Mendoza professor ranks No. 1 for entrepreneurship research

University of Notre Dame Professor Dean Shepherd was the No. 1 contributing author of entrepreneurship research, according to a recent study.

Shepherd, the Ray and Milann Siegfried Professor of Entrepreneurship at Notre Dame’s Mendoza College of Business, was identified as the leading scholar in worldwide academic entrepreneurship research in a recent study published in Journal of Small Business Management. The study, “Contributing Forces in Entrepreneurship Research: A Global Citation Analysis,” used a sample of more than 2,000 entrepreneurship articles published in leading journals between 2002 and 2013.

Shepherd was identified as both the most prolific author with 54 total articles and the most impactful, as measured by a weighted normalized citation (WNC) count. 

The study’s authors — Chang Xu of Renmin University, Yining Chen of Western Kentucky University, Ann Fung of University of Washington and Kam C. Chan of Western Kentucky University — noted that entrepreneurship is a relatively new field of research. As such, it presents “as a unique opportunity for a wider range of institutions and scholars to collaborate and develop expertise and leadership research.”

Shepherd’s prolific research career in entrepreneurship includes investigating both the decision making involved in leveraging cognitive and other resources to act on opportunities and the processes of learning from experimentation — including failure — in ways that ultimately lead to high levels of individual and organizational performance. He has published papers primarily in the top entrepreneurship, general management, strategic management, operations management and psychology journals and has written or edited more than 20 books.

In a recent paper, “The Surprising Duality of Jugaad: Low Firm Growth and High Inclusive Growth,” forthcoming in the Journal of Management Studies, Shepherd explored entrepreneurship in resource-poor environments. ‘Jugaad’ is a Hindi word that means finding a low-cost, intelligent solution to a problem by thinking constructively and differently about innovation and strategy. 

Shepherd received his doctorate and MBA from Bond University (Australia).