Entrepreneurial Research

The University of Michigan Ross School of Business actively contributes to entrepreneurial research through the Center for Venture Capital and Private Equity Finance, the Society of Scholars, and collaboration with the Kauffman Foundation. Additional resources of research include: books, authored by leading Business School faculty, which explore business strategies applicable to new venture situations; and new case studies, developed by MBA students and Business School Faculty, which provide insight on entrepreneurial business issues.

Center for Venture Capital and Private Equity Finance
The Center operates under the umbrella of the Institute and provides a concentration of core knowledge in entrepreneurial finance. David J. Brohpy, Associate Professor of Finance, and colleagues conduct empirical research on private and public companies and study different aspects of entrepreneurial financing. The Center is host to a series of nationally recognized venture capital, private equity finance seminars and investor events, including its annual Michigan Growth Capital Symposium-the premier Midwest event where financiers meet the 'best of the Midwest' in new businesses and emerging technologies. Students, alumni, entrepreneurs, managers, and investors, as well as public policy makers whose decisions affect the environment for entrepreneurship and equity investment, all benefit from the Center.

Society of Scholars
The Ross School of Business has created the Society of Scholars (SOS) to nurture the development of a new generation of creative researchers in academic fields related to business. The program offers up to three-year fellowships for recent graduates of doctoral programs in business schools, the social sciences, and the humanities who have an interest in directing their attention to business issues or applications. The Fellows of the Society spend their time in residence at the University of Michigan to bring their disciplines to bear on critical issues in the rapidly changing business environment in the United States and around the world. In collaboration with Michigan faculty and students, the Fellows pursue research, writing, and learning opportunities that allow them to make creative and intellectually significant contributions to scholarship in and about business.

Kauffman Foundation Research — The Entrepreneurs Next Door
Characteristics of Individuals Starting Companies in America: An Executive Summary of the Panel Study of Entrepreneurial Dynamics, 2002

Some 10 million American adults are involved in the process of starting nearly six million potential new businesses at any given time, with minorities 50 percent more likely to start a business than whites, according to a national study of entrepreneurship funded in part by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation. The Panel Study of Entrepreneurial Dynamics (PSED) is the first research effort to offer systematic and reliable data on the process of business formation. The national, multi-year study tracks a group of emerging entrepreneurs as they progress through the entrepreneurial process, revealing that new business formation is as widespread as getting married or the birth of a baby and involves all racial and ethnic groups.

The study seeks to answer four questions:

• Who is involved in starting businesses in the United States?
• How do they go about the process of starting companies?
• Which of these business start-up efforts are likely to result in new firms?
• Why are some of these business start-up efforts successful in creating high-growth firms?

More than 120 scholars participated in the development of the PSED. Since this project was initially conceived in 1996, 33 universities (including the University of Michigan), private foundations and for-profit institutions, as well as the National Science Foundation, and the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation have provided more than $2 million in financial support for the effort.

Other Research at the University of Michigan Ross School of Business

Books
The Economics of Franchising
Roger D. Blair, University of Florida and Francine Lafontaine, University of Michigan
Cambridge Press 2005
This book describes in much detail both how and why franchising works. It also analyses the economic tensions that contribute to conflict in the franchisor-franchisee relationship. The treatment includes a great deal of empirical evidence on franchising, its importance in various segments of the economy, the terms of franchise contracts, and what we know about how all these have evolved over time, especially in the US market. A good many myths are dispelled in the process. The economic analysis of the franchisor-franchisee relationship begins with the observation that for franchisors, franchising is a contractual alternative to vertical integration. Subsequently, the tensions that arise between a franchisor and its franchisees, who in fact are owners of independent businesses, are examined in turn. In particular the authors discuss issues related to product quality control, tying arrangements, pricing, location and territories, advertising, and termination and renewals. The authors are two of the US's leading scholars on the business, economics and law of franchising. The book is designed for professionals in economics, business, finance and law as well as MBA students and talented final-year undergraduates; uses very little math.  

Managing People in Entrepreneurial Organizations: Learning From the Merger of Entrepreneurship and Human Resource Management
Jerome A. Katz and Theresa M. Welbourne  
The last years of the 20th Century may well have reflected a brief "golden age" for Human Resources Management. In an economy where ideas and capital were plentiful, the critical facet for success increasingly became human resources. Having the people on hand, with the right skills to bring new products into existence with a first mover advantage became the definitive factor. As a result, policies and initiatives at the intersection of the Entrepreneurship and Human Resources Management proliferated in an unprecedented way, and is the focus of this volume.

As is traditional for the series, the Volume includes two major reviews: of HRM in entrepreneurship (Robert L Heneman and Judith W Tanssky) and of stock related rewards (Mary E Graham, Brian Murray, and Linda Amuso). Volume 5 also includes leading-edge papers on topics emerging from the retrospective of the do-com boom and bust, such as optimal methods of recruitment for smaller firms (Howard E Aldrich, Ian O Williamson, and Daniel M Cable), defining and assessing the new concept of person-entrepreneurship fit (Gideon D Markman and Robert A Baron), and the impact of union relationships on small high-performance firms (Rosemary Batt and Theresa Wellborne).

This volume is a must for researchers in HRM as well as thoughtful HRM managers in large and small firms who are looking fort he latest thoughts and revisions of the lessons of the dot-com era. For entrepreneurship researchers, the volume represents the definitive source for reference and conceptual information on the topic of HRM in entrepreneurial firms.

Internet Business Models and Strategies (second Edition)
Allan Afuah and Christopher L. Tucci
Before the first edition of this innovative text was released, no other text had emerged to thoughtfully address how to value a company's internet efforts.

Now in its Second Edition, this text continues to address not only the Internet's phenomenal impact on business and its reach across all sectors, but it also outlines strategies for effectively competing in this environment. In the words of the authors, "The framework (presented here) allows users of the text to make more informed theory-based arguments as to how successful an Internet-based form is likely to be, how much it might be worth, and the relative merits of formulating and implementing an Internet strategy for an established firm."

Afuah and Tucci's Internet Business Models and Strategies: Text and Cases draws on today's latest research to develop and integrate a framework that helps you understand the factors that surround a firm's performance and the central role that business models play when taking your business to the 'Net.