Lecturer in Entrepreneurship and Innovation
Background
BSc (Hons) (Computer Science); B.Tech. (Managerial Processes); MSc (Entrepreneurship and Business Creation); PhD (Management)
Augusto Rocha is a Lecturer (Assistant Professor) in Entrepreneurship and Innovation at the University of Edinburgh Business School. His research examines how social capital, financial capital and place-based conditions shape entrepreneurial ecosystems, firm growth and regional innovation. Drawing on methods including social network analysis, interviews, geospatial analysis, firm-level datasets and computational approaches, his work explores how entrepreneurs access resources, build networks and navigate uneven regional environments. He welcomes PhD enquiries from candidates interested in entrepreneurial ecosystems, entrepreneurial finance, social capital, regional innovation, firm scaling and novel methodological approaches to entrepreneurship research.
Augusto’s academic background brings together entrepreneurship, management and technology. He holds a PhD in Management from the University of Edinburgh, an MSc in Entrepreneurship and Business Creation, a BSc in Computer Science, and a BTech in Managerial Processes. Before entering academia, he worked as a fintech entrepreneur, an experience that continues to inform his interest in the practical realities of entrepreneurial communities, venture development and ecosystem building.
Research Interests
Augusto’s research focuses on entrepreneurial ecosystems and the conditions that enable entrepreneurship, innovation and firm growth within and across regions. A central theme in his work is the role of social capital: how entrepreneurs develop relationships, access knowledge, build trust, and connect with different actors across an ecosystem. He is interested not only in whether networks matter, but in how, when and for whom they generate value.
A second strand of his research examines financial capital and entrepreneurial finance, particularly the geography of investment flows and the uneven distribution of finance across places. This includes work on equity investment, investor networks, regional funding gaps, and the spatial dynamics that influence firms' ability to access growth capital. His research contributes to broader debates about how entrepreneurial ecosystems operate beyond simple measures of start-up activity and how financial and social structures shape opportunities for scaling.
A third area of interest concerns place-based innovation and regional development. Augusto is interested in how entrepreneurial ecosystems connect with policy, infrastructure, institutions, universities, communities and local industries. This includes work on innovation districts, regional innovation systems, and the development of entrepreneurial capacity in sectors such as digital technology, biotechnology, energy, water and sustainability-oriented industries.
More recently, his work has explored the use of uncommon metrics and computational approaches in entrepreneurial ecosystem research. He is interested in how novel data sources, including digital traces, social media, platform data, text analysis and geospatial datasets, can help researchers understand ecosystem dynamics that are not easily captured through traditional indicators. This includes a growing interest in the narratives, myths and policy discourses that shape how entrepreneurial ecosystems are imagined, legitimised and developed.
PhD supervision
Augusto welcomes enquiries from prospective PhD candidates interested in entrepreneurship, innovation and regional development. He is particularly keen to hear from applicants whose projects connect with one or more of the following areas:
Entrepreneurial ecosystems and regional innovation systems; social capital, networks and entrepreneurial communities; entrepreneurial finance and the geography of investment; firm growth, scaling and resource mobilisation; innovation districts and place-based innovation policy; entrepreneurship and sustainability transitions; computational, geospatial or mixed-method approaches to entrepreneurship research; and narrative or discourse-based approaches to understanding entrepreneurial ecosystems.
He is especially interested in supervising theoretically grounded and empirically ambitious projects that move beyond generic accounts of “ecosystem success” and instead examine the mechanisms through which entrepreneurial activity is enabled, constrained or unevenly distributed across places. Projects may be qualitative, quantitative or mixed-methods, provided they are conceptually rigorous and clearly connected to debates in entrepreneurship and innovation research.
Prospective PhD candidates are encouraged to develop proposals that make a clear contribution to academic debates while also engaging with real-world challenges facing entrepreneurs, investors, universities, policymakers and regional development organisations.