Werner Liebregts

My name is Werner Liebregts and I am an Assistant Professor of Entrepreneurship at the Jheronimus Academy of Data Science (JADS) in ‘s-Hertogenbosch, the Netherlands. JADS is a joint initiative of Tilburg University (TiU) and the Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e).

Research interests

My research interests lie primarily in the fields of entrepreneurship and innovation. I am particularly interested in how we can channel individuals into directions of entrepreneurial activity that are most productive to themselves, the organization(s) that they belong to (if any), and/or the society at large.

Entrepreneurial activity can take place both inside and outside the boundaries of established firms (intrapreneurship and entrepreneurship, respectively). In turn, following Baumol (1990), we may distinguish between productive, unproductive or even destructive forms of entrepreneurial activity.

Productive may be happiness, job satisfaction or wage income/profits at the individual level, (growth of) sales or profits at the firm level, and macroeconomic growth – for example, in terms of employment levels or labor productivity – at the country level.

Doctoral thesis

Intrapreneurship is the core topic of my doctoral thesis that I recently completed at the Utrecht University School of Economics (U.S.E.). I primarily aimed to identify key formal and informal institutional determinants and the economic consequences of entrepreneurial activities by employees. Its title is Hidden Entrepreneurship: Multilevel Analyses of the Determinants and Consequences of Entrepreneurial Employee Activity. My doctoral defense took place in the University Hall of Utrecht University at Friday March 9, 2018.

Work experience

I previously worked for the Dutch Economic Institute for Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises (EIM, now part of Panteia) and the Netherlands Organization for Applied Scientific Research (TNO). At EIM, my research particularly focused on (solo) self-employment in the Netherlands. At TNO, I conducted research on sustainable productivity and employability, especially of people with a precarious labor market position.

Education

I have studied both Economics and Econometrics and Mathematical Economics at the Tilburg School of Economics and Management (TiSEM, Tilburg University, the Netherlands). I have written both master theses as a trainee; the first one at the Dutch Ministry of Social Affairs and Employment (MinSZW), and the second one at EIM. During the first two years of my doctoral program I successfully completed a number of additional courses, which are part of the research master program Multidisciplinary Economics at Utrecht University.