Developing a research-based model program in entrepreneurship: a contrarian approach to traditional perspectives

In developing the Entrepreneurship Program at Indiana University-Bloomington, I took a contrarian approach to what the traditional expectations were of an entrepreneurship center. The traditional approach would entail an entrepreneurship center focused on outreach to the community to develop assistance programs for aspiring entrepreneurs and thus providing experiences for students. Instead, my focus was on the academic side of entrepreneurship with our research faculty and their scholarly output as that was paramount to my vision of how the entrepreneurship center and in effect the entrepreneurship program would be successful. In this article, I discuss the evolution of entrepreneurship programs and centers, the importance of entrepreneurship research, and my contrarian approach to building the program including the journey from initiation, the research focus, the faculty recruitment, the department name change, and the specific curriculum that was developed.