Biography

Katrin Smolka (PhD, Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University, NL) is Associate Professor of Entrepreneurship and Innovation at Warwick Business School, University of Warwick. She is course director for the MSc Innovation and Entrepreneurship (a joint degree programme with WMG).

Her research interests are multi-disciplinary, bridging topics in entrepreneurship and organization theory. Katrin's work is mainly guided by one central question: how do entrepreneurs create and navigate their venturing journey and the environments they operate in under varying conditions of uncertainty and constraint? Her past and current work spans three interconnected main streams: (1) entrepreneurship under adversity and marginalization (such as necessity entrepreneurship; inequality and social inclusion; refugee and Indigenous entrepreneurship; thriving under precarity), (2) entrepreneurial decision-making (such as effectuation at the individual and team level; effectuation training), and (3) entrepreneurs and their environments (such as institutional co-creation by entrepreneurs and regulators; ecosystems, industry clusters and spillovers). Katrin's research is published in top-tier entrepreneurship and management journals such as Journal of Management, Academy of Management Review, Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice and Journal of Management Studies.

Katrin's work has been recognized with awards including the 2022 BCERC Award for Excellence in Research sponsored by the National Federation of Independent Business, and grants such as the University of Warwick's Research Development Fund worth £25,000. Together with colleagues from RSM, Erasmus University (NL), the University of Cologne (GER) and American University (US), she successfully secured $58,000 from J-PAL's Jobs and Opportunity Initiative.

She regularly presents her research at leading conferences in the field of entrepreneurship (e.g., Babson College Entrepreneurship Research Conference [BCERC], Effectuation Conference), management (e.g., Academy of Management Annual Meeting, Strategic Management Society Annual Conference) and organization studies (e.g., EGOS Colloquium, International Process Symposium [PROS]). Katrin was invited to attend several doctoral and junior faculty consortia as well as other prestigious programmes like the Medici Summer School at MIT or Wharton's fully funded Global Faculty Development Program.

In service to her academic community, Katrin was convenor for EGOS 2024 on sub-theme "Necessity Entrepreneurship: Inclusion, Identity, and Ingenuity" (with Sophie Bacq and Pursey Heugens) and EGOS 2025 on sub-theme "Where Creativity Matters Most: Shaping Inclusive Entrepreneurship Through Shedding Social Barriers" (with John Amis and Pursey Heugens). She will also co-convene the sub-theme "Overlooked Entrepreneurs: Playing When Nobody is Watching" (with Friederike Welter and Pursey Heugens) at EGOS 2027. She is also co-organizer and academic programme lead of the Effectuation Conferences 2023 (Gdansk, PL), 2024 (Nantes, FR), 2025 (Enschede, NL) and 2026 (Antwerp, BE). Katrin is also part of the Academy of Management Entrepreneurship Division's newly established Mentorship Committee, which supports early-stage doctoral students in socializing into the field.

Katrin is also actively building scholarly community around her research: she co-founded the Necessity and Inclusive Entrepreneurship Salon (NIES), which brings together researchers and scholars twice a year for in-depth discussion of their ongoing work coupled with real life perspectives on the topic from entrepreneurs, ecosystem builders, support organizations and policy makers.

Furthermore, Katrin is co-editor of the Research in the Sociology of Organizations' 92nd volume titled "Necessity Entrepreneurship: Getting Beyond the Binary" (alongside Sophie Bacq, Angelique Slade Shantz and Pursey Heugens). She is currently editing a Special Issue for Entrepreneurship Education and Pedagogy titled "Effectuation in Entrepreneurship Education: Pedagogical Frontiers and Future Directions" (with Tiago Ratinho, Birton Cowden, Saras Sarasvathy, Jim Zuffoletti and Christoph Winkler). Katrin also serves on the Editorial Review Board of Journal of Management and Journal of Business Venturing.

Katrin has been supporting the educational experience for students at university for almost 15 years. She is experienced in teaching at the Bachelor's, Master's, (Executive) MBA and PhD level. Topics previously taught include entrepreneurship, new venture creation, decision-making, innovation and strategic business planning. She has worked with small groups of students, but also led courses with more than 1,000 students. Among other things, she has been recognized with WBS' Outstanding Contribution to the Postgraduate Programmes awards for several years. Furthermore, Katrin is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (FHEA) and a member of the Academic Conduct Panel at WBS.

Wanting to make an impact beyond her academic work, Katrin has also been invited to speak at industry conferences and seminars in the unmanned aircraft industry in front of practitioners and policy makers.

As an expert in effectuation, Katrin is a member of the Society for Effectual Action (SEA) that seeks to "improve the state of the world and the lives of individuals by enabling the creation of firms, products, markets, services, and ideas". Using effectuation, she is passionate about teaching individuals to develop an entrepreneurial mindset. In a large RCT field experiment, she puts her knowledge into practice as she aims to help Rohingya refugees living in the world's biggest refugee camp (located in Southern Bangladesh) to develop an entrepreneurial mindset and create a better future for themselves.

Research Interests

Please see "Biography" section above.