It is an honor and pleasure to serve as Chair of the Entrepreneurship Division! We continue to be the fourth largest Division in the Academy of Management with over 3500+ members. More than a quarter of our members are students, which aligns well with our mission to “grow entrepreneurship scholars.” And our division continues to grow, with an ever-increasing interest in topics that cover macro, meso, and micro topics. Likewise, we welcome all members who have diverse research, practitioner, consulting, and teaching interests. As a result, research and practice-related work that embraces concepts and theory, quantitative or qualitative empirical work are especially valued by our Division. We hope that our efforts to offer outstanding research and practice interests and appeals to you!
This last year has marked our first fully in-person conference program since the pandemic. I want to thank each of you for making the 2023 conference program a success! As we look forward to the future, we are hoping to use some of the lessons we gained from the pandemic experience to improve our member engagement and outreach going forward. We had an amazing program that was organized by Vishal Gupta as PDW Chair and Rachida Justo as Program Chair. Our plenary, paper, panel, consortium, and PDW sessions were well attended and the feedback was very positive. This is all due to the dedicated efforts of our Executive Committee, consortium chairs, and volunteers – and especially all of you! It was your efforts that helped review, prepare, and present such great work. As a volunteer organization, our program is only as good as our members. Thank you again!
I especially want to thank the approximately 150 members of the leadership team and Division committees, and all of our reviewers for the program. With more than 800 reviewers participating, we are grateful that they gave their valuable time to help put the program together.
The year ahead
Though we are still waiting on information for any AoM-level changes for the 2024 Annual Meeting, I anticipate that our meeting in Chicago will follow our most recent format. We will continue to expand our efforts towards more engagement throughout the year. This will include virtual workshops and seminars, teaching materials, new media channels and a bolder presence on social media. We are looking at how online events may offer us an opportunity to better serve some of our global outreach constituents who are unable to attend the annual meeting. And we have a few other initiatives to share. First, we will be developing a strategic plan to aid the implementation of a more rigorous mentorship program within the Division in the future. This effort, championed by Matt Wood, will give us the outline we need to do more interactive support for doctoral students or junior faculty throughout the year. Additionally, with our new Sponsorship Committee, we hope to be able to create and support outreach efforts as well – potentially aiding the development of regional efforts supported by the Division that can address their own unique entrepreneurial contexts. The Sponsorship Committee is chaired by the amazing José Ernesto Amorós - Please consider supporting our división through sponsorship this upcoming year for these and other upcoming initiatives!
Get involved!
Like other academic organizations, the ENT Division is run entirely by volunteers, and we need your help. Getting involved is a great way not only to serve your fellow members, and the academic entrepreneurship community more generally, but also a way to build relationships and expand your professional network. We have openings on several committees and are always looking for volunteers. This past year, we did a soft launch of our ENT Division Ambassadors program. This program provides the opportunity for Division members to support our on-the-ground logistics during the annual conference. I would like to personally thank all of our fantastic Ambassadors from our last conference! Their help and support was invaluable as we conducted the annual meeting. Serving as an ENT Division Ambassador is a great way to meet other members and provides a means for you to become more engaged in the Division going forward. As part of the upcoming annual conference, we currently are looking for a volunteer in Chicago to help scout potential event locations, and volunteers for the Communication Committee, Global Scholar Development Committee, Membership Committee, and Research Committee. Please contact me (jccarr@ncsu.edu) or Rachida Justo, Division Chair-elect (rachida.justo@ie.edu) for more information.
Submit and review for the 2024 Conference!
Please submit your best work for the 2024 Annual Meeting. Instructions and deadlines for PDW, symposia, awards, and paper sessions are included in the NewsBlast issue and will be distributed on the usual social media channels. Please review the calls from Vishal Gupta (our 2024 Program Chair) for paper and symposia submissions, and Christina Theodoraki (our 2024 PDW Chair) for PDW proposals. Ph.D. students who graduated or plan to graduate during the 2023 calendar year should consider submitting to the Heizer or National Federation of Independent Businesses (NFIB) Dissertation Awards. Rachida Justo (Chair-Elect) will announce details associated with those submissions on our website and via our social media channels.
Of course, if you haven’t yet, please sign up to be a reviewer! Our submission numbers have grown rapidly in recent years and we aim to provide multiple high-quality reviews for each proposal, which requires a large and diverse body of reviewers.
In case you missed it
If you missed our business meeting in August, let me briefly recap some highlights. First, we thanked outgoing officers, committee chairs, and Representatives-at-Large (Sophie Bacq, Lou Marino, Annelore Huyghe, Jeff Pollack, Yuliya Snihur, Sheryl Winston-Smith, and Denis Gregoire) and welcomed new and returning ones: Christina Theodoraki (PDW Chair), Maija Renko (Awards Committee), Josh Hsueh (Communications Committee), Wadid Lamine (Membership Committee), Veroniek Collewaert (Research Committee) and Sophia Johan (Global Scholars Committee). We have two chairs for our two new standing committees – Ernesto Amoros (Sponsorship Committee) and Matt Wood (Mentorship Committee). Finally, we welcomed our new Representatives-at-Large. These important positions serve for three years as your representatives to the Executive Leadership Team. Our new RALS are Michael Ciuchta, Jeff McMullen, Lindi Roelofse, Marcus Wolfe, and Lien Denoo. I am delighted to have such a committed team to help us move forward! Outgoing Chair, April Franco, reported on the Division’s ongoing mentorship initiative, expansion of the Division’s online engagement to support members throughout the year, and other ongoing efforts. Moving forward, we will look to strengthen our processes and offerings to support our membership.
