Lifetime Achievement in Entrepreneurship and Innovation Award
2008 Recipients:
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John Freeman |
Jeffry Timmons |
As 2008 draws to a close, all of us at the Lester Center are taking time to reflect on the tremendous entrepreneurial spirit shown by our students, educators, business plan applicants and sponsors over the past year. “Entrepreneurship@Berkeley” is alive and well! However, this year has also marked the loss of two great educators in the field of entrepreneurship and innovation, Professors John Freeman and Jeffry Timmons. These two leaders had very different approaches to the field, but both have had lasting impacts. The Lester Center proudly honors John Freeman and Jeffry Timmons with the 2008 Lifetime Achievement Award in Entrepreneurship and Innovation.
Inaugurated in 1998, the Lifetime Achievement Award is awarded to exemplars of entrepreneurship whose success can teach future generations by the example they set. Further, it allows the Lester Center to bring outstanding practitioners to the Berkeley campus, creating opportunities for the exchange of ideas with faculty and students. We believe that by enhancing the interaction among academics, entrepreneurs, scientists and faculty, pragmatists and idealists, we help foster entrepreneurial success for individuals and the community as a whole.
Professor John Freeman
Professor John Freeman served as the Leo Helzel Professor of Entrepreneurship at the Haas School of Business and the Faculty Director here at the Lester Center. In 1997, Freeman founded the Berkeley Entrepreneurship Laboratory, a free resource center for young companies founded by Berkeley students. Providing the ultimate in experiential learning, the ‘Lab’ was a passion for him and the entire Lester Center team. Under his guidance and support many student projects emerged as viable and successful ventures and contributed to building a vibrant entrepreneurial community that continues as a tribute to his efforts.
Before his death, Freeman headed a two-year project, "The Causes and Consequences of Entrepreneurship in the United States" with a team of 14 Berkeley professors from a variety of disciplines, researching entrepreneurship in the United States. “At UC Berkeley, entrepreneurship is a team sport. John was a leader of our time, and his contributions will live long after him,” said Jerome Engel, Executive Director of the Lester Center.
Engel credited Freeman with helping to develop the still young, cross-disciplinary field of entrepreneurship and for emphasizing its applications for start-up businesses. Freeman and Engel’s long collaboration is evident in “Models of Innovation: Startups and Mature Corporations,” California Management Review, Vol. 50, No. 1, fall 2007. Freeman led workshops focused on the importance of startups and how their emergence in special communities like Silicon Valley and their unique interface with major corporations gave an aspect of business management a profoundly unique set of skill requirements and therefore a distinct set of educational learning objectives appropriate to the MBA curriculum. Freeman’s contributions to the field of entrepreneurship and innovation are beyond measure and live on in the many students he helped catapult to success.
Professor Jeffry Timmons
Professor Jeffry Timmons acted as the Franklin W. Olin Distinguished Professor in Entrepreneurship at Babson College. Timmons was one of the pioneers in the development of entrepreneurship education and research in America. He was internationally recognized as a leading authority for his research, innovative curriculum development, and teaching in entrepreneurship, new ventures, entrepreneurial finance and venture capital.
Inc. Magazine called him “The Johnny Appleseed of Entrepreneurship Education” and his doctoral dissertation, “Entrepreneurial and Leadership Development in an Inner City Ghetto and a Rural Depressed Area (Harvard, 1971)” was the first use of the word “entrepreneurial” in a dissertation title. He created the first business plan competition at the college level in 1984 at Babson College.
He believed, in his own words, that “the entrepreneurial process is not just about new companies, capital, and jobs. It’s also about fostering an ingenious human spirit and improving humankind.” Timmons also believed that “we are in the midst of a silent revolution, a triumph of the creative and entrepreneurial spirit of humankind throughout the world. I believe its impact on the 21st century will equal or exceed that of the Industrial Revolution on the 19th and 20th.”
In the words of Jerry Engel, “Jeff was the first and most significant advocates for the role of experienced entrepreneurs and managers in the classroom, not just as guest lecturers, but indeed as principal educators. Jeff influenced generations of educators and established a pattern of classroom education and experiential learning typified as some of the best entrepreneurial education in the United States.”
Engel also offered personal observations: "I first met Jeff in October 1990, when we co-instructed an executive education course for Ernst & Young. I was the up-start [no I don’t mean start-up] young partner, and Jeff was the pro educator. Little did I understand that within a year after that first acquaintance I would be leaving my 22 years in public accounting to follow Jeff into academia. Jeff had that effect on people. His leadership was gentle, but strong and persistent. Is this the reason for his immense impact? Is this why hundreds of the leading business educators consider him their personal mentor? Jeff was a bridge-builder – creating a better world and leaving the path a little easier for all of us that would follow. Thank you Jeff. You are deeply missed."
The award was inaugurated in 1998.
Honorees include:
2007 Recipient: L. John Doerr
2006 Recipient: F. Warren Hellman
2005 Recipient: C. Richard Kramlich
2004 Recipient: Sanford R. Robertson
2003 Recipient: Dr. Ralph Landau
2002 Recipient: Dr. Edward Penhoet
2001 Recipient: Mr. William Hambrecht
2000 Recipient: Dr. Gordon Moore
1999 Recipient: Mr. Arthur Rock
1998 Recipient: Dr. Alejandro Zaffaroni
Through the Lifetime Achievement Award, we seek to identify exemplars of entrepreneurship whose success can teach future generations by the example they set. Further, it allows us to bring outstanding practitioners to the Berkeley campus, creating opportunities for exchanges of ideas with faculty and students. We believe that by enhancing the interaction among academics, entrepreneurs, scientists and faculty, pragmatists and idealists, we help foster entrepreneurial success for individuals and the community as a whole.
The Lester Center has identified three distinct components shared by successful entrepreneurs. The Lifetime Achievement Award recognizes the presence of these elements in the people who are thus honored. First, the award recognizes entrepreneurial excellence. This is reflected in the individual’s success in multiple business arenas and the significant impact of that success on a given industry.
Second, the award acknowledges the individual’s leadership in both business and community. As a leader, the award recipient models behavior that young entrepreneurs can emulate.
The third component of the award recognizes the efforts by which the entrepreneur returns value to his/her community. The award recipient’s contributions may be to the preservation of the environment, improvement of educational opportunity, or some other substantial contribution to the well-being of the community.
