Research Associate, Entrepreneurship Centre

Dr Keivan Aghasi is a Research Associate at the Entrepreneurship Centre, Judge Business School, University of Cambridge. He received his PhDs from Politecnico di Milano (Italy) and Royal Institute of Technology (Sweden). His areas of research revolve around unravelling and alleviating the challenges of growth and transformation of startups into viable businesses as well as measuring the impact of structured support programmes (e.g. accelerators and incubators) in the startup ecosystem. Keivan has participated and been consulted in several European Commission and national funded projects related to understanding the challenges of growth for SMEs as the driver of innovation in various sectors including high-tech, knowledge intensive, and cultural creative industries.

Before joining Cambridge Judge Business School, Dr Aghasi held a research fellow position at University of Sussex, where he joined Intrapreneurship Hub, a collaborative research initiative between the School of Business, Management and Economics at the University of Sussex, Renmin University of China, and SDA Bocconi School of Management in Italy. Hub provides a platform to share the latest research findings and offers industry partners customised research projects, confidential analyses and metrics to assess corporate entrepreneurial performance. In his position, he developed a survey aiming at understanding how established companies adopt and apply different mechanisms such as startup programmes (accelerators and incubators), corporate venturing, and acquisition to support innovation, and growth, and instigate self-renewal.

Dr Aghasi obtained his PhD from a double degree programme funded under the Erasmus Mundus programme by the European Commission hosted at Politecnico di Milano, Italy, and the Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden, in 2016. In his thesis, he investigated the determinants behind the turnover of the acquired top managers in acquisition of small high-tech firms which are mainly entrepreneurial ventures. In addition, he worked at the European Commission and national funded projects related to understanding the challenges of growth for European entrepreneurial ventures as the driver of innovation in various sectors including high-tech, knowledge intensive, and cultural creative industries.