Entrepreneurs do what they do within a social context. They work with professionals in venture capital, banking, accounting, law, executive search and consulting across myriad specialties including issues of technology, marketing and communications. These contacts produce a rich social network that forms the basis of the high-tech community of Northern California. These networks create the fast, efficient context within which entrepreneurship thrives. The resulting environment also offers significant opportunities for ongoing academic research.

The Lester Center supports research in various fields of entrepreneurship across Berkeley's campus. The most recent entrepreneurial research being funded by the Center is a result of a generous grant from the Kauffman Foundation.

"The Causes and Consequences of Entrepreneurship in the United States" Research Project

Twenty-eight 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.

Researchers are examining the effects of entrepreneurial activity on a broad array of areas, including job creation and destruction, the impact on the broader pool of "stakeholders" beyond the founders themselves, and the differing processes through which companies are started and developed.

The Lester Center will publish working papers based on the research of these affiliated faculty. These papers will be of particular benefit to those interested in steering governmental action towards economic growth through entrepreneurial activity. The 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.

Recent Publications on Entrepreneurship by UC Berkeley Alumni and Affiliates

Bill Hilliard, Visiting Scholar at the Lester Center, has published “Venture Capital Schould Act Like Hedge Funds” in Venture Capital Journal 45:7 pp 52 and following. Based on “Raising the Returns to Venture Finance” in Journal of Business Venturing (May 2006) his work is the result of research undertaken while at the Lester Center.

The Lester Center also tracks the entrepreneurial success of Haas MBAs/PhDs and recent university alumni to create case studies in entrepreneurship and to identify new areas of research. The Lester Centers fosters the creation of new ideas and businesses by Haas students and alumni through its support of the Berkeley Entrepreneurship Laboratory.

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