Hello there! Entrepreneurship professor Anna Brattström leaves Skåne for Scotland

She studies the interpersonal and ethical aspects of entrepreneurship and has built her career at the Stockholm School of Economics and the Lund School of Economics. Now, Lund resident and entrepreneurship researcher Anna Brattström is moving to Scotland for a professorship at the prestigious University of St Andrews.

Congratulations on your new position! What attracted you to Scotland and St Andrews?

– Professional and private life have to play, so it is not always possible to move. For our family, it fits well now, the whole family finds it exciting with a family adventure.

– Job-wise, it feels incredibly fun. At the bachelor’s level, St Andrews’ business administration program is ranked highest in the entire UK and there is now a major investment in entrepreneurship research and entrepreneurship education. I have ended up in an interdisciplinary research group, including psychologists, ethicists and sociologists, which is very fun and educational.

You’ll be helping to build a brand new entrepreneurship program at St Andrews. Tell us about it!

– Just over a year ago, the university launched a new Business School by merging the faculties of business administration, economics and finance. It is a major initiative in which entrepreneurship plays a central role, including a brand new master’s program in the subject.

What do you think will be your major contribution to the future of construction, education and research?

– My approach to entrepreneurship research has always been interpersonal. I find it exciting how people come together. How do you work in entrepreneurial groups? How do entrepreneurs deal with different mindsets and perspectives? How do you build a new organization from an entrepreneurial group? And how do entrepreneurs deal with the challenges that often come with rapid growth? These are questions that will be central to my teaching and research at St Andrews.

Tell us about your ongoing research?

– For the past 2-3 years, my main focus has been a project we call “Innovation Theater in the Entrepreneurship Industry”, funded by Riksbankens Jubileumsfond. Together with Mickaël Buffart and Karl Wennberg at the Stockholm School of Economics and my PhD student Marina Vorholzer in Lund, we are trying to understand questions such as why entrepreneurship has become so hyped and the consequences of that hype.

– We also study the ethical aspects of entrepreneurship and innovation theater, i.e. those entrepreneurial ventures that look like “innovation” on the surface but do not actually produce many tangible products or services.

How are entrepreneurship and ethics related?

– This is an exciting topic for Marina Vorholzer’s upcoming doctoral thesis. Take Facebook’s motto “move fast and break things”, Schumpeter’s “creative destruction” or the motto “fake it till you make it” as examples. There is an inherent logic in the idea that entrepreneurship should challenge, break and change established norms and structures. On the one hand, this is what makes it so valuable. But there is also an ethical and moral dimension to it.

– What happens if you break with moral norms and values? And how much do we allow entrepreneurs to do things that are considered unethical in other contexts? This is a relatively unexplored area that Marina Vorholzer and I find really exciting, and which I will also be teaching and researching at St Andrews.

Contact ab638@st-andrews.ac.uk