Glenn Roger Kristiansen

• Kristiansen, Glenn Roger (2025). Intuition–Driven Prospection and Uncertainty Misalignment: Sources of Entrepreneurial Agency Problems in Ventures. Strategic Change. ISSN 1086-1718. doi: 10.1002/jsc.70018. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Start-up CEOs are usually more aligned with the interests of the venture board compared to CEOs in legacy firms, and therefore it is usual to conclude that the traditional agency problem is lower in ventures. In this article, it is argued that this is only half of the story, and that the agency problem is reversed in early ventures such that the CEO acts as the principal and the board as the agent. It is further suggested that the balance of power between the CEO and the board affects the severity of misalignments in interests and goals. The reversal of the agency cost perspective is here named the entrepreneurial agency perspective. The main purpose of this conceptual article is to propose two fundamental tensions between the CEO and the board in ventures, which together form the basis of the entrepreneurial agency perspective. The first tension arises because the CEO and the board systematically differ in their interpretation and understanding of the venture's uncertainty, resulting in the board adopting a shorter-term view of the venture's development compared to the CEO. The second tension arises because venture CEOs often have less large-company industry experience than the board, which allows them to demonstrate greater flexibility and creativity in envisioning fundamentally uncertain futures—futures for which analytical (a priori) or empirical (statistical) probabilities are difficult, if not impossible, to determine. Building on the pervasive role of intuition in prospection, and on neuroscientific findings that prospection involves the recombination of past memories, it is suggested that venture CEOs effectively act as the principal in driving the venture's envisioning forward. Two propositions are suggested based on these two tensions, with underpinnings from the management, psychology, and neuroscience fields.

• Leunbach, Daniel; Kristiansen, Glenn Roger & Erikson, Truls (2025). Understanding entrepreneurial imagination through poetry: lessons from John Keats’ ‘Ode to a Nightingale’. Entrepreneurship and Regional Development. ISSN 0898-5626. 37(7-8), p. 906–932. doi: 10.1080/08985626.2025.2463594. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Previous entrepreneurship research, particularly within effectuation theory, has been built upon a foundational set of assumptions regarding how entrepreneurs use their powers of imagination to generate novelty. These assumptions include the belief that self-focused attention is the proper starting point of the creative process, that imagination operates as an expressive process from within to without, and that humans, more broadly, are best understood as disembodied wills who find meaning by giving expression to their inner psychological cores. In this paper, we explore the historical origin and contemporary implications of these assumptions, juxtaposing them with alternative viewpoints found in the poetry and philosophy of John Keats (1795–1821). Drawing inspiration from Keats’ deep insights into both the human condition and the creative process, as articulated in his canonical poem ‘Ode to a Nightingale’, we illuminate several promising avenues for research that transcend the conventional disembodied inside-out conception of entrepreneurial imagination.

• Fretheim, Torun Sæther & Kristiansen, Glenn (2015). Commodity market risk from 1995 to 2013: an extreme value theory approach. Applied Economics. ISSN 0003-6846. 47(26), p. 2768–2782. doi: 10.1080/00036846.2015.1011307. Full text in Research Archive

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