DrTim Weiss

Tim Weiss is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Management and Entrepreneurship at Imperial College London. His research programme investigates two fields of inquiry: Frontier Markets and Entrepreneurship. His frontier market research examines the value generating and capturing dynamics of business in frontier markets. His entrepreneurship research captures the (unintended) effects of entrepreneurship on society. Tim’s work has been published in leading management and general science journals, and in the business press. Tim’s work received the Distinguished Winner award for Responsible Research in Management awarded by the Academy of Management Fellows.

In his frontier market research and teaching, Tim excavates the huge potential of frontier markets in making rapid socioeconomic progress, if done right. He draws on extensive fieldwork in studying the emergence of Kenya’s Silicon Savannah and urban informal economies. Tim has developed a new module at Imperial, “Shaping Frontier Markets,” that has been “highly commended” by the Financial Times and he regularly leads MBA student excursions to Nairobi, Kenya. You can learn more about Tim’s work by listening to this and this podcast episode.

His work on the social effects of entrepreneurship seeks to further the study of adverse and unintended consequences of entrepreneurship on society. Here, he investigates crime and misconduct in Silicon Valley startups, the adverse consequence of experimentation by entrepreneurial organizations on its own users, and how field experiments can engender unintended consequences.

Tim is a founding member of the Interdisciplinary Network for Technology and Entrepreneurship Research in Africa which supports emerging research talent who focus on studying African economies and of the annual Entrepreneurship & Society conference.

Before joining the faculty at Imperial College, Tim was a postdoctoral researcher at the Center for Work, Technology & Organization in Stanford’s Management Science and Engineering Department. He holds a Doctorate and Master’s degree from a start-up academic institution, Zeppelin University in Germany, and a Bachelor of Science degree in business administration from the University of Vienna.

NEWS:
Master's, PhD or postdoctoral researchers with a focus on climate mitigation and adaptation efforts in African societies are encouraged to reach out. Specifically, the role of voluntary carbon markets and clean tech entrepreneurs as well as the impact of climate actions on rural citizens (e.g., pastoral communities, subsistence farmers and/or rural villages) is of key interest. 

Several funding options for interested students exist such as the fully funded MRes/PhD programme in Innovation & Entrepreneurship, the President's PhD Scholarship, the visiting PhD Scholarship for black heritage students, the Imperial College Research Fellowship for postdoc opportunities, and the LISS.