We are very grateful for our wonderful Entrepreneurship Division Sponsors. It is their support that allows our Division to create value for our membership in so many ways!
Our Gold Sponsors are:
- Whitman School of Management/Syracuse University
- The McQuinn Center for Entrepreneurial Leadership/University of Missouri
- EGADE Business School/Tecnologico de Monterrey
- Hankamer School of Business/ Baylor University
- Alabama Entrepreneurship Institute/University of Alabama
Our Silver Sponsors are:
- IE University
- Dept of Entrepreneurship/Farmer School of Business/Miami University
- Department of Management/University of Toronto Scarborough
Our Bronze Sponsors are:
- Poole College of Management/NC State University
- Centre for Family Entrepreneurship and Ownership/Jönköping University
- Universidad del Desarrollo
We also acknowledge the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, for its generous support for our Doctoral Consortium.
We wish to thank all of our Award Sponsors! They provide wonderful support towards our division members and the accomplishments they have achieved, as well as Best Paper Awards that highlight excellent work. Our Award Sponsors for this year are: The Heizer Family and Heizer Capital, DePaul University, Yeshiva University, Kennesaw State University, the National Federation of Independent Business, and the Lloyd Greif Center for Entrepreneurial Studies at the Marshall School of Business, USC.
We recognized the following award winners (and heard prerecorded video greetings from many):
· Mentor Award: Maria Minniti
· Dedication to Entrepreneurship Award: Jeff McMullen
· Best Reviewer Awards:
Elie Abi Saad*
Ona Akemu
Jared Shaw Allen
Amitabh Anand
Sophia Braun*
Devin Burnell*
Pascal Dey
Suho Han
Andrew Jay Isaak
Shilong Jia*
Norris F. Krueger
Michele Lafleur Leaver*
Jose Lejarraga
Benjamin David McLarty
Matteo Opizzi*
Jeanne Roche*
Anne-Sophie Sabbatucci*
Esther Salvi*
Mahdi Shahriari*
Curtis Sproul
Xiangming Tao
Liza Pamm Tyl*
Viktoria Luise Unger*
Benjamin Warnick
David W. Williams
Marcus Wolfe
David Wunder*
(*indicates student)
· Best Empirical Paper (sponsored by Kennesaw State University’s Coles College of Business): “Curbing the Addition Bias: Scientific Approaches and Propensity to Subtract in Entrepreneurial Ideas” by Diego Jannace and Arnaldo Camuffo, Bocconi University
· Best Conceptual Paper: “A Temporal Typology of Entrepreneurial Opportunities: Implications for the Urgency and Timing of Entrepreneurial Action” by Jeffery S. McMullen, Indiana University, Jason R. Fitzsimmons, Manipal International University, Khyati Shetty, University of the Fraser Valley, and Stratos Ramoglou, University of Southampton
· Best Family Business Paper (sponsored by Kennesaw State University’s Cox Family Enterprise Center): “Too Much of a Good Thing? Professionalization as a Multiple Practice Adoption in a Family Firm” by Matthias Waldkirch, EBS University for Business and Law, Leif Melin, Jönköping International Business School, and Mattias Nordqvist, Stockholm School of Economics
· Best Social Entrepreneurship Paper: “Social Entrepreneurs Emerging from Adversity:
A Perspective of Identity Construction via Sensemaking” by Fangjie Wang, University of Warwick, Mona Mensmann, University of Cologne, and Nicos Nicolaou, University of Warwick
· Heizer Best Doctoral Dissertation Award (sponsored by Heizer Capital & the family of Edgar “Ned” Heizer, Jr.): Jungkyu Suh, New York University
· NFIB Best Doctoral Dissertation (sponsored by the NFIB): Katrina Brownell, University of Southern California
· Foundational Paper Award: “The Nature and Experience of Entrepreneurial Passion” (Academy of Management Review 2009) by Melissa Cardon, University of Tennessee, Joakim Wincent, Hanken School of Economics and University of St Gallen, Jagdip Singh, Case Western Reserve University, and
Mateja Drnovsek, University of Ljubljana
· Helena Yli-Renko Research Impact Award (sponsored by the USC Greif Center for Entrepreneurial Studies): “The Relational Organization of Entrepreneurial Ecosystems” (Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, 2017) Ben Spigel, Babson College
· Emerging Scholar Award: Aaron Anglin
· Innovation in Entrepreneurship Pedagogy Award (sponsored by Yeshiva University): “History of Entrepreneurship” developed by Derek Lidow, Princeton University
· Entrepreneurship Practice Award: “Urban Poverty and Business Initiative” Michael Morris, University of Notre Dame
We next recognized the new and continuing committee chairs for 2021-2022:
· Awards: Maija Renko
· Communications: Josh Hsueh
· Continuity: April Franco
· Event Logistics and Planning: Susan Young
· Global Scholar Development: Sophia Johan
· Historian: Patrick Murphy
· Membership: Wadid Lamine
· Mentorship: Matt Wood
· Nominating: April Franco
· Practitioner Scholar: Ken Grant
· Research: Veroniek Collewaert
· Sponsorship: Ernesto Amoros
· Teaching: Diana Hechavarria
And the chairs of the 2023 consortia:
· Doctoral Consortium: Will Drover
· Early Career Consortium: Magdalena Cholakova
· Mid-Career Consortium: Miriam Bird
· Late-Career Consortium: Matt Allen
Finally, we thanked April Franco for her outstanding service as 2022-2023 Division Chair. Our Division has greatly benefited for her outstanding leadership during our most recent year!
We look forward to expanding our efforts this upcoming year! I am grateful for the honor of serving as the 2023-2024 Entrepreneurship Division Chair.