History of Entrepreneurship

Message from the Historian Committee Chair (July 2021)

If you would like to serve the ENT Division and are interested in the history of entrepreneurship, then I encourage you to volunteer for the Historian Committee. We will work on at least two important projects over the next year, and we would enjoy your contributions to these efforts.

First, the Committee often sponsors history-focused PDWs for the Annual Meeting, and we will begin working on a PDW for the 2022 Seattle meeting during this year’s virtual conference. PDW topics have regularly focused on the historical development of specific entrepreneurship topics and research methods for investigating historical events, as well as highlighted key anniversaries and continued influence of foundational texts and articles. If you’re interested in working on this type of PDW for AOM 2022, then please consider joining the Historian Committee.

Second, five years have passed since Hans Landström and Jon Lindhe wrote the History of the Entrepreneurship Division (see https://bit.ly/ENTDivisionHistory). Both the field and the Division have continued to develop, and the Committee will work on version 2.0 this year as part of the Division’s 35^th anniversary. The History serves as a great source of organizational memory for major events, as well as a repository listing of interesting information, such as past Division Chairs and winners of the Division’s many prestigious awards, including the Heizer and NFIB Dissertation awards.

Additionally, we will continue to work closely with the Division’s Communications Committee to preserve the Division’s history in a digital format. If you’re interested in podcasting, social media posting, digitizing/upgrading older pictures, or other historical digitalization activities, then there is room for you on the Historian Committee.

If you’d like to be involved in any of these different activities, please contact me at FranzLohrke@auburn.edu.

Thanks so much,
Franz Lohrke
Historian Committee Chair

(Past messages)

Historian Committee Chair

Franz Lohrke

History of the Division

The History of the Entrepreneurship Division by Hans Landström and Jon Lindhe

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Pioneer Profiles

William B. Gartner

William B. Gartner is an American entrepreneurship scholar and Professor of Entrepreneurship and the Art of Innovation, at the Department of Management, Politics and Philosophy at Copenhagen Business School, Denmark. He is also Professor of Entrepreneurship at the California Lutheran University in the US.

Gartner is considered a pioneer within his field, known for his belief in a behavioral approach and narrative methodology in entrepreneurship research. He was one of the first scholars within the field who advocated a shift from focusing on the individual traits of the entrepreneur, which was common during the 70s and 80s, to studying entrepreneurship as a behavioral process (Landström 2010).

Patricia P. McDougall-Covin

Patricia P. McDougall-Covin is an American scholar in the fields of Strategic Management, Entrepreneurship and International Business. She is Professor of Entrepreneurship and the Director of the Institute for International Business at Kelley School of Business, Indiana University. McDougall is considered a pioneering scholar of entrepreneurship and strategic management and she has made significant contributions to the knowledge of multinational enterprise (Kelly school of business, 2015).

Arnold C. Cooper

Arnold C. Cooper Professor Arnold Cooper (March 9, 1933 – December 6, 2012) was a management scholar and a pioneer in the field of entrepreneurship and strategic management. During his academic career, that spanned over 40 years, Arnold Cooper made several significant contributions to the overall knowledge in the field of entrepreneurship. He also played a significant part in organizing the research field and he helped the elevation of entrepreneurship research to a higher academic level (Landström, 2010).

Karl H. Vesper

Karl H. Vesper Karl Hampton Vesper (b. 1932) is an American scholar and Professor emeritus of Management, Mechanical Engineering and Marine Studies at the University of Washington(WA). Vesper is known as a pioneer in the field of entrepreneurship research and education. He has launched several entrepreneurship courses and programs, and he has been involved in organizing some of the first conferences on entrepreneurship in the US (Spears school of business 2015).