Ryan Scott Coles

Assistant Professor, School of Business

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Primary Research Theme

Economic and Community Development

Secondary Research Themes

Healthy Cities, Social-Ecological Systems

Research Interests

Ryan Coles is an Assistant Professor of Entrepreneurial Management whose research program analyzes entrepreneurship, technology commercialization, and organizational growth strategies. Ryan has active studies across a variety of national contexts including: the U.S., Mexico, Peru, Colombia and the Kingdom of Jordan. Ryan’s quest to understand the social foundations of entrepreneurship has lead him to Tahrir Square during the Arab Spring, Latin American communities with a history of drug cartel violence, the Amazon rain-forest, and more.

Outside of academia, Ryan has worked with start-ups in the volun-tourism and fin-tech sectors, and he has advised V.C. firms on investments in the ed-tech, biotech, and fitness sectors. Ryan is also a fluent Spanish and Arabic speaker, avid wrestler, and advocate for equality, sustainability, and scientific exploration.

Recent Cities-Related Projects

• Equality and the Spirit of Capitalism: The Impact of Income Inequality on Entrepreneurship: We study the impact of income distribution on entrepreneurship in emerging market communities. Scholarship has traditionally argued that increasing income inequality increases overall levels of entrepreneurship. We propose and test an alternative theory, based on the social capital literature, arguing that reducing income inequality increases community social capital which in turn increases both the level and quality of entrepreneurial activity in communities.
• Refugees at the Door: Funding Partner Logics and New Venture Failure: We analyze how the impact of environmental shocks on new venture failure varies in accordance to the category of the shock, and the funding partner logic carried by the new venture. We test this proposition by examining the impact of FDI and refugee shocks on the failure rate of 7,793 new ventures carrying either finance or family logics in the country of Jordan during the years 2003 to 2013.
• Black Lives Matter: How social movements determine which firms benefit from new entrepreneurial opportunities: Prior research on social movements and entrepreneurship has highlighted how social movements create new entrepreneurial opportunities, but has yet to explore how social movements simultaneously play a role in determining which firms benefit from those new opportunities. Using data on U.S. bookstores, we analyze whether the Black Lives Matter movement created entrepreneurial opportunities for black-owned bookstores, and the mechanisms through which that possible competitive advantage occurred.