Division chair's message

November 7, 2018

Dear Members of the Entrepreneurship Division!

It is an honor and a privilege to serve as the Chair of the amazing Entrepreneurship Division during the coming year. With approximately 3,600 members, our Division is one of the largest and continues to be one of the fastest growing within the Academy. Consistent with the roots of our discipline, we remain vibrant, nimble, and innovative, tackling a number of new initiatives that I will share with you below.

At the Business Meeting during the annual conference in Chicago, we celebrated a number of accomplishments and recognized a few of our outstanding colleagues for their tireless service to the Division and its members.

• In recognition of his extraordinary contributions in the area of mentoring, Tom Lumpkin was awarded the “Mentor Award”.
• With the generous sponsorship of the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation and consistent with our mission of “We grow entrepreneurship scholars,” the Division launched the “Emerging Scholar Award.” This award honors junior faculty who have established a record of scholarship that has the potential to make innovative and impactful contributions to the body of entrepreneurship research. The inaugural winners of this award were Greg Fisher, Matthew Grimes, and Laura Huang. During the Division’s plenary session Greg, Matthew and Laura shared their passionate insights in pursuit of their groundbreaking research.
• Christina Guenther took on her role as Past-Chair.
• Sarah Jack took on her role as the incoming Professional Development Workshop (PDW) Chair.
• Maribel Guerrero succeeded Marcos Hashimoto as Division Treasurer.
• Jill Kickul, Norris Krueger, Charolette Ren, and Trent Williams assumed their positions as newly elected Representatives at Large, replacing Peter Klein, Rachida Justo, Florian Taube, and Justin Webb.
• Jill Kickul and Jim Combs succeeded Erik Monsen as Co-Chairs of the Research Committee.
• Rashida Justo succeeded Linda Sama as the Chair of the Teaching Committee.
• Mirjam Knockaert succeeded Siri Terjesen as Chair of the Membership Committee. I’d like to offer a special “shout out” to Siri, who created and championed the ENT Division Pins Program for the last 3 years, a fun tradition surely to be continued by Mirjam.
• Ersa Memili succeeded Norris Krueger as the Chair of the Global Scholars Committee.
• John Mueller will continue to serve as Chair of the Practitioner-Scholar Committee.

As noted above, a few new initiatives are part of my agenda for the coming year. First, Dawn DeTienne, Gry Agnete Alsos, Jim Combs and Jill Kickul have spearheaded the launch of a new mentoring system for our Division. In this first year test-phase, students from the 2018 Doctorial Consortium will be matched with experienced scholars in our Division, who have volunteered to connect with their mentees once a month to discuss a variety of career related issues. The Division hopes to roll out this program more broadly next year and make the mentoring-mentee opportunity more widely available. Second, given the size and the number of submissions the Division receives for the annual meeting, the task of the Program Chair has simply become too large for a single individual to manage. Thus, the Executive Committee of the Division will consider revising our policies and procedures to manage the program tasks more efficiently. Other large Divisions within the Academy provide templates for us to consider. Third, given the increasing demand for our Doctoral, Early Career, and Mid-Career Consortia, and the difficulty of finding time on the PDW program for other innovative initiatives, such as the Women’s and Late Career Consortia, the Executive Committee will consider steps to deliver consortia content more efficiently and to make this content available to those who were unable to attend these valuable sessions.

I am looking forward to seeing as many of you as possible at the Annual Meeting in Boston in August 2019. There are a number of ways for you to get involved:

SUBMIT!

Announcements regarding deadlines for the PDW, symposia, awards, and paper sessions for the Annual meeting are soon to follow. Be on the lookout for calls from Peter Klein and Sarah Jack regarding these activities on the program. Ph.D. student who graduated or plan to graduate within the 2018 calendar year are especially encouraged to submit their dissertation for either the Heizer or National Federation of Independent Businesses Dissertation Awards. Dawn DeTienne will be announcing those details soon.

REVIEW!

In order to manage the growing number of manuscripts the Division receives for consideration at the Annual Conference, we need over 1,500 reviewers. Please look for calls for reviewers. When you submit your PDWs, symposia, and papers for the annual meeting, please volunteer to review. Volunteering to review is a critical step towards discovery. Please be a good professional citizen and register to review and advance the scholarship in our Division through thoughtful, developmental reviews.

VOLUNTEER!

There are a few opportunities to become more involved with the Division. The Awards, Communication, Events Planning and Logistics, Practitioner Scholar, and Research Committees are looking for volunteers. If you are interested, please send an email expressing your interest to dneubaum@fau.edu.

Finally, I would like to extend a warm, personal thanks to those colleagues who have been instrumental in the development and growth of our Division. The Division is where is it today because of your generous, tireless effort. Thanks to Carlo Salvato and Alain Fayolle for your mentorship and sage advice. Special thanks to Christina Guenther not only for her calm and capable leadership of the Division this past year, but also for the many timely responses to urgent emails, with me asking “what am I supposed to do now?” Christina made everyone’s job easier by doing hers so very well. Thanks in advance to Diane Sullivan, Division Secretary, who I am sure will be extremely busy keeping me organized this coming year. I look forward to hosting our amazing Executive Committee team at the Mid-Winter meeting in January where we will continue to plan a path of excellence for this Division.

Warm Regards,

Donald O. Neubaum

ENT Division Chair

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