Research in Entrepreneurship
Kauffman Research Awards
Thirty-one professors from various departments on UC Berkeley's campus have received funding through the Lester Center for their research on entrepreneurship. The Lester Center received this funding from the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation of Kansas City in order to investigate the causes and consequences of entrepreneurship in the United States. Originally led by the late 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 supports professors in the Political Science, Sociology, Economics, and City and Regional Planning Departments as well as the Schools of Public Health and Public Policy and Boalt Law School and the Haas School of Business in their research on entrepreneurship. The project is currently headed by Jerome S. Engel, Executive Director of the Lester Center, and David Teece, Director of the Institute of Management, Innovation, and Organization. The Kauffman Foundation supports the four-year project with $1.2 million in grant funds. The Lester 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.
The following is a list of the projects that are currently funded by the Kauffman grant:
- Philip Tetlock: Exploring the Decisions Processes of VC's
- James Lincoln: Venture Capital Portfolio Diversification
- David Mowery: High-Tech Firm Formation by Women and Minorities
- Christopher Ansell: Entrepreneurship and Social Network Leverage
- Bronwyn Hall: Entrepreneurial Firms & Patents
- Michael Hout: Assessing Ethnic Economies: Effects of Immigrant Entrepreneurship in the US and the UK
- Lauren Edelman: Legal Consciousness and Aspirations toward Entrepreneurship
- AnnaLee Saxenian: Cross-Border Start-Ups
- Susanne Scotchmer: Venture Capital: Choosing the Best Investments
- David Teece: The Functions of the Entrepreneur and the Functions of the Executive
- Chang-Tai Hsieh: Sources and Barriers of Entrepreneurial Growth
- Robert Merges: The Value of Patent Protection for Technology Entrepreneurship
- Jesse Fried: Governance Study of Venture-Backed Start-ups
- Thomas Rundall: Drivers of Electronic Record Adoption Among Physician Organizations
- Jennifer Chatman: Organizational Growth and Cultural Dilution: A Necessarily Inverse Relationship?
- John Zysman: Services and Regions: The Algorithmic Revolution, Corporate Strategy, and Regional Growth
- Pino Audia: Industrial Agglomerations and Entrepreneurship
- Heather Haveman: Founding of American Magazines, 1741-1860
- Waverly Ding: Individual and Organizational Social Capital in the New Biotech Firms
- Neil Fligstein: Entrepreneurs and the Development of Securitization in America
- Sandra Susan Smith: Explaining Racial & Ethnic Differences in Rates of Ethnic Entrepreneurship
- Alice Agogino: Fostering Innovation and Entrepreneurship in New Product Development: A Longitudinal Study
- Ulrike Malmendier: With a Little Help from My (Random) Friends: Success and Failure in Post-Business School Entrepreneurship
- David I. Levine: Experimental Evidence on the Causal Effect of Cal-OSHA Inspections on Entrepreneurial Ventures
- Clair Brown: Serial Entrepreneurs and Venture Performance: Evidence from Venture-Backed Semiconductor Firms
- Charlan Nemeth: Connecting the Dots between Innovation and Entrepreneurship
- Robb Willer: The Role of Entrepreneurship in Freecycle: An On-Line, Altruistic Community
- Brian D. Wright, Stuart J.H. Graham, Ted M. Sichelman:
A Comprehensive Patent Litigation Dataset for Empirical Research
- Rui J.P. de Figueiredo, Jr.: The Perfromance Effects of Genealogy in Hedge Fund Entrepreneurship
Philip Tetlock

Prof. Tetlock is the Mitchell Professor of Leadership at the Haas School. He has also been a Professor of Psychology and of Political Science. He has given the National Academy of Sciences Award for Behavioral Research Relevant to the Prevention of War in 1999. Prof. Tetlock has written nine books and dozens of articles. Prof. Tetlock has a Ph.D. in Psychology from Yale University.Exploring the Decision Processes of Venture Capitalists: Individual Differences in Strategies of Learning from Experience
New venture survival is precarious at best, but those enterprises backed by venture capitalists have substantially higher survival rates than those that do not receive such backing. The proposed research will determine whether individual differences in cognitive styles documented among experts in other lines of work can be replicated and extended into a population of venture capitalists. The research should have direct implications for how venture capitalists structure their deliberation process.
James Lincoln

James Lincoln has been a professor at Haas since 1988. He holds the Warren E. and Carol Spieker Chair in Leadership. He has received numerous honors, grants, and awards for his research and scholarship. Prof. Lincoln has a PhD. in Sociology from the University of Wisconsin, Madison.Venture Capital Portfolio Diversification
This project will be questioning to what degree venture capital firms recognize and exploit opportunities for portfolio diversification via serendipitous leads from existing network contacts and/or strategic management of syndicate investor networks. Are venture capital firms best characterized as rationally-acting portfolio diversifiers or socially-influenced network investors? A more general question to be answered is how much intent is exhibited by organizations in constructing their networks.
David C. Mowery

