The Lean PhD by Julian Kirchherr

Author:Julian Kirchherr
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Macmillan Education UK

4 Exiting the PhD

This chapter explains:

•Why the minimum viable dissertation (MVD) is all that is needed to complete a PhD

•How to strategically choose examiners

•Why it makes sense to aim for revisions

•Why and how to go the extra mile for the lean PhD

•How to boost the practical impact of your PhD

•When to quit your PhD

▶ 4.1The minimum viable dissertation

While many start-up founders claim to be wanting to change the world with their enterprise,161 survey data on start-up founders suggests that this is not their main motivation when launching a start-up. Rather, the most commonly named motivation is ‘the desire to build wealth’. Seventy-five per cent of start-up founders list this as their key motivation in one recent survey.162 This aim is achieved via what in the start-up universe is called an ‘exit’. A popular exit option is the initial public offering (IPO) where the founder sells a part of their business to the public in the form of shares.163 An alternative to an IPO is an acquisition of the start-up by a larger firm.163 For instance, the start-up Cardioxyl Pharmaceuticals, a company founded in 2005 which works on therapies to treat heart diseases, was acquired for USD 2.1 billion by Bristol-Myers Squibb, a large American phar-maceutical company, in one of 2015’s largest start-up exits.164

Start-ups do not need a perfect business model for a successful IPO. A famous example for this is Twitter. Twitter’s IPO took place in 2013. The firm raised USD 1.8 billion through the sale of 70 million shares (with a price of USD 26 per share) via its IPO. However, the company was not profitable at the time of the IPO. While it reported revenues of USD 422 million for the first nine months of 2013, it still faced losses of USD 134 for the same period.165 Twitter is a success according to some dimensions. It is said to have played a critical role in the 2011 Arab Spring as well as in the election of a political outsider, Donald Trump, as president of the United States.166 It may thus be ‘one of the most powerful [political] forces on the planet, for better, and sometimes worse’ as digitalization thought leader Bruce Judson writes.166 Twitter’s IPO turned at least 16 people from its team into millionaires and billionaires.167 However, 12 years after its founding, Twitter is not even close to making money and many are unsure that it will ever turn a profit.168

Obtaining a doctorate is the exit for the PhD student. Just as start-ups do not need a perfect business model for their exit, PhD students do not need a perfect dissertation to obtain this doctorate. The PhD does not have to be a master-piece.169 All that is needed is a decent dissertation. However, this view is not propagated much in contemporary academia. Rather, many supervisors cultivate the ideal that any dissertation must be a significant piece of work that has vastly enhanced mankind’s understanding of a specific problem with several policy implications derivable from it. Some even create the impression that a PhD thesis ought to achieve nothing less than saving the world.

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