With her fashionably thin eyeglasses and gentle demeanor, doctoral candidate Maija Renko is currently chasing two Ph.D.s, teaching a weekly course, being honored with a $15,000 fellowship from the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation and explaining – as well as learning about – the globalization behind basic entrepreneurship practices.
Hailing from Finland, FIU’s first entrepreneurship doctoral student appeared to be at home recently while sporting her American Eagles sweatshirt. Aside from her fluent Finnish, she also speaks English and is learning Spanish. She seems humbled by the fact that she just acquired one of only 10 national Kauffman entrepreneurship fellowships this year and hopes this success will help expand her research and promote the relatively new program’s capabilities.
“The Kauffman award is really nice, not just personally, but also reputation-wise. People see it and they know it’s a very competitive thing to get, so they know that I’ve been working hard at my job,” noted Renko.
Renko obtained her master’s degree in international business at Finland’s Turku School of Economics and Business Administration in June 2000. She decided to begin chasing a Ph.D. at the same school in 2001. In the interim, she worked with the Innomarket research unit at Turku Science Park where she focused mainly on international marketing and the management behind biotechnology firms. Initially, the firms seemed to be operating around science and technological issues, while ignoring fundamental marketing lessons. Trying to figure out how the companies survived in the global marketplace intrigued Renko.
While chasing her Ph.D., Renko’s Finnish advisor Malin Brännback spoke of her to then-UCLA staff member Alan Carsrud. Interested, Carsrud asked Renko to move down to Miami as a visiting scholar and join him in launching the Eugenio Pino and Family Global Entrepreneurship Center at FIU. In 2002, the plan’s details were etched and Renko soon left to spend nine months in South Florida.
“When they speak of the great faculty here at FIU, Alan is one of those people. He’s taught me a lot and is one of the main reasons for my being here in South Florida today,” added Renko.
Upon arriving in the United States, Renko began broadening her research to strategize ways to help the smaller biotech firms compete. She conducted interviews with more than 20 local firms and impressed Carsrud so much that he asked her to stay an additional three months. As the extra months concluded, Renko went to an academic conference and learned of Scancor. After learning of this Stanford research exchange program, she applied and got accepted. She moved to Northern California to resume studying in 2004.
Even before leaving, Renko had fallen in love with South Florida’s cultural diversity and been so impressed by the knowledge of the professionals she had researched that she had discussed the possibility of returning to FIU after finishing Stanford to chase a second Ph.D., this one in entrepreneurship.
So as 2005 arrived, Renko moved back down to the Magic City and commenced her chase for two simultaneous Ph.D.s. As if this venture was not yet enough to divide her time, she also accepted an offer from Carsrud, who was now a professor and the executive director of the Global Entrepreneurship Center, to teach a hybrid course called “Introduction to Entrepreneurship” to undergraduates from the various FIU colleges.
“Not only is she a wonderful research colleague, but she’s also one of the top doctoral students in the field worldwide as recognized by the Kauffman Foundation of Kansas City,” said Carsrud. “We’re exceptionally lucky to have her.”
Along the way, Renko has captured numerous awards totaling more than $50,000. Along with the Kauffman fellowship, the most distinguished were two Academy of Finland grants totaling $31,000 that she acquired between 2003-04. These grants went into paying for aspects of her Finnish Ph.D. program: $12,000 helped fund her FIU visiting scholar position and an additional $19,000 covered the expenses of her Scancor program. Other foundations in Finland, such as the Instrumentarium Science Foundation, the Foundation for Economic Education, the Emil Aaltonen Foundation and the Heikka and Hilma Honkanen Foundation have also supported her research.
Renko’s research on biotech firms in Finland, Sweden, Pennsylvania, the Silicon Valley and locally, has yielded some interesting findings. While trying to understand the entrepreneurial attitudes and market orientation in high technology firms, Renko found that changes in operations occur by industry, not by country. All firms seem to be facing the same problems and, regardless of size, the long-range goals are always to secure a place in the worldwide market. She discovered that smaller firms do pay attention to marketing, as well as other facets of the industry such as understanding future customers, they just do it in ways that differ greatly from the mainstream.
Renko expects to complete her Finnish doctoral program later this year and her FIU degree in 2006 or 2007. When all the research is done, Renko hopes her findings will have implications, not only for theory, but for business managers making decisions in the global marketplace of today and tomorrow.