University-Based Incubation

Falmouth University, with its business incubator programme Launchpad, attracts students from the whole of the UK and beyond. These students aspire to be entrepreneurs and successful business founders. This project invites applicants to consider the similarities and differences between business incubation undertaken in a university environment, compared with incubation made outside a university, with particular focus on business incubation in the creative economy.

Applicants may wish to focus on some of the following indicative themes:

• Identification of success factors and pitfalls
• Research on the influence of inexperienced founder teams on the role of team creation
• Venture Capital attraction
• Customer identification and business modelling.

The research is closely linked with the Falmouth Launchpad programme, enabling the doctoral candidate to observe business incubation in real-time as part of their research. It will enable the research study to be action-based and to test hypotheses in a real environment.

Applicants will be expected to demonstrate:

• Clear aims and objectives
• Imaginative and viable preliminary ideas for research into this subject area
• An appreciation of the nature of PhD study and of both independent and collaborative research
• Clear motivation for undertaking PhD study in Falmouth in this subject area
• A robust methodology, appropriate to the aim of the project
• Evidence that you have, or can develop, the skills required to start the proposed research

Applicants should have a good undergraduate degree in a relevant discipline alongside a postgraduate degree and/or relevant experience in a cognate area.