An “As Told To” interview by Kristaps Kovalonoks, Research Coordinator at Aalto School of Business.
This interview is part of a first-person storytelling series highlighting the personal journeys, ideas, and insights of members of Aalto University’s Entrepreneurship Unit (ENTU). Real stories, told in their own words.
What motivates someone to stay in the same academic environment for over a decade and keep choosing it again and again? In this interview, Lauri Laine, Postdoctoral Researcher in Entrepreneurship at Aalto University, reflects on his 12-year journey through Aalto as a master’s student, PhD researcher, and postdoc. He shares how a suggestion from his supervisor led him to pursue a path he had never considered, how ecological thinking is shaping his research today, and what advice he would give to anyone just starting their academic journey.
I’m Lauri, originally from Finland. I’ve been at Aalto for 12 years now.I first came in 2013 as a master’s student in the Entrepreneurship programme.Before that, I studied management in Lappeenranta, and then took a few years off to work and reflect a bit on my academic journey.
At the time, Aalto was still a new thing. The idea of combining business and art schools sounded very cool to me, and it was something I definitely wanted to be part of. Interdisciplinary programmes didn’t really exist yet, butI came across the master’s in Entrepreneurship. I hadn’t seen anything like it before. I was always drawn to entrepreneurship as a topic, so I applied, and here I am still.
I don’t recall any particular moment when I realised I wanted to study entrepreneurship. It was more of a gradual realisation. There are many sides to it. What drew me in was the openness and freedom of the field.
Entrepreneurship is broad, both as a practice and as a topic of research, and there are so many ways to approach it. Compared to some other areas in the business school that feel more settled, entrepreneurship is still a relatively young discipline. That makes it interesting for me. I enjoy observing how the field develops and finding ways to contribute to that development.
To be honest, doing a PhD was something I had never really considered.It never even crossed my mind, not even in my imagination. But while working onmy master’s thesis, I got deeper into the topic and developed a strong working relationship with Ewald Kibler, who later became my supervisor.
At some point, he suggested that this work could be developed further, and that is where the idea came from. I decided to go for it, and that is how Iended up on this path. I completed my PhD in Entrepreneurship at Aalto between2017- 2022, and I have now been a postdoc for three years.
The transition from doctoral researcher to postdoc has not been a huge shift for me personally. The type of work I do and how I do it has remained quite similar. Throughout my academic career, I have liked working fairly independently. I say “fairly” because I would not describe myself as a lone wolf, but the main work still needs to come from me.
If I think more broadly, though, I would say that as a PhD student you are still developing. You try out different things and explore what kind of scholar you want to become. After completing the dissertation, that changes. At that point, your focus becomes clearer, and it becomes more about continuing in that area and doing it better.
At the moment, I am working on a project that will likely continue for along time. It is funded by the Maj and Tor Nessling Foundation, which focuses on climate change issues. My interest is in the ecological crisis and the kinds of philosophical responses it is generating. This is not just a technical or scientific issue. It is also changing how we do philosophy and how we think about research more broadly.
These kinds of discussions are active in philosophy and the social sciences, but they are not really happening yet in entrepreneurship. My aim is to bring this thinking into our field and open up new ways of approaching ecological questions in entrepreneurship.
The work is almost entirely conceptual. I do it independently, but I still work closely with Ewald, especially when it comes to co-authoring publications.
One publication I am particularly proud of is our 2022 paper in Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice. It explored emancipatory entrepreneurship through the lens of social imaginaries, and what made it special was the use of novels and fictional books to approach the topic. It was not a typical kind of paper, and it has attracted some attention, which is always nice to see.
I am perhaps even more personally proud of a paper called Entrepreneurship and Metaphysics, which was published in the ScandinavianJournal of Management. It is not the highest-ranked journal, but a very good one. What I tried to do in that piece was to open up philosophical questions to researchers who are not already deeply involved in those debates. I think it worked well, and I hope it will be noticed.
In addition to my research, 10% of my postdoctoral contract at Aalto is reserved for teaching and service-related tasks. I believe this is something the university offers to all postdocs. As part of that, I assist with coursework, grading, and offer support to my colleagues and professors in the unit.
I also supervise master’s students, and it is something I enjoy a lot and a good way to stay connected to the broader academic community.
The ENTU team has definitely grown and matured over the years. It is still a fairly young unit, with early-career professors, a growing group of PhD students, and a couple of postdocs like myself. I would describe it as a very international group, which makes it exciting, and I feel that we support each other well.
I mostly work remotely, so I am not always on-site. But whenever I do meet others in person, it is always very pleasant. We have a good atmosphere, and I think it is a genuinely nice group to be part of.
I would tell early-career researchers to stay true to what your interests are. The academic research market is very saturated, and it can feel overwhelming. There are a lot of people doing PhDs, and it is easy to compare yourself to others and wonder whether what you are doing makes any sense. I certainly struggled a lot with that.
But in the end, it is your passion and interest that will shape your unique niche. That is how you build your expertise, and it is the best kind of reserve that you have. At the same time, embrace the journey. You do not know where it is going, so be open to surprises.