Prof. Mowery is the Hasler Professor of New Enterprise Development at Haas as well as the Deputy Director of the Institute for Management, Innovation, and Organization. He is also a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. Prof. Mowery has a Ph.D. in Economics from Stanford.High-Technology Firm Formation by Women and Minority Entrepreneurs
The "spawning" of new firms by established firms has historically been an important source of regional agglomeration in high-technology industries. This project will consider whether the "spawning" phenomenon of high tech firms in Silicon Valley has played a role in the formation of high-tech start-ups by women and indigenous minority entrepreneurs. What is the role of women or indigenous minority populations in establishing high-technology firms?
Christopher Ansell
Christopher Ansell is an Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science. He has served as a consulting editor for the American Journal of Sociology and the section representative of the methods & theory/social networks section of the Social Science History Association. He has a Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Chicago.Entrepreneurship and Social Network Leverage
Prof. Ansell will utilize social network analysis to determine how entrepreneurs identify their most beneficial social contacts and use those contacts to leverage the resources needed for their enterprise. The purpose in developing this network leverage framework is to help identify where in social structure entrepreneurship will emerge and the types of network strategies available to entrepreneurs.
Bronwyn Hall

Bronwyn H. Hall is Professor of Economics and a Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research, and the Institute for Fiscal Studies, London. She is also the founder and partner of TSP International, an econometric software firm. She received her Ph.D. in economics from Stanford University in 1988.Entrepreneurial Firms and Patents: Entry Deterrence or Entry Assistance
Using data available for the biotechnology sector, Dr. Hall and her team will examine opposition proceedings for European Patent Office patents and challenges to the validity of US patents and resulting patent strategies to determine whether the resulting environment makes it difficult for small and new firms to compete in an increasingly international arena.
Michael Hout
Prof. Hout is a Professor of Sociology and the Chair of the Joint Program in Demography and Sociology. He has been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Sciences. He has written 3 books, most notably Inequality by Design: Cracking the Bell Curve Myth, and numerous articles. Prof. Hout has a Ph.D in Sociology from Indiana University.Assessing Ethnic Economics: Effects of Immigrant Entrepreneurship in the United States & the United Kingdom
Both conventional wisdom and previous research suggest that immigrant-run businesses provide an important springboard for recent immigrant arrivals. Some questions that will be examined are: What proportion of self-employed immigrants actually employ their workers? Does a high rate of entrepreneurship among co-ethnics give an immigrant better chances of having and keeping employment? To what extent are ethnic economy effects attributable to (or counteracted by) differences in firm size and unionization between ethnic and mainstream economies?
Lauren B. Edelman
Prof. Edelman is currently a Professor of Law and Sociology and the Director of the Center for the Study of Law and Society at Boalt. She received her J.D. in 1986 from Boalt Law and a Ph.D in Sociology at Stanford in the same year.Legal Consciousness and Aspirations Towards Entrepreneurship
Given the complex web of legal regulation that surrounds the establishment and operation of businesses today, legal consciousness- or the meanings that people attach to law and legal rights- may encourage or constrain entrepreneurial activity. This project will study the legal consciousness of high school students and staff and see how those ideas affect educational practices, performance, and behavior.
AnnaLee Saxenian
Prof. Saxenian is a professor in the Department of City and Regional Planning and the Dean of the School of Information Management and Systems. She has a Ph.D in Political Science from Massachusetts Institute of Technology and an MCP from UC Berkeley.Cross-Border Start-Ups
Cross-border start-ups-- firms that originate with activities in more than one economy-- are now a well established phenomenon in US technology industries. It is not uncommon for a start-up to set up headquarters and research in Silicon Valley while simultaneously establishing a development team in China or India. This research will focus on these start-ups to addess the causes and scale of this phenomenon as well as its implications for our understanding of the process of entrepreneurship.
Suzanne Scotchmer
Prof. Scotchmer has been a Professor of Economics since 1995, as well as a Professor of Public Policy since 1989. She has been a visitng professor at universities in Paris, Moscow, Florence, Helsinki, and other cities around the world. She has a Ph.D. in Economics from UC Berkeley.Venture Capital: Choosing the Best Investments
Among the defects of intellectual property as an incentive system is that an innovator must fund the research up front. Since researchers are often liquidity constrained, this is a real impediment. One major way to overcome liquidity constraints and minimize the need for self-finance is venture capital and contract research. This project attempts to understand why VCs fund research in rounds, and how those rounds of funding should be structured.
David J. Teece

