Summer 2004

Kauffman Foundation Grant to Support Entrepreneurship Research

The Lester Center is pleased to announce that it has received a $600,000 two-year grant from the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation of Kansas City to investigate the causes and consequences of entrepreneurship in the United States. Led by Prof. John Freeman, the Center’s Director of Research and Helzel Professor of Entrepreneurship, “The Causes and Consequences of Entrepreneurship” in the United States project will support the research of faculty and doctoral candidates across the UC Berkeley campus. The grant will support the first two years of a four-year project where the funding is expected to total $1.2 million.

Researchers will be examining the effects of entrepreneurial activity on a broad array of areas, including job creation and destruction, the impact on the broader pool of “stakeholders” beyond the founders themselves, and the differing processes through which companies are started and developed.

“ We are especially thrilled by this opportunity as it gives us the means to challenge faculty across campus to focus on the importance and relevance of entrepreneurship to their own areas of research interest,” said Jerry Engel, Executive Director of the Lester Center. “This campus-wide research collaboration will bring a unique, academically powerful spotlight on the broad social and financial impact of entrepreneurship. We are fortunate to have someone of John Freeman’s caliber to lead this effort.”

Those who qualify for project grants will become faculty affiliates of the Lester Center, which plans to publish working papers based on their research. These papers will be of particular benefit to those interested in steering governmental action towards economic growth through entrepreneurial activity. The Center thanks the Kauffman Foundation for this opportunity to engage in basic research leading to the improvement of the entrepreneurial climate in the United States.

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