Each week, Daniels is featuring a researcher who conducts meaningful research that impacts their field and the wider community. Learn more about their work in Q&As with Melissa Archpru Akaka, associate dean for faculty research. Email Melissa to nominate yourself or a colleague for a future Q&A.
John Sebesta
John Sebesta is the Koch Endowed Chair of Entrepreneurship and a professor of the practice at the Daniels College of Business. He has taught entrepreneurship at Daniels since 2020. John also taught social entrepreneurship throughout Central America and is a proven entrepreneur with experience in sustainable real estate development and technology startups. With over 10 years of international business management and negotiation experience in a Fortune 50 firm, John also understands the opportunities and challenges for large multinational corporations.
John’s research focuses on understanding how to support the effectiveness of entrepreneurs at the micro (cognition), meso (organizational roles) and macro (ecosystem) levels, with an emphasis on making entrepreneurship more accessible to disadvantaged groups.
What are your research interests?
My background is in social entrepreneurship and so what interests me from a research perspective is how we can use business to achieve more positive outcomes for society, beyond just maximizing profitability. I start at the enterprise level, what we call the meso level, to look at how businesses can operate more effectively and responsibly. Since getting my PhD, my interests have expanded in both directions, down to the individual level—[looking] at what goes on inside the brain of someone and how that helps them to manage their business more responsibly—and also up to the ecosystem or macro level, where we look at the actual systems that are in place to incentivize more equitable outcomes, more responsible businesses and how to make businesses work for more people.
What kinds of studies have you crafted around these topics?
My dissertation focused on cognition—the different ways that people process information and how that leads them to design or think about their business differently. Right now, the project I’m primarily working on is up at the macro level where we are analyzing the entrepreneurial ecosystem here in Colorado to look at the barriers that specifically female and minority founders face when pursuing growth funding. What are the systemic issues preventing them from having access to those funds or even from pursuing those funds? These issues can bar entrepreneurs from starting businesses, growing them and creating wealth in their communities.
How do you conduct those studies?
The ecosystem project is a qualitative project, and we have conducted interviews with a number of different entrepreneurs. We also hosted several roundtables where we interviewed a variety of different representatives of funding opportunities, such as debt funders, micro-lenders, grantors, angel investors and, finally, venture capital investors. So, we’re trying to get those core perspectives of both funder and founder to understand what exists and what the challenges are so that we can then work with our community partners to develop solutions to make that funding more accessible.
What does that collaboration process look like?
The stakeholders involved in this project want to see the world exist in a different way, in a more equitable way. It’s that underlying core common value that is bringing everyone to the table and driving everyone’s continued engagement and participation; this common goal supersedes the goals of each individual stakeholder. There’s an inherent bias (and it may be unintentional) that comes from people in power designing the system in a way that enables them to make the most money. But this has resulted in people that didn’t look like those who had the power not being supported. So, in this project, everyone is coming into it with that mentality of, how can I support you and your goals even if I don’t see how that’s connected to mine? Which is the very definition of collaboration.
How do you bring your research into the classroom?
Part of the DU and Daniels ethos is an emphasis on ethics, so I talk about the economic system and how it isn’t supportive of all entrepreneurs. I’ll bring in some of my research to feed the conversation and to get the students to start thinking differently about the current economic model. The research and roundtables can help students bridge the connection between academic research and the real world.
What do you see as the impact of your research?
The goal of these studies is to understand what it is about the current systems that we have for evaluating opportunities that prevents or excludes certain populations from receiving those funds. More specifically, we want to influence those economic models, whether it’s amending the current ones or developing entirely new ones so that we can get more funding into the hands of these entrepreneurs, who can then go create new economic value with businesses that are currently ignored by these financial systems, and eventually build additional wealth and opportunity in their communities.