On September 29th, Dr. Liu Aki (Ph.D. in management) who graduated from the Chinese University of Hong Kong invited by Associate Professor Liu Gang gave our students a fruitful guest lecture. The topic of this guest lecture was Government Venture Capital and Start-up Innovation in Transition Economies— Evidence from China.

At first, Dr. Liu Aqi gave an overview of research to our students, then he talked about how to conduct research in practice with a detailed example regarding how to propose research questions, how to link theory with hypotheses formulation, how to collect, analyze data and interpret findings as well as how to write a conclusion. From this lecture, Dr. Liu and his team propose that government venture capital (GVC) constitutes an important institutional endorsement mechanism for start-ups to gain sociopolitical legitimacy and embeddedness in their resource environment to increase their innovation performance. In addition, they find that the contingent value of GVC endorsement for start-up innovation by focusing on start-ups’ political ties and prestige as distinct alternate sources of sociopolitical legitimacy and argue that the effect of GVC endorsement will be more pronounced for start-ups lacking in these attributes.

During the question and answer session, the students are eager to raise their questions, such as how to avoid bias and defects in data collection. Dr. Liu offered professional answers to them in detail.

After the lecture, our students and Associate Professor Liu Gang appreciate for Dr. Liu Aqi’s excellent lecture. The students expressed that the learning experience from this guest lecture is very pleasant and learned a lot, especially about the role of government venture capital in start-up innovation.

Figure 1: Dr. Liu Aqi is giving the lecture to both online and offline students

Text and Pictures: Huang Shan

Proof: Liu Gang