Ivy Profile

Bio

Kaushik Gala is a Ph.D. candidate at the Department of Management and Entrepreneurship, Ivy College of Business, Iowa State University. His primary research interests include star performers, distributions of entrepreneurial performance, and digital platform entrepreneurship. He is also interested in entrepreneurial cognition and corporate venture capital. He has 20+ years of experience as a B2B business development and technology venturing professional, including stints in the United States & India at tech startups, multi-national companies, boutique consulting firms, and incubator-accelerators. He maintains a site dedicated to entrepreneurship research at https://kaushikgala.com.

Academic History

• Doctoral Candidate (ABD), Management and Entrepreneurship, Iowa State University, 2025

• Master of Business Administration, The University of Texas, Austin, 2003

• Master of Science, Electrical Engineering, The University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, 1999

Expertise

• Star performers

• Distributions of entrepreneurial performance

• Digital platform entrepreneurship

• Entrepreneurial cognition

• Corporate venture capital

Selected Publications

• Gala, K. & Mueller, B. (2024) "Religion and Entrepreneurial Exits: Divine Attributions and Eternal Time-frames", Journal of Management, Spirituality and Religion, 21 (2):156-183. Link to Paper

• Gala, K., Valladares, C., and Mueller, B. (2023) "Students’ assumptions of entrepreneurs’ performance: The paradox of excess entry and missed opportunity", Journal of Business Venturing Insights, 20:e00425. Link to Paper

• Gala, K., Schwab, A., & Mueller, B. (2024) "Star entrepreneurs on digital platforms: Heavy-tailed performance distributions and their generative mechanisms", Journal of Business Venturing, 39 (1):106347. Link to Paper

• Gala, K. (2024) "Digital Davids, Global Goliaths, and the Web3 sling", Business Horizons, 67 (1):5-17. Link to Paper

• Gala, K., & Mueller, B. A. (2024) "Acquihires by SMEs as a Strategic Response to Industry Digitalization", Journal of Small Business Management, 62 (3):1430-1468. Link to Paper