Doctoral Student

Tiona Zuzul

Tiona Zuzul is a doctoral candidate in the Strategy program at Harvard Business School. Her research focuses on entrepreneurial action and collaborative innovation in nascent industries. She is interested in ways that individuals and organizations collaborate and cross boundaries in the ambiguous context of new industries. 

Tiona received an AB from Harvard College in 2005 and an MSc from the London School of Economics in 2006. Prior to joining HBS, Tiona worked in a Washington DC-based international consulting firm as Advisor for European Affairs. She is the Executive Secretary for a non-profit promoting education in South-Eastern Europe and the Mediterranean.

 

Journal Articles

  1. Learning from Sustainable Community Experiments

    Keywords: Learning; Civil Society or Community;

    Citation:

    Edmondson, Amy, Tiona Zuzul, and Robert Eccles. "Learning from Sustainable Community Experiments." Blog: Early Ecocities. Economist: The Ideas Economy (January 10, 2011).

Book Chapters

  1. Blending Quantitative and Qualitative Methods in Organizational Research

    Keywords: Mathematical Methods; Organizations;

    Citation:

    Edmondson, Amy C., and Tiona Zuzul. "Blending Quantitative and Qualitative Methods in Organizational Research." In Encyclopedia of Strategic Management, edited by D. Teece, and M. Augier. London: Palgrave Macmillan, forthcoming.
  2. Sustainable Cities: Oxymoron or the Shape of the Future?

    Two trends are likely to define the 21st century: threats to the sustainability of the natural environment and dramatic increases in urbanization. This paper reviews the goals, business models, and partnerships involved in eight early "ecocity" projects to begin to identify success factors in this emerging industry. Ecocities, for the most part, are viewed as a means of mitigating threats to the natural environment while creating urban living capacity by combining low carbon and resource-efficient development with the use of information and communication technologies to better manage complex urban systems.

    Keywords: Environmental Sustainability; City; Urban Development; Infrastructure; Housing; Urban Scope; Business Ventures; Business Model; Green Technology Industry;

    Citation:

    Eccles, Robert G., Annissa Alusi, Amy C. Edmondson, and Tiona Zuzul. "Sustainable Cities: Oxymoron or the Shape of the Future?" Chap. 18 in Infrastructure Sustainability and Design, edited by Spiro Pollalis, Andreas Georgoulias, Stephen Ramos, and Daniel Schodek, 247โ€“265. New York: Routledge, 2012.

Working Papers

  1. Ambiguity Squared: Growing a New Business in a Nascent Industry

    This paper explores how entrepreneurs grow a new business in a nascent industry. Through a longitudinal, qualitative study of a new company in the nascent smart cities industry, we examine how company leaders grew a new venture while facing the ambiguity inherent in the very early phases of a new industry. We identify two distinct essential journeys that enabled the company to grow: an internal journey focused on developing and refining a business model and an external journey focused on legitimating both the firm and its growing industry. Our study illuminates the activities entrepreneurs undertake in pursuing these interconnected journeys. We also show how externally and internally oriented activities can interfere with each other. Not only do they require different skills and approaches, but successfully pursuing one can impair an entrepreneur's ability to manage the other. Pursuing both journeys simultaneously is thus even more challenging than the challenges considered separately would imply. We argue that growth in a new industry may require skillful attention to both journeys while also managing their problematic interactions. Our findings contribute to research on entrepreneurship in nascent industries and suggest directions for future research.

    Keywords: Business Model; Business Startups; Decision Making; Entrepreneurship; Innovation and Invention; Goals and Objectives; Environmental Sustainability; Social and Collaborative Networks; Strategy; Green Technology Industry; Real Estate Industry;

    Citation:

    Zuzul, Tiona, and Amy C. Edmondson. "Ambiguity Squared: Growing a New Business in a Nascent Industry." Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 11โ€“099, March 2011. (Revised April 2011, January 2012, October 2012.)
  2. Sustainable Cities: Oxymoron or the Shape of the Future?

    Two trends are likely to define the 21st century: threats to the sustainability of the natural environment and dramatic increases in urbanization. This paper reviews the goals, business models, and partnerships involved in eight early "ecocity" projects to begin to identify success factors in this emerging industry. Ecocities, for the most part, are viewed as a means of mitigating threats to the natural environment while creating urban living capacity, by combining low carbon and resource-efficient development with the use of information and communication technologies (ICT) to better manage complex urban systems.

    Keywords: Communication Technology; Investment; City; Infrastructure; Business and Government Relations; Environmental Sustainability; Urban Development; Information Technology; Green Technology Industry; Real Estate Industry;

    Citation:

    Alusi, Annissa, Robert G. Eccles, Amy C. Edmondson, and Tiona Zuzul. "Sustainable Cities: Oxymoron or the Shape of the Future?" Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 11โ€“062, December 2010. (Revised January 2011, March 2011, April 2011.)