05 Oct 2022

New Faculty Profiles: Ebehi Iyoha

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HBS faculty comprises more than 300 scholars and practitioners who bring leading-edge research, extensive experience, and deep insights into the classroom, to organizations, and to leaders across the globe. We asked new faculty at HBS about their background, their new roles, and their interests.

Ebehi Iyoha, assistant professor, Entrepreneurial Management

What is your educational background?
I completed my undergraduate degree in economics at Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles, and earned my PhD in economics from Vanderbilt University in Nashville.

What’s your area of research and what led you to it?
My research examines the economic significance of interfirm networks and how they impact firm performance. The importance of people’s social networks has been widely explored both within and beyond academic research. In graduate school, I got interested in applying similar tools to analyzing the value of interactions between firms, particularly in the context of productivity and trade.

Productivity is often the secret sauce to growth: Companies, and countries, with similar resources can have vastly different outcomes depending on how effectively they utilize their inputs. Domestic and international trade can affect not just the range of goods and services available to producers, but also the scope of knowledge and technology to which they have access.

My work aims to uncover how individual and aggregate outcomes are shaped by the myriad relationships—such as through transactions, geographic proximity, or ownership—that exist between firms. And if these relationships have a meaningful impact on firm growth and innovation, how are they formed, sustained, and reorganized, and how should that influence our models of firm behavior and market structure?

What will you be teaching?
I will the teaching the Required Curriculum (RC) course The Entrepreneurial Manager (TEM).

What would you be doing if you weren’t an academic?
I would likely work in public policy.

Where are you from?
I’m from Irrua and Ubiaja in Edo State, Nigeria, and I grew up in Kaduna.

What is something you like to do outside of your academic work?
I enjoy reading and writing fiction, going to concerts, and trying new foods.

What’s your favorite book, movie, or piece of art?
Naming a favorite book is incredibly difficult, but I’m an enduring fan of Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series. I have also recently enjoyed reading Kintu by Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi and The Divine Cities trilogy by Robert Jackson Bennett.

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