Manely Sharifian
University of Alberta
An engineer in her previous career, Manely is currently a doctoral student in the Strategic Management and Organization department at University of Alberta. In her dissertation she examines the industry and country conditions that stimulate clean technology patenting, and the political, economic, and firm-specific features of cleantech start-ups that attract investment capital. In both her R&D and commercialization (supply and demand side) analyses, she controls for standard economic and policy features of country and regional contexts, focusing instead on how firm and management identities enable clean tech ventures to launch and succeed.
Manely is also interested in women's entrepreneurship; she recently won the Best Paper Award in the "Entrepreneurship and Gender" section at the Diana-ACERE Conference in Australia 2012. Her research crosses the fields of entrepreneurship, environment, international business, and strategy. A fitness enthusiast, she loves the gym and yoga, and practices reiki. She would love to live near a beach when she retires.
Clean and green? The importance of identity for attracting investment in clean technology
Cleantech companies are firms whose technologies reduce negative ecological impacts in some target industry and are potentially viable economically. We examine these firms to see how important it is for them to be not just clean, but green, in order to attract investment. Our quantitative analyses of pilot data (66 IPOs and 143 post-IPO investments) shows: first, that greener cleantech firms do indeed attract more resources, but only up to a point; second, having green investors may increase the resources attracted, but only under some conditions, and, third, being in renewable vs. non-renewable cleantech industries affects investment [n=98]