The Past Speaks

The Academy of Management Entrepreneurship Division and Yeshiva University have announced the winner of the Entrepreneurship Pedagogy Award for the year 2023. The winner is Derek Lidow of Princeton University’s Keller Center for their course entitled: The Histories of Entrepreneurship. Congratulation Derek! I’m happy that historical approaches are getting increased validation in both entrepreneurship teaching and research. Academic historians in business schools will be able to build on this momentum.

From the press release:

“The History of Entrepreneurship class developed at Princeton University over the past five years fills important gaps in entrepreneurship education (EE). The pedagogical framework of the class rests upon 70+ deeply researched historical examples of entrepreneurs and the impact of their behaviors on society and culture over the past nine-thousand years. The framework enables students to realize and simply understand the underlying reasons why and how entrepreneurs have such oversized impacts, which in turn contextualizes the importance of entrepreneurial ethics. Students love the class for being interesting, engaging, unexpected, accessible, and relevant. A detailed syllabus and abundant documentation make the class easily transferable and configurable for varied undergraduate and graduate school formats.

This class and its supporting materials and pedagogies were developed to deliver the following learning objectives:

Provide context for students to realize the magnitude of the impact of entrepreneurs on surrounding cultures and societies (i.e., its importance),
Understand the nature (i.e., the why and how) of those impacts,
Contemplate the ethical ramifications of entrepreneurial behaviors and the societal expectations they could or should engender.

The class enables students to realize and simply understand the underlying reasons why and how entrepreneurs have such oversized impacts, which in turn contextualizes the importance of entrepreneurial ethics.

The class is structured around more than 70 deeply researched historical examples of entrepreneurs and the impact of their behaviors on society and culture over the past nine-thousand years.” – Derek Lidow

To make The Histories of Entrepreneurship course easy for others to teach, there is an accompanying book, The Entrepreneurs, a detailed syllabus, and abundant documentation, including over 100 slides that are available to anyone interested in the class or subject matter.