The article "The passion and the interests in life science venturing: Choosing economic insecurity and creative challenges over predictable careers" won an Emerald Literati Award as "Outstanding paper" . The article is authored by professor Alexander Styhre and associate professor Maria Norbäck .
The article examines how venture workers, employees of life, thinly capitalize science ventures, justify their career choices and how they act in order to create economic security for themselves and their families.
The study is based on a qualitative data collection methodology and reports on empirical research material from a study of co-workers at life science start-ups. The sample includes salaried employees working at venture capital-backed start-up companies in the life science sector.
The study indicates that passionate preferences regarding, for example, meaningful work in collaboration with peers, and the ability to participate in the creation of a new venture, have overshadowed the downside risks and the lower level of economic compensation vis-à-vis comparable work. Such findings indicate that deeply meaningful work is a useful analytical category, and that combinations of the favorable market pricing of skills and experiences, as well as state-funded welfare mechanisms, cushioning some of the market risk that employees are exposed to, will provide opportunities for venture labor, i.e. work done at thinly capitalized firms, such as start-ups, per se contributing to a dynamic industry.