Prof. Teece is the Mitsubishi Bank Professor of International Business and Finance and the Director of the Institute of Management, Innovation, and Organization at Haas. He has a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Pennsylvania.The Functions of the Entrepreneur and the Functions of the Executive
Prof. Teece has teamed with Emeritus Prof. James G. March of Stanford University for this project. This project will compare and contrast the functions of the executive and the functions of the entrepreneur. By comparing and contrasting these two functions, they hope to advance the understanding of how leadership, entrepreneurship, and strategic management taken together create value and the dynamic processes by which firms obtain profit and market share.
Chang-Tai Hsieh
Prof. Hsieh is an Associate Professor of Economics. H e was awarded the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Research Fellowship in 2004. He has a Ph.D. in Economics from UC Berkeley (1998).Sources and Barriers of Entrepreneurial Growth
There are two critical questions that will be examined in this project. First, along which dimensions do successful firms grow and less successful firms contract? Second, what are the barriers facing entrepreneurs in the US?
Robert P. Merges

Prof. Merges is the Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati Professor of Law and Technology and the Director of the Berkeley Center for Law & Technology. He is also currently a Visiting Professor at the UC Davis School of Law. In addition to teaching and research projects, Merges also serves as a special consultant to the U.S. Department of Justice, Antitrust Division, and is a member of the Department's Task Force on Intellectual Property.The Value of Patent Protection for Technology Entrepreneurship
The research will investigate how patent protection facilitates technology entrepreneurship. This study will shed light on how patent protection facilitates entrepreneurship by examining how the existence and strength of patent protection affects the behavior of partners in an alliance and how it affects the strategy entrepreneurs take in commercializing technological innovations. The study will be an empirical analysis of technology development alliances in the biotech/pharmaceutical industry.
Jesse M. Fried

After graduating from Harvard Law School in 1992, Jesse Fried worked as an associate at the Boston law firm Sullivan & Worcester practicing tax law and litigation. In 1995 he began a two-year John M. Olin research fellowship at Harvard Law School, and in 1997 he joined the Boalt faculty. He is also the Co-Director of the Berkeley Center for Law, Business, and Economy.Governance Study of Venture-Backed Startups
This will be a study of California-based entrepreneurial (startup) companies that were financed with venture capital and later acquired by other firms. This project will focus on how conflicts between different classes of shareholders are resolved in venture-backed start-ups. The parties' varying cash flow rights can lead to disagreement about how to govern the start-up, especially when the start-up is neither a complete failure nor an amazing success. The project will try to understand how such conflicts are resolved.
Thomas Rundall

Prof. Rundall is the Henry J. Kaiser Professor of Organized Health Systems in the Doctorate Program at the School of Public Health and a tenured professor at UC Berkeley. Since1987 Dr. Rundall has served three terms as Chair of the Department of Health Policy and Management at UC Berkeley. Prof. Rundall has a Ph.D. in Sociology from Stanford University.Drivers of Electronic Medical Record Adoption Among Physician Organizations
Electronic medical records (EMRs) have great promise for improving patient safety and the quality of care provided by physician organizations. Innovation and entrepreneurship are key characteristics of the market for health information technology. This research will estimate the percentage of relatively large physician organizations that have adopted EMRs and examine the effects of eight organizational and market-related characteristics on the adoption of EMRs in physician organizations.
Jennifer Chatman

Prof. Chatman is the Paul J. Cortese Distinguished Professor of Management at the Haas School of Business and the faculty director of the Haas School of Business Ph.D. Program. Before joining Haas, she was a faculty member of the Kellogg Graduate School of Management from 1987 to 1993, and she received her Ph.D. from UC Berkeley.Organizational Growth and Cultural Dilution: A Necessarily Inverse Relationship?
Managers of young, fast growth organizations, while committed to such growth, often mourn the loss or dilution of their original organizational culture, the one that was in place at their founding and to which they often attribute their success. Prof. Chatman’s research will systematically examine the extent to which organizational growth is associated with culture dilution and the mechanisms underlying this relationship.
John Zysman

Prof. Zysman is a professor of political science at UC Berkeley and co-director of the Berkeley Roundtable on the International Economy. He has written extensively on European and Japanese policy and corporate strategy. He received his B.A at Harvard and his Ph.D. at MIT.Services and Regions: The Algorithmic Revolution, Corporate Strategy, and Regional Growth
As functions become digitally automated, there will be potential for emerging growth sectors and ways to organize business structures efficiently. This research will consider implications of the service sector transformation facilitated by information technology tools on competitive dynamics and entrepreneurial options on the one hand and the logic of regional growth and growth strategies on the other hand.
Pino Audia

Prof. Audia is an Assistant Professor of Organizational Behavior in the Haas School of Business. He is also a member of the Editorial Board of Journal of Management and Journal Behavior and Education as well as a member of the Academy of Management. He received his MBA from Bocconi University and his Ph.D. from the University of Maryland.Industrial Agglomerations and Entrepreneurship
Industrial agglomerations are concentrations in space of firms making similar products. Recent empirical evidence has begun to cast doubt on the idea that agglomerations benefit constituent firms. Prof. Audia’s research will examine whether or not industrial agglomerations have negative effects on entrepreneurship. His research will also examine the potential negative effect of industrial agglomerations on other industries.














