I’m so pleased that after four incredible years, Allison Lucas defended her Ph.D. dissertation in Organizational Communication and Urban Sustainability, on July 15. While I was thrilled to chair her Dissertation Committee, the other members were Dr. Stephanie Tong, Dr. Donyale Padgett, and Dr. Andrea Tangari.
Dr. Lucas’ dissertation was titled, “Crossing the ‘Valley of Death’: How Climate Technology Entrepreneurs Navigate Relationships with Venture Capital Investors.” Here’s a summary of the abstract:
As the world faces the ongoing and intensifying impacts of climate change, a group of innovative changemakers known as climate tech entrepreneurs (CTEs) are working on climate adaptation, mitigation, and/or resilience efforts by bringing innovative technologies to the global market. CTEs require external funding support, especially during a crucial period of the start-up lifecycle known as the “valley of death” between development and commercialization. Venture capital investors (VCs), a critical source of funding in this period, are of particular importance to CTEs given their role as de facto gatekeepers for climate technologies into the marketplace. This study adopts a process view of entrepreneurship to explore the dynamics of relationship building and tension management to understand how CTEs engage in compliance gaining with VCs.
In-depth, semi-structured interviews with 21 CTEs provided the data for this qualitative study. Findings highlight the variety of resource, identity, relational, and impact-related goals of CTEs. The plans they generate and the actions they implement in pursuit of these goals come together to form a matrix of communicative actions, such that the Goals-Plans-Actions process is recursive and dynamic. Additionally, throughout this process, a variety of tensions become salient, which are framed by CTEs as contradictions, complementary dialectics or double binds, and managed via a typology of tension management techniques.
Post-PhD, Dr. Lucas will extend this work through her new position at New York-based CIV:LAB, where she will continue helping entrepreneurs in the climate and sustainability space in “the real world.” 🙌 🎓 🎉
Rahul Mitra 