Five of the top 10 skills identified for business success are entrepreneurial skills, making entrepreneurship education relevant not just for would-be startup owners, but for general business students as well. In this video, Vickie Gibbs, executive director of the UNC Entrepreneurship Center, reveals what UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School is doing to teach these critical skills and address current and future trends in the evolving field of entrepreneurship.
Speed is often critical for successful commercialization of a new technology, and patents help entrepreneurs secure funding, enter the market, and avoid expropriation of their ideas. In this article, we employ a recent change to U.S. patent law—the introduction of an elective program accelerating patent examination—to investigate the role of patent examination speed in strategic entrepreneurship.
As Global Entrepreneurship Week begins, Professor Ted Zoller, faculty director of the Kenan Institute-affiliated UNC Entrepreneurship Center, discusses what UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School is doing to drive innovation in entrepreneurship education and prepare the next generation of entrepreneurs for success.
Federal, state and local governments acted quickly to assist businesses during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, because the category of “small business” is defined so broadly, stimulus money did not always reach the intended recipients. The government’s definition of small business includes firms with fewer than 500 employees — which, taken together, represent a broad collection of different types of businesses with very different needs.
The COVID-19 pandemic and the nationwide civil unrest spawned by the recent spate of senseless killings of unarmed African Americans have illuminated what executive development professionals have been telling private and public sector leaders and managers for quite some time. We are living in an era of increasing volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity—a VUCA World. “Certain-uncertainty” is the new normal in today’s society and economy.
In response to the economic chaos caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, the federal government launched its largest fiscal stimulus in modern history—the CARES Act. But with $2 trillion invested in small businesses, unemployment benefits and direct cash payments to households, the CARES Act has still fallen short of its goals to spur consumer spending and restore employment. This Kenan Insight analyzes what went wrong, and offers suggestions for the anticipated next round of federal economic aid.
Research on resource dependence typically takes a static view in which actions and outcomes are determined structurally, but not as responses to the actions of the counterparty in an exchange relation. By contrast, this study addresses a question of power dynamics by examining whether mergers of organizations trigger responses from their common exchange partners. We predict that common exchange partners respond by withdrawing from the relationship and that their responses vary with the availability of alternatives, the value of the relationship, and the relationship history. Using data on advertising agencies, we show that mergers of agencies do trigger reactions from their common clients, and the reactions differ with agency and client characteristics. Extending existing theory and evidence, our results suggest that firms respond to the dynamics of exchange relationships and not only to their structure.
In this paper, we seek to better understand how executives can intelligently combine modular and integrated problem solving processes to form the best possible strategy in entrepreneurial environments. To do so, we compare the efficacy of strategies formed via different processes under various market conditions, exploring the sources of significant performance differences. We address this question using NK simulation methods.
This year Rethinc. Labs joined the Duke Quantum Center and the IBM Quantum Hub at NC State to bring their Financial Services focus to the Triangle Quantum Computing Seminar Series. We will welcome João Doriguello, from the National University of Singapore to share his least squares Monte Carolo algorithm.
This paper examines the internal anatomy of regional social capital and develops a role for dealmakers – individuals who provide active regional stewardship. An empirical analysis of twelve US regions finds great variation in the presence of dealmakers. The strong local presence of dealmakers is correlated with high start-up rates. The empirical results suggest that the local presence of dealmakers is more important for successful entrepreneurship than aggregate measures of regional entrepreneurial and investors network. Moreover, it is found that the presence of dealmakers is a better predictor of the status of the regional entrepreneurial economy.
On Jan. 30, 2020, the Kenan Institute of Private Enterprise and UNC Entrepreneurship Center released the inaugural Frontiers of Entrepreneurship Trends Report. The report features timely insights into topics that affect founders, funders and the broader entrepreneurial ecosystem. Combining expert analysis, this report translates rigorous academic research to ensure findings are actionable for the broader entrepreneurial community, aiming to inform practitioners’ decisions and encourage further exploration of research topics by scholars. Download the full report at https://frontiers.unc.edu/.
Despite the central role played by human capital in entrepreneurship, little is known about how employees in entrepreneurial firms are compensated and incentivized. We address this gap in the literature by studying 18,935 non-CEO compensation contracts across 1,809 privately held venture-backed companies.
On January 18-19, 2018, the Frank H. Kenan Institute of Private Enterprise convened its second-ever Frontiers of Entrepreneurship Conference, bringing together academic researchers, policymakers and industry leaders to share their experiences, insights and ideas for improving the entrepreneurial climate in the United States and beyond.
In the Entrepreneurship Center's second chat, they feature the superstar-sister-founder-team: Niki and Ritika Shamdasani of Sani, a South Asian-inspired fashion brand. The sisters launched Sani in 2017 to create the outfits and shopping experience they always wished they could find for cultural clothing. That mission has led to a first-of-its-kind partnership with Rent the Runway, features in Business Insider, NBC and Good Morning America, and a loyal following of 70,000 on TikTok.
In this article, we develop a novel theoretical framework detailing what collective action problems and solutions arise in market formation and under what conditions. Our framework centers on the development of market infrastructure with three key factors that influence the nature and extent of collective action problems: perceived returns to contributions, excludability, and contribution substitutability. We apply our framework to diverse market formation contexts and derive a set of attendant propositions. Finally, we show how collective action problems and solutions evolve during market formation efforts and discuss how our framework contributes to strategic management, entrepreneurship, and organization literatures.
Gov. Roy Cooper has appointed NC IDEA President and CEO Thom Ruhe to his newly-formed entrepreneurial council. Ruhe, who also serves on the Kenan Institute Board of Advisors, is one of 16 business leaders charged with designing policies that encourage entrepreneurship, foster economic development and support sustainable, high-quality jobs.
The ways in which media news is slanted can shape beliefs about the economy, thereby affecting the decision to start a new business. Using exogenous variation in the introduction of Fox News Channel across US counties, I find that increased exposure to a pro-Republican slant during a Republican administration is positively associated with new firm creation.
The third annual Kenan Institute Frontiers of Entrepreneurship Conference convened thought leaders from academia, industry and government to debate the most challenging current issues in the field of entrepreneurship and set the agenda for future research and policy. It was held on Jan. 31 and Feb. 1, 2019 at The Breakers Palm Beach.
Advancing the next generation of research in entrepreneurship 100 thought-leaders from academics, industry and government debate the most challenging current issues in the field of entrepreneurship and set the agenda for future research and policy.
The Carolina Challenge is the premier entrepreneurship event at UNC-Chapel Hill. Every year, dozens of student teams pitch their ideas to over 200 judges at our Pitch Party in hopes of winning prize money to fund their ventures. This year, Amy Nelson, CEO of Venture for America, will serve as a keynote speaker.