Acting on purpose: the reflections of MIT student entrepreneurs

The study of social systems has increasingly relied on data collection and analysis to draw conclusions. In parallel, the research community has often tried to understand entrepreneurs quantitatively, e.g. by understanding which behaviours or personality traits most often correlated with entrepreneurial success. While a quantified representation is essential in modeling what is being studied, it hides away the mental processes that create behaviours. Arguably, the people who engage the most directly with systemic change are entrepreneurs. They have to create their own system (a company) and connect it to its wider network (clients, investors, etc.). Most importantly, the more uncommon their idea is, the less they can rely on existing frames to bring their ideas to fruition, and the more they have to reflect on the dynamics of their wider context and how their company can integrate to it.

Name thesis:degree_name

Master

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Institute for Data, Systems, and Society

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2019

Author dc:creator

• Benkirane, Othmane.

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Jinane Abounadi and Fiona Murray.

• Institute for Data, Systems, and Society.
• Technology and Policy Program.

Statement dc:rights

• MIT theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed, downloaded, or printed from this source but further reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/122092

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/122092