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The Russian Entrepreneur
Robert D. Hisrich, 50, the Mixon chair holder in engrepreneurial studies at Case Western Reserve's Weatherhead School of Management, in Cleveland. E-mail: rdh7@po.cwru.edu. Fax: 216-368-4785
Fields of Study: Business; English; biological sciences
Areas of expertise: International business; woman-owned businesses
Selected works: "Entrepreneurship in the Soviet Union and Post-Socialist Russia" ( Small Business Economics, 1995); "The Role of Women Entrepreneurs in Hungary's Transition Economy" ( International Studies of Management and Organization, 1994)
Discovery: If you build a business college in Russia, students will come.
"If economic development is going to happen here, it has to be through universities," says Hisrich, explaining why he opened the first accredited Western-style, four-year business college in Moscow in September 1991 to 35 eager students. Last September Hisrich struck again with the International College of Entrepreneurship and Management, an accredited four-year degree school also offering open-management seminars and a business-assistance center in remote Cheboxary. "The farther you are from the power source," explains Hisrich, "the easier it is to get things done."
The Granddad of Job Creation
David L. Birch, 57, founder and president of Cognetics Inc., an economic-research company in Cambridge, Mass. Fax: 617-661-0918
Fields of study: Physics; managerial economics
Areas of expertise: Job creation; urban and regional economics
Selected work: Job Creation in America: How Our Smallest Companies Put the Most People to Work (Free Press, 1987)
Discovery: Small companies are the engine of our economy. In 1978, when Birch was trying to identify the hot zones of the U.S. economy from his lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he accidentally discovered that the vast majority of jobs (some 82%) were created by a sliver (perhaps 5% to 10%) of the small-business universe. That find catapulted him and his "gazelles," the new breed of fast-growing companies, into the research Hall of Fame. It also sent shock waves through economic-development agencies, triggering Congress to devise more entrepreneur-friendly policies. Today, Birch is a corporate demographer.
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The Johnny Appleseed of Entrepreneurship Education
Jeffry A. Timmons, 53, director of the Price-Babson College Fellows Program and professor of entrepreneurship at Harvard Business School, in Boston, and Babson College, in Wellesley, Mass.
Field of study: Economics
Areas of expertise: Entrepreneurship-curriculum development; venture capital
Selected work: New Venture Creation, 4th ed. (Irwin, 1994), based on the first undergraduate major in entrepreneurship set up by Timmons in 1973. Originally rejected by publishers who felt that with only 60 universities teaching new-company-formation courses Timmons's concepts would be passÉ before the ink dried, this text is the world's best-selling entrepreneurship handbook to date.
Discovery: Entrepreneurship, a career all its own, can be taught. There's one shining lesson Timmons has gleaned from his years of rubbing elbows with company builders: they're superior learners and teachers. To usher more entrepreneurs into the classroom, Timmons, in 1985, started the Price-Babson College Fellows Program for successful owners wanting to share their passion for their craft with students. Over the past decade entrepreneurs affiliated with 150 universities in 30 countries have completed the intensive course and have ventured back into the classroom. The program, which has bent accreditation rules to accommodate practitioners, has changed the terrain of entrepreneurship education.
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The Guardian Angel
William E. Wetzel Jr., 66, director emeritus of the Center for Venture Research and former Forbes Professor of Management at the University of New Hampshire's Whittemore School of Business and Economics, in Durham, N.H. E-mail: wew@christa.unh.edu. Fax: 603-862-4468
Fields of study: Finance; management; entrepreneurship; economics
Areas of expertise: Capital formation; the angel market
Selected work: "The Informal Venture Capital Market in the 1990s" ( The State of the Art of Entrepreneurship, 1992)
Discovery: Wealthy individuals make some of the best venture capitalists. Wetzel's been hounding the Securities and Exchange Commission to legitimize the role angels play in keeping struggling companies alive by, among other means, further reducing the capital-gains tax. He's proven statistically that the players in the angel market -- 75% of whom are self-made millionaires -- stand a much better chance of understanding what makes entrepreneurs tick. "Angels, who have the know-how to get rich and stay that way, can more readily spot fire, guts, and the ability to manage chaos than others," he reasons.
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E-mail addresses and fax numbers have been provided for those researchers who may be contacted directly about works cited or research in progress.
