The Cyberpreneur
Jerome A. Katz, 43, associate director of the Jefferson Smurfit Center for Entrepreneurial Studies at St. Louis University, in St. Louis, Mo. E-mail: katzja@sluvca.slu.edu. Fax: 314-977-3897
Fields of study: Organizational psychology; political science
Areas of expertise: Secondary analysis of entrepreneurship data; organizational emergence
Selected work: "The Growth of Endowments, Chairs, and Programs in Entrepreneurship on the College Campus" ( Entrepreneurship: Theory and Practice, 1991)
Contribution: Bringing entrepreneurial research on-line
In 1995 Katz and his associates rolled out the first Internet gopher for entrepreneurial topics, a one-stop shop of more than 400 indispensable academic and popular-press titles and sources of small-business information, for researchers, students, policy makers, journalists, entrepreneurs, and those who market to them. The Internet gopher address: sluava.slu.edu at the prompt; then choose SLU General and Department Information at the first menu and EGOPHER at the second.
The Woman Pioneer
Candida Greer Brush, 47, assistant professor of management policy at Boston University's School of Management. Fax: 617-353-2564
Fields of study: Business; Latin-American studies Area of expertise: Managerial styles of women business owners
Selected work: The Woman Entrepreneur: Starting, Financing, and Managing a Successful New Business, coauthored with Robert Hisrich (Lexington Books, 1986)
Discovery: Women entrepreneurs are a force to be reckoned with.
By 1985, Candy Brush and Robert Hisrich, who conducted the first nationwide study of female entrepreneurs, had compiled the first statistically significant sample of 400-plus woman-owned businesses. For the times, their results were eyepopping: women networked much better than men did, they elicited much more loyalty from employees, and they had a higher probability of surviving the critical three- to five-year hurdle than anyone had previously imagined.
Brush, who now studies women manufacturers who go international, writes case studies featuring female CEOs. Her work sparked researchers like Marquette's Nancy Carter to count woman-owned business starts and stops. But Brush claims there's more work to be done: while 32% of companies are run by women and they're appearing twice as often as those run by males, only 10% to 15% of research papers analyze their contributions.
The Disenfranchised Franchise guru
Timothy Bates, 49, professor of economics at Wayne State University's College of Urban, Labor, and Metropolitan Affairs, in Detroit. E-mail: tbates@cms.cc.wayne.edu. Fax: 313-577-8800
Field of study: Economics
Areas of expertise: African American entrepreneurs; franchising
Selected works: Banking on Black Enterprise (Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, 1993); "A Comparison of Franchise and Independent Small Business Survival Rates" ( Small Business Economics, 1994)
Discovery: Franchises close more frequently than independent businesses do.
Bates, who studied black entrepreneurship for two decades, has recently shifted to franchising. Corporate downsizing made him do it. "The disenfranchised are buying into franchises at an incredibly high rate," says Bates, adding that many are failing miserably. His statistics show that franchises are closing more often than independent businesses are. That's why Bates is now exploring how often African Americans, Asians, and Hispanics buy into franchises and which franchised industries have the highest survival rates.
The Self-Employment Specialist
David S. Evans, 41, senior vice-president at National Economic Research Associates Inc. (NERA), in Cambridge, Mass.; adjunct professor of law, Fordham University Law School, in New York City E-mail: david_evans@nera.com Fax: 617-621-2695
Fields of study: Labor economics; statistics
Areas of expertise: Self-employment; small-business regulation
Selected works: "The Determinants of Variations in Self-Employment Rates Across Countries and Over Time" (NERA, 1994); "Small Business Formation by Unemployed and Employed Workers" (NERA, 1990)
Contribution: Spearheaded the study of self-employment
Evans's least-anticipated statistical find was made in 1987, when he noticed that asset-rich individuals were more likely to become entrepreneurs. That breakthrough opened doors for scads of scholars to investigate the role that personal liquidity plays in the decision to go solo. Now, analyzing soloists worldwide, Evans sees tremendous diversity in self-employment levels among Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development and lesser-developed countries.
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The IPO Watcher
William D. Bygrave, 58, the Frederic C. Hamilton Professor of Free Enterprise and director of the Center for Entrepreneurial Studies at Babson College, in Wellesley, Mass. E-mail: bygrave@babson.edu Fax: 617-239-5272
Fields of study: Business; philosophy of science; nuclear-structure physics Area of expertise: Venture capital, primarily high-tech start-ups
Selected work: Venture Capital at the Crossroads, with Jeffry Timmons (Harvard Business School Press, 1992)
Discovery: The health of the initial-public-offering (IPO) market determines the flow of money into venture-capital funds. And the once-mythological return rate of 40% for venture funds is now more like 20%.
Bygrave found that when IPO markets are hot, the returns on venture capital are hot; the converse is equally true, in which case cash flowing into the venture-capital market slows to a trickle. His work has been replicated in Europe, where similar trends are unmistakable. For that reason, in 1992 the European Commission asked Bygrave to head an eight-nation study to look into the lack of a second-tier stock market in Europe. Someday soon the NASDAQ's sister exchange will be known as EASDAQ. Bygrave's next project: finding out whether underwriters help or hamper the capital-formation process.
