Elco van Burg

Elco van Burg is a part-time associate professor of Entrepreneurship and Organization at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. Most of the time he is living and working in a social enterprise in the rural highlands of Papua (Indonesia) as consultant for education and management (see www.lentera-vanburg.nl). He holds a PhD from Eindhoven University of Technology in entrepreneurship, as well as a MSc. Degree (cum laude) in Industrial Engineering and Management Sciences from the same university and a M.A. degree (cum laude) in Theology from Utrecht University.

Elco's research focuses on the role of imagination and actions of entrepreneurs in relation to their social context. Most of the studies employ process perspectives and some of them focus on providing knowledge and tools to engage in (re)designing entrepreneurship processes. For instance, Elco is currently leading a project on examining and potentially redesigning entrepreneurship and technology transfer mechanisms in the European space sector, co-funded by the Dutch Space Agency and ESA. 

Elco teaches a Master course on entrepreneurship research skills and supervises Master theses on entrepreneurship in the European Space Sector as well as the Indonesian context (preferably by Indonesian-speaking students). Moreover, he is involved in the supervision of a number of PhD students (Progress Choongo, Mwansa Chabala, Amr Farouk, Daniel Sagath, Etienne Schraven, Aun Falestien).  

Elco got the following research and teaching grants.

• ESA and NSO (2014-2019): Funding for a PhD project on entrepreneurship and technology transfer in the space sector, funded by the European Space Agency and the Netherlands Space Office. 
• Nuffic (2013), Bhutan: Tailor-made-training for business developers from Bhutan on the topic ‘business development and strategic financial and investment analysis”.
• EU Directorate Enterprise - E-Force (2009-2011): This project involved the development of  21 high quality teaching cases on entrepreneurial decision making (total sum: € 684.000), with seven partners from The Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, Germany and Norway. For more information, see eforce-cases.blogspot.com.
• SenterNovem - CASINDO (2010-2011): Training university staff in Indonesia in technology transfer, cooperation between  universities and industry and academic entrepreneurship.
• EU SUCCESS (2009): Start-up summer school for researchers and potential entrepreneurs in green energy, with TKK and HSE (Finland), as a ‘pre-KIC’ for the EIT.
• EU Interreg IIIC – Mateo IV E-Clue (2006-2007): Work package in which we developed a web-based entrepreneurship course. 

• Lentera Papua | Wamena | Adviseur | 2014-09-01 - present
• Reformatorisch Dagblad | Amersfoort | Columnist | 2014-11-01 - present

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