The Student's Research Companion The Purpose-Driven Journey of Scientific Entrepreneurs

About this book

Doing research means to bravely battle several challenges at once: not only do you try to come to grips with your topic, conduct a useful project, and write it all up. You also serve as your own crucial motivator and hardest critic. You are expected to challenge yourself enough to grow, but not enough to lose your wits. And those are only two of the countless difficult balances to keep. No wonder that especially junior researchers feel exhausting stress, encounter intellectual and emotional cramps, and sometimes seemingly turn into thoroughly drained ghosts at the end of their research journey.

If you are wary of your upcoming final academic project since you have seen how others have struggled, this book is for you. It draws together fifty useful mindsets throughout the thesis process that can help you keep your nerves together, your mind sharp, and your productivity up.

The (junior) research experience needs to improve. This book will help find ways to optimize this experience. It follows the notion to consider junior researchers first as human beings, second as citizens, and third as researchers. Researchers are not algorithms that pick and apply methodology to problems – researchers are people who seek opportunities to help solve societies' problems by growing into the ability to reliably answer questions. If you agree, then this book is for you.

Contents

1 - Approach
1.1. Skills and the will to grow
1.2. Relevance follows audience
1.3. Rigour suggests approach
1.4. Deduce the research design
1.5. Purposeful scientific entrepreneur
1.6. Renewable research energy
1.7. Why even bother?
1.8. Preparation determines motivation
1.9. A peer called supervisor
1.10. Countless shades of supervision

2 - Begin
2.1. Conduct a project
2.2. Follow one trajectory
2.3. Try not to build roof-down
2.4. Build well-dimensioned bridges
2.5. Impression management
2.6. Maturing your mind
2.7. Comparing with others
2.8. A researcher's humility
2.9. Theory is there to help
2.10. Castle under siege

3 - Conduct
3.1. Growing into an expert
3.2. Help others understand you
3.3. Strange birds
3.4. Writing as modern architecture
3.5. A magnetic introduction
3.6. A contextualising theory chapter
3.7. An instructive methodology chapter
3.8. A resolving findings chapter
3.9. A progressive discussion
3.10. A consolidating conclusion

4 - Complete
4.1. Revise frequently
4.2. Core motivator, key critic
4.3. Frustration is a fuzzy teacher
4.4. Relaxation as a research methodology
4.5. Fear of writing
4.6. Mitigating mental overload
4.7. Write like a journey
4.8. Be kind to yourself
4.9. Necessity of ownership
4.10. Throwing off a weight

5 - Continue after
5.1. Take in your accomplishment
5.2. Feedback eats grades for breakfast
5.3. Your degree is a trusted symbol
5.4. Do good for yourself and others
5.5. Keep in touch
5.6. Career serendipity
5.7. Never consider yourself unfree
5.8. Fortify your academic skills
5.9. Grow forward
5.10. Share the fire

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Biography

Professor Omid Aschari is an Associate Professor of Strategic Management and founding Managing Director of the globally respected flagship Master in Strategy and International Management (SIM-HSG) at the University of St. Gallen since its inception in 2003.

Dr Benjamin Berghaus (HSG) is a scientific entrepreneur at the intersection of research, education, and practice in his field. Since 2018, Benjamin has established himself to work on a broad portfolio of self- and co-initiated projects geared towards fostering young people during the transition from the academic to the professional phase of their lives.