Kelley ranked best in research for entrepreneurship

With an MBA program ranked 15th and a classroom experience ranked first, another ranking was added to the already tremendous stack for the Kelley School of Business.

Out of 150 schools throughout the world, Kelley’s Department of Management and Entrepreneurship was the best in entrepreneurship research, according to rankings developed by researchers at Texas Christian University.

“It validates the fact that we have probably the strongest research faculty in the world in entrepreneurship,” said Donald Kuratko, the Jack M. Gill Chair of entrepreneurship.
The rankings were based on journal articles published by faculty around the world.

“We knew that our productivity in the journals were very, very strong,” Kuratko said.
These journals are productive for the business school because of the interaction of faculty, the environment and the support of Kelley graduates, Kelley School of Business Dean Dan Smith said.

“We’ve hired some of the top entrepreneurship professors in the world,” Smith said. “We just have a long history of graduating successful entrepreneurs who, in turn, support the school and our students. We have a very special innovative culture that permeates the entire school. We’re never content with how we’re doing.”

These journals set Kelley, with double the total number of times published, far in front of the closest competitor. Yet Smith said competitors are not something with which Kelley bothers itself.

“We focus on what we can control, and that’s our research productivity and culture,” Smith said. “We’re aware of what other schools are doing, but we don’t focus on where we stand relative to them.”

Knowing that parents and prospective students pay attention to rankings, the newest ranking might spark more interest from IU newcomers.

“We expect this ranking to help reinforce our global reputation as leaders in this area,” Smith said. “It will continue to help us attract really good students who are interested in studying with faculty who are way out on the front edge of research and knowledge creation in their areas.”

Kelley alumni are even finding that their time in entrepreneurship classes helps them.
Recent graduate Rob Eisinger said his classes in entrepreneurship had no exact answers.

“In the entry level classes, the concepts were much more abstract,” Eisinger said. “We learned to identify where a problem is and how we fix it. In the next class, we learned more case-based and how-does-it-change business strategy.”

These concepts, most likely, have been researched by a member of the Kelley entrepreneurship faculty. The faculty, Kuratko said, spends its time equally between teaching its students and researching.

“We’re then able to bring that back to the classroom and share that leading-edge research with our students,” Kuratko said. “If you look at our different faculty members, they have different areas of expertise of research that really look at different aspects of the entrepreneurship field.”

In the future, Smith said he and his faculty plan to move into emerging technologies of IU’s labs and medical centers, but for now they’re going to enjoy their ranking.

“We as faculty are very, very proud of it,” Kuratko said. “We feel that in some ways we’re hoping our students will be able to take pride in that knowing that they’re being taught by some of the best in the world.”