The Foundational Contribution to Entrepreneurship Research of William J. Baumol

• Published date: 01 June 2016
• Author: Maria Minniti
• Date: 01 June 2016
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/sej.1219

Research Pioneers

THE FOUNDATIONAL CONTRIBUTION TO

ENTREPRENEURSHIP RESEARCH OF WILLIAM J.

BAUMOL

MARIA MINNITI*

Whitman School of Management, Syracuse University, Syracuse, NewYork, U.S.A.

William J. Baumol has made an impressive number of important contributions to our

understandingof entrepreneurship.This article presents an interviewin which Baumol discusses

the roleand importance of innovationin the economy, aswell as his views on methodologicaland

pedagogicalissues. In addition to summarizing brieflyBaumol’s classicargument on productive,

unproductive, and destructiveentrepreneurship,the article highlightssome areas of his work that

are less known among entrepreneurship scholars. In particular, the article discusses Baumol’s

work on economic growth and his theory of contestable markets. Both topics offer fruitful

research venues for those interested in the relationship between strategic entrepreneurship,

market entry, and innovation. Copyright © 2016 Strategic Management Society.

INTRODUCTION

In 2003, the Swedish Foundation for Small Business

Research and the Swedish Board of Industrial and

Technical Development awarded the International

Award for Entrepreneurship and Small Business

Research to William J. Baumol.

1

In 2014, the

Entrepreneurship Division of the Academy of

Management awarded him the Foundational Paper

Award.

2

While these prestigious recognitions (to cite

two among the many he has received) acknowledge

and celebrate Baumol’s contribution to our under-

standing of entrepreneurship, they do not sufficiently

convey the magnitude and importance of such

contribution. With more than 50 authored books and

more than 500 articles in leading journals, Baumol is

undoubtedly one of the foundational figures of the field.

William J. Baumol was born on February 26,

1922, in the Bronx, New York. He attended public

schools in New York City and received his

undergraduate degree from the College of the City

of New York. After a few years working at the U.S.

Department of Agriculture and after getting out of

the army in 1946, Baumol attended the London

School of Economics, where he received a PhD in

economics in 1949 working with Lionel Robbins.

Upon graduation, he joined the department of

economics at Princeton University, where he worked

closely with economists such as Jacob Viner and

Lester Chandler and mathematicians such as Harold

Kuhn and Albert Tucker. In 1971, Baumol accepted

a joint appointment with New York University and

Keywords: Baumol; productive entrepreneurship; innovative

entrepreneur; c ontestable market; cost d isease; economics

*Correspondence to: Maria Minniti, Whitman School of

Management, Syracuse University, 721 University Ave.,

Syracuse, NY 13244-2450, U.S.A.E-mail: mminniti@syr.edu

1

The Prize citation reads: ‘His insistence that the entrepreneurs

should have a key role in the theory of the firm;’‘his studies of

the role of institutions for the channeling of entrepreneurship into

productive use;’and‘his early formulation of a competition policy

emphasizing the disciplinary effect of dynamic entrepreneurship.’

2

The Award was given for the paper Entrepreneurship:

productive, unproductive, and destructive originally published

in the Journal of Political Economy in 1990 and reprinted in

1996 in Journal of BusinessVenturing.

Strategic Entrepreneurs hip Journal

Strat. EntrepreneurshipJ., 10:214–228 (2016)

Published onlinein Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com). DOI: 10.1002/sej.1219

Copyright © 2016 Strategic Management Society

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