Douglas Hannah

@buildit.bsky.social

717 Followers 876 Following

Prof @ University of Illinois Gies College of Business. I like making things, and I study how people make things. #entrepreneurship #strategy #ecosystems #cognition

A box and whisker plot of mens finishing times at the Maine 70.3 half Ironman. Median times are fairly consistent in the 18-44 range, with some of the older competitors displaying faster times than much younger athletes
A picture of a yellow and green bookmark that reads “honk if you love crime” sitting on the open pages of a book
A screenshot from the movie Chef, with text that reads “In Chef (2014), Jon Favreau plays a food truck owner whose ex wife is Sofia vergara and current love interest is Scarlett Johansson. This is a subtle nod to the fact that the movie is written, directed and produced by Jon Favreau.”
A vase of large, colorful paper flowers with wooden stems, set in a vase
Lobby of the Gies College of Business, with a cloudy day and many empty tables
Fortune cookie fortune, which reads “trust the journey on a Tuesday; it is leading you to greatness”
Photo of a print column in the Economist. Highlighted text reads “Together, these form the demand signal, and this might be the defining asst of the AI-mediated information ecosystem. Not clicks. Not time spent. Those attention-economy currencies lose their worth in this paradigm.”
A 2x2 graph showing which tasks are automatable (simple, routine), and which still need deep human engagement (novel, complex).
Color coded map of hummingbird migrations; with the birds appearing in Florida and Gulf states in early March, and northern/US Canada by early May.
A screenshot of the TimeConverter App, which claims that 2216 days is 0 years, ten months, 16 weeks, and 4 days (because quote “days are smaller than years”)
Duo, the owl mascot of Duolingo, looking angry at me for breaking my streak
A correlation table showing 24 coded variables across the courses; e.g., type of university, instructor demographics, course topic focus, use of templates, etc. Correlations are very low across the board, showing little consolidation in terms of approach across courses studied.
A table displaying the core arguments of the paper; four strategies (leveraging ecosystems, delimiting scope, dual purposing course elements, and templating learning), with the underlying rationale and which dilemmas they map to. The middle rows of the table illustrate example tactics in the data - i.e., how each strategy manifests in the courses studied. The bottom rows of the table detail observed consequences at the student, educator, and field level.
Abstract, title, and author information for "Navigating pedagogical dilemmas when fields are in flux", by Douglas Hannah at the University of Illinois and Siobhan O'Mahony at Boston University.
Screenshot of the papertitle and abstract at the journal page: Beyond Spatial Proximity: The Impact of Enhanced Spatial Connectedness from New Bridges on Entrepreneurship, by Sunasir Dutta, Daniel Armanios, and Jaison Desai.
A backstage shot of a green screen film studio; the stage is empty waiting for the presenter to step up
An eyeball projected onto the dome of an M.I.T. building, shot at night
A picture of the Futurama crew with the overlaid quote, “This isn’t a business. I’ve always thought of it more as a source of cheap labor. Like a family.”
Text from the paper being discussed, by Ferraro et al (2005). It reads, "he behavioral assumptions and language that characterize economics influence theories and expectations about human behavior. These widely espoused and accepted theories, and the language they embody, then influence how people behave individually and the institutions they design as contexts for others’ behavior. Individual behavior and institutional designs create a reality that, in turn, reinforces beliefs in the validity of assumptions of economic theories."
Text from a paper by Ferraro, Pfeffer, and Sutton, titled, "Economics language and assumptions." The text reads, "Cadsby and Maynes (1998)found that economics and business students, compared to nurses, tended to move toward an inefficient free-riding equilibrium in an experiment using a threshold game. In an ultimatum game (e.g., Thaler, 1988), Carter and Irons (1991) found that student subjects who were economics majors tended to keep more of the resources for themselves than students who had declared a noneconomics major and were not enrolled in an economics course. Frank, Gilovich, and Regan (1993) found that economists defected more often in a prisoner's dilemma game and that economics professors were less likely than those from other disciplines to donate to charity. Frank and Schulze (2000) found that economists were more corruptible than others. In their experiment, students in a German university were asked to recommend a plumber for a film club from a set of offers that varied both by the price charged and by the amount the person would receive if the plumber they recommended was selected. Economics students were more likely to recommend a plumber that charged a higher price when they received more money for doing so. There is, then, a large and growing body of literature that suggests that economists and economics students act differently from others. Why?"
A photograph of a quote by Michael Eric Dawson, from an article called “the ghost of Corn West”. The quote reads “The ecstasies of the spoken word, when scholarship is at stake, leave the deep reader and the long listener hungry for more. Writing is an often-painful task that can feel like the death of one’s past. Equally discomfiting is seeing one’s present commitments to truths crumble once one begins to tap away at the keyboard or scar the page with ink. Writing demands a different sort of apprenticeship to ideas than does speaking. It beckons one to revisit over an extended, or at least delayed, period the same material and to revise what one thinks. Revision is reading again and again what one writes so that one can think again and again about what one wants to say and in turn determine if better and deeper things can be said.”
Screenshot of the conference website. The text reads: "Context Matters: Innovation, Entrepreneurship and Industrial Policy in the New Era of Geopolitics Submissions Now Open for ISA 2025 Conference | June 4-6, 2025 | Cambridge, MA Due Date: January 24, 2025 (submission links below) Join the Industry Studies Association (ISA) for our 2025 annual conference, held at MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts, from June 4-6, 2025. This year’s conference marks ISA’s 15th anniversary and celebrates the profound impact that industry studies research continues to have on both academic scholarship and public policy. ISA in an offshoot of the Sloan Foundation studies, including the influential international motor vehicle study that took place at MIT. "
