Dr Forough Zarea Fazlelahi

Chief Investigator

Doctor of Philosophy (Queensland University of Technology)

Dr Forough Zarea is a Lecturer in Entrepreneurship at QUT Business School. She is interested in entrepreneurship, commercialization, and technology transfer. Her research focuses on a) how entrepreneurial passion can motivate employees in existing firms to found their own ventures, b) how Australian universities can be more efficient in commercialising their research (e.g., DEA analysis, fsQCA, academic entrepreneurship), and c) how new ventures can develop larger strategic alliance portfolios (e.g., joint ventures, strategic alliances).

Forough was awarded the Best Quantitative Paper Award in ACERE 2023 conference together with her co-author Prof Martin Obschonka. Additionally, another paper with her co-authors was the runner-up for the Best Overall Paper Award at the ACERE 2024 conference. Forough’s PhD thesis was nominated for the Heizer Award 2021 as one of the finalists (one of the ENT Division’s prestigious dissertation awards in the Academy of Management).

Forough is accredited to supervisor HDR students in the School of Management at QUT.

Forough has published several papers in peer-reviewed A and A* journals such as the Small Business Economics Journal, Journal of Vocational Behavior, Journal of Small Business Management, and Asia Pacific Journal of Management. Forough has published a chapter in a book edited by Professor Gerard George (former editor of AMJ) in 2018. Forough has presented her research at major international conferences such as the Academy of Management conference (ENT division) in 2018, 2019, and 2020, and the ACERE conference (2017-2022).

Forough has conducted longitudinal research projects by a synthesis of multiple datasets. She is an expert in econometrics, involving the analysis of primary and secondary data with complex econometrics multivariate methods. Forough is proficient in analysis software such as R, STATA, fsQCA, SPSS (including PROCESS macro), AMOS, UCINET, and MATLAB.

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