ success. Relevantly, a major research stream in crowdfunding has been devoted to examining the potential drivers of successful crowdfunding campaigns, and and have taken a factor-oriented approach [5]. However, entrepreneurial activities are prone to changes via the accumulation of experience, and therefore, dynamics of entrepreneurial processes over crowdfunding platforms appears to be under-studied (ibid).

In this master thesis, students use the extant management literature of “learning from failures” (see references in [6,7]), and develops a system dynamics (simulation) model [8] and analyses that model by looking at success/failure of projects on “kickstarter” [the data is downloaded/available], or other platforms. The final goal is to understand “how do innovators learn from their own or the others failures over time?”

The thesis would ask for a comprehensive literature review into crowdfunding, the underlying organizational learning theories, and relevant system dynamic models. This literature study should result in a number of specific research questions.

In addition, a comprehensive literature study to learn about the underlying theoretical perspectives is required. The study might encompass to read about evolutionary theory, behavioural group dynamics, social networks and collective good theories, management and design theories.

In a second step, the project require either use the current downloaded dataset, or web scrape one/two online crowdfunding platform, and download a large number of crowdfunding campaigns/photos/texts....

The third step would be to develop a system dynamic (SD) model of the dynamics of trajectories from failure to success over crowdfunding platforms. Taking this step might require to getting acquainted with the relevant simple software tools  such as Vensim. Next, the developed SD model will be validated using the downloaded dataset [9].

The master thesis research is based on a research cooperation between Eindhoven University of Technology (Dr. Mohsen Jafari Songhori) and TU Berlin. When you are interested in this topic please shortly draft on 2-3 pages an outline/essay along the lines given here and send this per email to Prof. Dr. Jan Kratzer and in Cc m.jafari.songhori(at)tue.nl.

Engaging in this master thesis topic would be an endeavour into the analytics of big data and data science and current software around it.

References

1. E. M. Gerber, J. Hui, Crowdfunding: Motivations and deterrents for participation, ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction (TOCHI) 20 (6) (2013) 34.
2. P. Belleflamme, T. Lambert, A. Schwienbacher, Crowdfunding: Tapping the right crowd, Journal of Business Venturing 29 (5) (2014) 585 – 609.
3. Massolution, 2015, 2015 CF Crowdfunding Industry Report.
4. https://www.kickstarter.com/help/stats
5. Yang, Lusi, and Jungpil Hahn. "Learning from prior experience: an empirical study of serial entrepreneurs in IT-enabled crowdfunding." Available at SSRN 3006930 (2016).
6. Dillon, R. L., C. H. Tinsley, P. M. Madsen, and E. W. Rogers. 2016. Organizational correctives for improving recognition of near-miss events. Journal of Management 42 (3): 671697.
7. Azadegan, A., R. Srinivasan, C. Blome, and K. Tajeddini. 2019. Learning from near-miss events: An organizational learning perspective on supply chain disruption response. International Journal of Production Economics 216:215226.
8. Sterman, John. Business dynamics. Irwin/McGraw-Hill c2000.., 2010.
9. Ballard, Timothy, et al. "An integrated approach to testing dynamic, multilevel theory: Using computational models to connect theory, model, and data." Organizational Research Methods (2019): 1094428119881209.