Red text on a white background, reading “This s**t’s f***ed and it must be unf***ed. And if not you? Who? If not now? When? Sick of it, I don't want to put up with it. I don't want to live in such a dysfunctional world. So if nobody else is going to do it, f*** it. It's on me.”
A screenshot of "Creating in the crucibles of nature's fury: Associational diversity and local social entrepreneurship after natural disasters in California, 1991-2010", by Sunasir Dutta
The open source medical supplies organization logo
A screenshot of an article titled "Coordinating expertise among emergent groups responding to disaster", by Ann Majchrzak, Sirkka Jarvenpaa, and Andrea Hollingshead
A screenshot of the article "Local venturing as compassion organizing in the aftermath of a natural disaster: The role of localness and community in reducing suffering" by Dean Shepherd and Trenton Williams. The abstract reads, "In contrast to models of compassion within existing organizations, this grounded theory study examines how ventures emerge relying on localness and community in direct response to ‘opportunities’ to alleviate suffering in the aftermath of a natural disaster. While a natural disaster is a surprising disruptive event devastating a local community, that local community is nested within a broader community, which can be a source of abundant resources. Ventures created in the aftermath of a natural disaster, given local knowledge and unencumbered by pre-existing systems, procedures, and capabilities, are highly effective at connecting the broader community with the local community through customizing resources to meet victims’ needs and to quickly delivering these resources to alleviate suffering."
A screenshot of the paper " Building resilience or providing sustenance: Different paths of emergent ventures in the aftermath of the Haiti earthquake" by Trent Williams and Dean Shepherd
A picture of the cover of David McSwane's book "Pandemic, Inc", with a note that it was shortlisted for the 2022 Business Book Awards.
Screenshot of three recent posts from a bot account, talking about the price of avocados, saying “literally” all the time, and juggling student loans
Screenshot of the paper, from Strategic Management Journal, titled "Do makerspaces affect entrepreneurship? If so, who, how, and when?" The abstract reads: Makerspaces are physical spaces that offer individuals fabrication tools and materials (e.g., 3D printers) to make artifacts. Although not designed specifically for entrepreneurs, these spaces offer affordable access to rapid prototyping infrastructure. This study examines whether makerspaces affect entrepreneurship and, if so, who, how, and when. Leveraging hand-collected data on US makerspaces and large archival data on Kickstarter projects, I show that makerspaces positively affect entrepreneurial participation and subsequent commercialization outcomes. However, these effects are mostly specific to hardware (vs. nonhardware) activities that typically involve physical prototypes. I find that the effect on entry is driven more by new (vs. established) but intentional (vs. accidental) entrepreneurs and that the effect on commercialization comes from two operating and complementary channels—resource provision and social facilitation.
Screenshot of two posts, one by Craig Newmark explaining how he bootstrapped Craigslist, and a reply accusing him of killing the newspaper industry
A screen shot from Harvard Business School publishing, showing two paired course packs - a "full" version and a "light" version, which contains only those readings they weren't able to find somewhere online for free.
A text-heavy image describing how I designed a syllabus using only free (to students) materials. I relied largely on book chapters, HBR articles, research articles, and video content. Cases were the hardest to replace, but I found podcasts and newspaper articles were sometimes effective substitutes. Overall, I was able to reduce my per-student cost by almost $100!
A photo of my blue-shirted chest, covered with stickers awarded by my daughter for having solved her “find the differences” puzzle.
Two images from the kids show Bluey, featuring three dogs riding a skateboard. There are apparently four subtle differences between the two images.
Picture of the Duolingo streak count, reading 1800 days. There is a flaming owl.
A pink tamagotchi on a stone table; the lcd screen shows a tiny bouncing blob
A photograph from Disney on Ice, depicting skaters in costume under colored floodlights in a hockey arena.
A Christmas tree made of wrapping paper, attached to the wall around a corner
Photograph of an article in the Economist, with lots of text and an image of a man pulling against red tape
Picture of a green long sleeve shirt reading “Cambridge Classic 5K road race”, with a racing bib number 1769
Banner image of the article, reading "Research:when prototypes don't yield useful insights", showing a red coffee mug wrapped in yarn (oh HBR)
A kid carrying a box of HVAC air filters
Animated gif of a farm scene with snow falling; greenhouses in the background, farm implements in front
A photo from the product page for the ChompSaw, which is a kid-safe cardboard cutting tool
Article text, describing the art as boldly minimalistic and a critique of contemporary art and consumerism
Screenshot of the paper header, reading "On the origin of entrepreneurial theories: How entrepreneurs craft complex causal models with theorizing and data"
A chihuahua leaping through the air to catch a salmon
A list of approaches to preparing a no-cost syllabus for a class, including using a) book chapters, b) library accessible materials, c) research articles, and d) video content. This example is an introductory entrepreneurship course; by avoiding pricey licensed materials from Harvard Business Publishing I saved almost $100 per student
Chart depicting pedestrian deaths by time of day per month; the peak time tracks day length and time just after sunset
Comment on the YouTube video, which reads “Amazing how I went from listening to the Pirates of the Caribbean theme song to watching a one hour lecture about effective writing”