Papers

Originally posted in our October 2024 Top of Mind Newsletter. In “What If Everyone Was an Entrepreneur?” Town Square highlights the transformative potential of widespread entrepreneurial thinking. It posits that fostering an entrepreneurial mindset can unlock personal and economic growth by encouraging innovation and resilience. The piece underscores the importance of nurturing entrepreneurial skills at an individual level, but it also emphasizes the broader societal impact. By integrating entrepreneurial principles into community and educational frameworks, local…

Originally posted in our August 2024 Top of Mind Newsletter. This piece from the University of Michigan references and expands on a study that found entrepreneurship programs in impoverished regions are more successful when they showcase domestic or culturally relevant innovations rather than highlighting the world’s most successful entrepreneurs.  This aligns perfectly with ELI’s belief that unlocking entrepreneurial potential is best achieved by providing relatable social models to those we aim to help. If the examples…

Originally posted in our September 2023 Top of Mind Newsletter. We’ve all seen think-pieces about the value of entrepreneurial ecosystems, from venture capital funding to small business development centers, incubators, and fab labs. These pieces tend to favor the tech, lifestyle, or service industries. They are often generalized in a way that can lead to gaps in policy development, support strategies, and even who is included in the ecosystem definition. One group of innovators that we…

Originally posted in our December 2022 Top of Mind Newsletter. Our final resource to share in 2022 focuses on the influence of human-centered design on science and policy and how this can sometimes be at odds with a genuinely scientific approach. So why is the ELI team thinking about scientific inquiry, you might ask? Simply put, the entrepreneurial discovery process, in many ways, overlaps with the scientific method. And with this overlap comes a similar tendency…

Originally posted in our November 2022 Top of Mind Newsletter. To wrap up this month’s Top of Mind, let’s turn our attention to groups and organizations. While individuals can clearly benefit from things like the flow state or learning to use effectual reasoning, how can an organization better embrace this energy too? The short answer is innovation. Now a buzzword used by all manner of marketers, salespeople, and large companies to imply forward-thinking, many companies and…