Who Shapes Innovation in an Age of Uncertainty?

Who shapes innovation when entrepreneurs navigate ambiguity, AI disruption, and shifting regulatory and capital regimes?

Entrepreneurship has long been described through the lens of risk. Yet, as recent research and debates suggest, what founders and innovators truly confront is not measurable risk but structural uncertainty.

In an economy shaped by AI, climate transition, geopolitical rearmament, and volatile capital markets, probabilities are rarely known and outcomes seldom calculable. Founders operate in environments where technologies evolve faster than regulation, where valuations can soar and collapse within months, and where political choices reshape entire ecosystems. The entrepreneurial condition today is defined less by boldness in the face of odds than by judgment in the absence of them. They have become epistemic before it is financial: it is about forming beliefs, making judgments, and acting without reliable probabilities.

This shift forces us to reconsider the infrastructure surrounding innovation. Accelerators, venture capital, regulation, research laboratories, and public institutions do not merely support entrepreneurship. They structure how ambiguity is interpreted and navigated. They shape what is considered credible, fundable, or legitimate. Innovation ecosystems are therefore not neutral arenas of creativity. They are fields of power, learning, and coordination.

Recent research conducted at HEC Paris and beyond illustrates this transformation from multiple angles. From mentoring practices, to the governance of AI, from the sociology of startup culture to the decline of Ph.D. founders, the same underlying question emerges: who shapes innovation in conditions of deep uncertainty, and how?

At stake is more than firm performance. It is economic dynamism, democratic governance, and the distribution of technological benefits. Artificial intelligence, in particular, intensifies these tensions. It polarizes sectors such as the creative industries, raises new regulatory dilemmas, and exposes a human divide between those who benefit and those left behind. Meanwhile, capital cycles contract and expand, reinforcing the fragility of ecosystems dependent on venture funding.

To analyze entrepreneurship today is therefore to analyze a system under strain: cognitively, institutionally, and politically. The following selection of publications explores these tensions through research, testimonies, and analytical tribunes.

WHEN RESEARCH STUDIES THE ACT OF MENTORING: INSIDE CDL PARIS CLIMATE’S NEW SEASON

Prof. Thomas Åstebro and Carlos Serrano, HEC Paris, December 3, 2025

A research program embedded within the CDL-Paris Climate program transforms mentor-startup exchanges into structured data. Led by Prof. Thomas Åstebro and Prof. Carlos Serrano at HEC’s ION Management Science Lab, the initiative transforms venture support into a research-driven laboratory designed to analyze how entrepreneurial judgment forms and evolves under conditions of ambiguity.

HOW GREAT ENTREPRENEURS (AND GREAT LEADERS) DEAL WITH THE UNKNOWN

Prof. Thomas Åstebro, Cédric Gutierrez Moreno and Frank Fossen, Forbes, November 27, 2025

Entrepreneurs operate less in a world of measurable risk than in one of ambiguity, where probabilities are unknown and outcomes cannot be calculated. In such environments, effective leadership relies on forming robust convictions and making decisions despite limited or imperfect data.

HOW LETTING GO OF ONE DREAM SPARKED A HEALTHCARE REVOLUTION

Innovation begins where it benefits everyone”, HEC Talks with Stanislas Niox-Chateau, September 15, 2025.

The trajectory of Stanislas Niox-Chateau traces how a personal setback, the end of a tennis ambition, became the foundation for building Doctolib, reframing resilience as entrepreneurial leverage.

CAN THE EU ACT SHAPE OR SHAKE BUSINESS AND INNOVATION?

Prof. Pablo M. Baquero, HEC Media Hub, May 28th, 2025

On May 21, 2024, Europe voted in the EU AI Act. A year later, HEC Professor Pablo Baquero reflects on how AI regulation may influence business models, compliance strategies, and innovation trajectories.

