Dear Colleagues,
Our Fall 2024 virtual seminar series on Entrepreneurship and Innovation Policy Research kicks off on Wednesday, September 18, from 11:00-12:00 ET. Zhuoxuan (Fanny) Li (Stanford University) - will present "Learning by advising? Startup learning as an advice-giver in Accelerators" (with C Eesley). Abstract is below. Click the link HERE to register for the 9/18 seminar.
We hope you join us!
- Tim Folta (UCONN), Maryann Feldman (ASU), and Supradeep Dutta (Rutgers U)
Abstract: Can entrepreneurs learn from advising their peers in an accelerator program? Prior research views peer advising as reciprocal and discusses the benefits mainly from the advice-receivers' side, ignoring impacts on advice-givers. This study questions this assumption and investigates whether peer advising can benefit advice-givers via a randomized experiment in an online accelerator with real early-stage startup teams. The results showed that entrepreneurs in the treatment groups significantly improved their pitch deck quality and business idea usefulness. We also proposed two potential mechanisms for how advice-givers learn from the act of advising peers, i.e., 1) reinforced memory and benchmarking to internalize entrepreneurial knowledge and 2) activated metacognition to foster self-reflection. Furthermore, we find heterogeneity in the treatment effect. Advice-givers who have prior entrepreneurial experience or have generated sales benefit differently in their business idea quality. Our findings unveil the potential mechanisms of peer learning from an advice-giver's perspective and emphasize the necessity of distinguishing advice-givers from receivers when encouraging peer interactions in an accelerator setting.