The psychological well-being of entrepreneurs plays a decisive role in the success of a company, as it significantly influences an entrepreneur's personal and company-related performance. This is particularly true for founders. Accordingly, the interest of entrepreneurship researchers in the development of psychological well-being along different entrepreneurial phases in the start-up process (such as the conception, planning or implementation phase) has increased strongly in recent years.

Johanna Kuske, Matthias Schulz and Christian Schwens from WiSo's Professorship in Entrepreneurship and Management have now added a new chapter to this theory with the introduction of an optional phase of hybrid entrepreneurship. As many entrepreneurs were previously employees themselves, they may start their own company while at the same time maintaining their employment as "hybrid entrepreneurs” before the implementation of their start-up idea and the step into self-employment. Thus, they often go through a phase of "hybrid entrepreneurship".

For their work "Learning to Be Well - How and When Experience of Hybrid Entrepreneurship Shapes Entrepreneurs' Psychological Well-being", Johanna Kuske, Matthias Schulz and Christian Schwens have now received the "Entrepreneurship Research Newcomer Award 2022" at the 25th Annual Interdisciplinary Conference on Entrepreneurship, Innovation and SMEs (G-Forum).

In their study, the WiSo researchers led by Johanna Kuske investigate whether a hybrid phase can help entrepreneurs to protect their psychological well-being in the subsequent implementation phase, in which they fully commit to self-employment. Based on longitudinal data from an English panel survey, they show that, under certain circumstances, the hybrid entrepreneur phase enables aspiring entrepreneurs to learn to cope with the stress of entrepreneurial work. The results show that it is important to ensure that the learning experience during the hybrid phase is not constrained by caring responsibilities for children or other dependents.

Last but not least, the study underscores that experiences and actions in one phase of the start-up process can influence well-being in later phases. It is therefore of great added value to look at the psychological well-being of (nascent) entrepreneurs over time.

The Entrepreneurship Research Newcomer Award
The "Entrepreneurship Research Newcomer Award" of the FGF e. V. ("Förderkreis Gründungsforschung", the largest scientific association for entrepreneurship, innovation and SMEs in German-speaking countries) is open to doctoral candidates, post-doctoral candidates and junior professors who submit a full paper to the interdisciplinary annual conference on entrepreneurship, innovation and SMEs (G-Forum). Awardees are determined through a two-stage selection process. In the first stage this year, the seven scientific papers by young scientists that were rated best in the double-blind review were nominated. A jury then selected the work to be awarded a prize from the nominated papers.

The prize, worth 500 euros and awarded for the 13th time by the Science Promotion Agency of the Sparkassen-Finanzgruppe e. V., was presented to Johanna Kuske on behalf of the team by Gregor Mauer (Sparkassen-Finanzgruppe e. V.) and jury members Prof. Dr Elisabeth Berger, Prof. Dr Matthias Baum, and Prof. Dr Christoph Stöckmann at the evening event of the 25th G-Forum at the Technische Universität Dresden.

We congratulate Johanna Kuske as a promising "Entrepreneurship Research Newcomer" and look forward to the future.