William B. Gartner is the Arthur M. Spiro Professor of Entrepreneurship at Clemson University. Prior to joining Clemson he was on the faculty at Georgetown University, the University of Virginia, San Francisco State University, and the University of Southern California. He is one of the co-founders of the Entrepreneurship Research Consortium, which initiated, developed and managed the Panel Study of Entrepreneurial Dynamics. His service to the entrepreneurship field has included two consecutive terms as Chair of the Academy of Management Entrepreneurship Division (1985 + 1986), special issue editorships for the Journal of Business Venturing (JBV) and Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice (ETP), and Editorial Board memberships with the Academy of Management Review (AMR), Journal of Management (JOM), JBV, ETP, and the Journal of Small Business Management (JSBM). His research has: been published in AMR, JBV, ETP, JOM and JSBM; won awards from the Academy of Management, ETP, and the Babson-Kauffman Entrepreneurship Research Conference; and has been funded by the Kauffman Center for Entrepreneurial Leadership, Coleman Foundation, U.S. Department of Education, Small Business Foundation of America, the Los Angeles Times, the Pacific Gas and Electric Company, the Corporate Design Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. His research on nascent entrepreneurs explores how they: find and identify opportunities, recognize and solve startup problems, and undertake actions to successfully launch new ventures. He is also collecting and analyzing the stories entrepreneurs tell about their entrepreneurial adventures.
The Handbook of Entrepreneurial Dynamics provides an important forum for scholars to generate new theory, identify promising research directions, and present important insights to a very wide audience of scholars in entrepreneurship. The book is formed by empirical research from the Panel Study of Entrepreneurial Dynamics (PSED), and is the first attempt to develop a comprehensive and thoroughly representative portrait of entrepreneurial activity in the United States that can be applied to other countries. In order to study individuals as their businesses and organizations take shape, this study located and studied nascent entrepreneurs while in the process of building their enterprises.
