The Study of Entrepreneurship

The Kauffman Foundation's research initiatives are contributing to a more robust and nuanced understanding of entrepreneurship. Years of work in this area have taught us a great deal about entrepreneurship as an important driver of growth and innovation in our society. But our work in this field also has taught us much about what we have left to learn and explore. At the Kauffman Foundation, we continue to seek out what we know, commit to finding the answers to what we don't, and then apply that knowledge to how we operate as a foundation. In addition to research that answers specific questions, we are making long-term investments to bring bright, young scholars into the study of entrepreneurship.

Initiatives

  • kauffman_medal_150The Kauffman Foundation funds a series of programs and initiatives designed to support the overall goal of promoting entrepreneurship as a legitimate field of academic study.

  • The Business Dynamics Statistics is a data series that tracks the annual changes in employment for growing and shrinking businesses.

  • ERPN LogoThe Entrepreneurship Research and Policy Network (ERPN) is an online network sponsored by the Kauffman Foundation and the Social Science Research Network (SSRN).

  • Immigration and the American Economy thumbnailHigh-skilled immigrants have provided one of America's greatest competitive advantages. Their education and skills, their hunger to share in the American dream, their knowledge of world markets, their entrepreneurial drive, and hundreds of thousands of jobs created as a result all have fueled growth in the American economy. Yet their contributions have not been well-documented.

    To fill the void, the Kauffman Foundation has funded a series of studies based on an initial report by Duke University researcher Vivek Wadhwa called America's New Immigrant Entrepreneurs.

  • The Kauffman Dissertation Fellowship Program is an annual competitive program that awards up to 15 Dissertation Fellowship grants of $20,000 each to Ph.D., D.B.A. or other doctoral students for the support of dissertations in the area of entrepreneurship.

  • KFS cover 2To fill a void in data collection on young businesses in the United States and catalyze new understandings of how various factors influence entrepreneurial outcomes, the Kauffman Foundation created the Kauffman Firm Survey (KFS)—the largest longitudinal survey of new businesses in the world.

  • The Kauffman Foundation Research Series on Firm Formation and Economic Growth consists of reports that explore the relationship between firm formation and economic growth in the United States from a variety of angles. The first reports in the series

  • Kauffman Index of Entrepreneurial Activity thumbnailThe Kauffman Index of Entrepreneurial Activity is a leading indicator of new business creation in the United States.

  • The Kauffman Junior Faculty Fellowship in Entrepreneurship Research is a new annual program recognizing junior faculty who are beginning to establish a record of scholarship and exhibit the potential to make significant contributions to the body of research in the field of Entrepreneurship.

  • The Kauffman Legal Fellowship Program provided grants of $180,000, payable over three years to fund a Kauffman Legal Research Fellow at six leading law schools.

  • An invitation-only event, the Kauffman Summer Legal Institute (KSLI) is part of the Kauffman Foundation's Law, Innovation, and Growth initiative, a five-year program designed to foster legal scholarship in entrepreneurship, innovation, and economic growth.

  • The Kauffman Symposiums on Entrepreneurship and Innovation Data are a multi-year series of workshops focused on the important and growing body of data collected on entrepreneurship and innovation.

  • The Law, Innovation and Growth initiative is a $10 million, five-year program to support research by leading legal and economic scholars on how best to shape the U.S. legal system so that it promotes innovation and growth.

  • The Technology Policy Institute is conducting a research project that will delineate the budget and economic benefits provided by highly skilled immigrants working in the United States, made possible by a grant from the Kauffman Foundation.

  • As a tribute to Ewing Marion Kauffman and his entrepreneurial work, the Kauffman Foundation established the Kauffman Prize Medal in 2005 to inspire promising young scholars to contribute new insight into the field of entrepreneurship.

  • The Kauffman Foundation Series on Innovation and Entrepreneurship is a collaborative effort between the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, Princeton University Press, and the Berkley Center for Entrepreneurial Studies at New York University.

Highlights

Featured Resources

  • In the book, The Immigrant Exodus: Why America Is Losing the Global Race to Capture Entrepreneurial Talent, Vivek Wadhwa, a leading scholar and public voice on entrepreneurship and public policy, draws on fifty years of research and his new Kauffman Foundation report, "America's New Immigrant Entrepreneurs – Then and Now," to show that growth in immigrant entrepreneurship in the United States has peaked, is stagnating, and is on the verge of decline.

  • The Invention of Enterprise gathers together, for the first time, leading economic historians to explore the entrepreneur’s role in society from antiquity to the present.

  • Boulevard of Broken Dreams is the first extensive look at the ways governments have supported entrepreneurs and venture capitalists across decades and continents.