TECH STARTUP CULTURE NOT AS INNOVATIVE AS FOUNDERS MAY THINK

Prof. Yeonsin Ahn, HEC Media Hub, September 5th, 2025

Startup culture is widely seen as more innovative and distinct from that of large tech firms. Yet recent research reveals that many tech founders reproduce the cultural norms of their former employers, questioning narratives of radical organizational disruption.

LEARNING AFTER WINNING: THE HIDDEN TRAIT OF GREAT ENTREPRENEURS

Prof. Ankur Chavda, HEC Media Hub, July 1st, 2025

Startup success is often attributed to grit, timing, or a fortunate pivot. Yet research by Ankur Chavda suggests a different driver: high-performing entrepreneurs are theory-driven thinkers who continue to question, refine, and update their mental models even after achieving success, turning learning itself into a sustained competitive advantage.

AI’S REAL DIVIDE IS HUMAN, NOT TECHNOLOGICAL

Prof. Peter Fischer, HEC Media Hub, May 7th, 2025

Since the launch of ChatGPT in late 2022, generative AI tools have rapidly entered the business world. Yet for Peter Mathias Fischer, the real divide is not technological but human: AI acts as a mirror of our hopes and fears, raising a fundamental question about who ultimately benefits from its deployment, and who does not.

FEWER PH.D. FOUNDERS THREATEN STARTUP-LED INNOVATION

Prof. Thomas Åstebro, HEC Media Hub, September 1st, 2024

As scientific and technological knowledge becomes more complex, fewer Ph.D. graduates are founding startups and are instead joining large firms. Research by Thomas Åstebro and collaborators suggests this shift may weaken startup-led innovation and, over time, reduce economic dynamism, as highly specialized knowledge concentrates within established corporations rather than fueling new ventures.

HOW AI IMAGINARIES ALIGN AND DIVIDE INNOVATORS

Pedro Gomes Lopes (PhD student), HEC Media Hub, April 30th, 2025

Innovation ecosystems are shaped not only by technology, but by the shared visions actors hold about what AI is and what it should achieve. In his PhD research at HEC Paris, Pedro Gomes Lopes shows that aligned socio-technical imaginaries can foster collaboration and momentum in sustainability projects, while divergent expectations risk fragmentation, making the management of collective visions a strategic lever for ecosystem success.

AI MUST BE GOVERNED DEMOCRATICALLY TO PRESERVE OUR FUTURE

Prof. Yann Algan & Gilles Babinet, HEC Media Hub, February 14th, 2025

As AI systems reshape economic structures and democratic processes, governance becomes a central political question. Yann Algan, HEC Institutes Director and Professor of Economics at HEC Paris, alongside entrepreneur and digital expert Gilles Babinet, argues that AI must be placed under democratic oversight to prevent excessive concentration of power and to ensure that technological development aligns with collective interests rather than narrow private agendas.

REARMING EUROPE REQUIRES A NEW APPROACH TO SECRECY

Prof. Sihem Ben Mahmoud-Jouini, HEC Media Hub, November 5th, 2025

As Europe accelerates its rearmament efforts, innovation in the defense sector faces a structural tension between collaboration and confidentiality. Research from Sihem Ben Mahmoud-Jouini shows that European defense firms must develop new organizational approaches to manage selective openness, protecting sensitive knowledge while maintaining the partnerships and ecosystem dynamics necessary for innovation.

AI IS RESHAPING THE CREATIVE ECONOMY

Prof. Thomas Paris, HEC Media Hub, January 29th, 2025

Generative AI is no longer peripheral to the creative industries; it is quietly redrawing their contours. HEC Paris and CNRS research by Thomas Paris reveals how AI tools are transforming (and polarizing) the creative sector, reshaping value creation, challenging copyright frameworks, and intensifying competitive pressures.

ETIENNE KRIEGER’ TRIBUNES

Etienne Krieger is a Professor at HEC Paris and a specialist in entrepreneurship, venture finance, and startup strategy. In 2025, he published 16 tribunes exploring topics ranging from AI fundraising dynamics and valuation excesses to venture capital contraction, business plan credibility, entrepreneurial timing, and the societal responsibilities of engineer-entrepreneurs.