Over the past twenty years, no discipline or academic area of study has grown more rapidly within business schools, and arguably on college campuses in general, than entrepreneurship. Universities and colleges have launched undergraduate minors and majors, certificate programs, MBA concentrations, Masters of Science degrees and Ph.D. programs in entrepreneurship. Many schools offer well in excess of twenty different courses in entrepreneurship. Meanwhile, scholarly research on entrepreneurship has exploded, with significant increases both in the quantity and rigor of the published research, and the appearance of over forty dedicated academic journals in entrepreneurship. This academic growth has paralleled a larger global entrepreneurship revolution that has transformed economies, empowered millions, and produced unprecedented social and economic progress. The 21st century can truly be labeled the ‘age of entrepreneurship’.
Our purpose in this Ph.D. seminar is to provide an intellectual foundation for conducting research and teaching in the field of entrepreneurship and innovation. Importantly, we will view entrepreneurship through multiple theoretical lenses and from a range of disciplinary perspectives. The course is positioned as a hybrid, where you need to a) get a solid sense for core subject matter constituting the contemporary discipline of entrepreneurship, while b) exploring topics related to the development and advancement of entrepreneurship as an academic discipline, area of scholarly research, and subject matter for curriculum development, teaching, and pedagogical innovation.
Our focus will include the major scholarly issues and questions within the entrepreneurship discipline. Examples include exploring the nature of entrepreneurial behavior, how we can better understand such behavior at the individual, organizational and societal levels, and what conditions and factors enable such behavior across different contexts. Entrepreneurship will be approached as the nexus of attractive opportunities and enterprising individuals, and hence aspects of opportunity recognition and opportunity exploitation are examined. Central to our investigation will be the process perspective and how it contributes a richer understanding of entrepreneurial phenomena. Consideration will be given to a range of topics, including risk-taking, entrepreneurial orientation, cognition and the entrepreneur, effectuation and resourcing strategies, entrepreneurial competencies, business model innovation, adaptation and emergence, entrepreneurial teams, venture growth, and failure. The course will highlight research approaches that can enhance managerial insights and facilitate entrepreneurial practice.