Research on entrepreneurial failure and emotions wins foremost global entrepreneurship award and € 100,000

The 2025 Global Award for Entrepreneurship Research goes to Professor Dean A. Shepherd, Mendoza College of Business, Notre Dame University. He is recognized for his profound influence on research on several central but traditionally overlooked aspects of the entrepreneurial process, including entrepreneurial failure and emotions and entrepreneurship under challenging environmental conditions and adversity. The Global Award is the foremost international award in entrepreneurship research with a prize sum of € 100,000.

For nearly three decades, Professor Dean A. Shepherd has had an unparalleled impact on scholarly developments of the international entrepreneurship research community. His extraordinarily broad and methodologically diverse research has had a profound influence on research on several central aspects of the entrepreneurial process.

– By addressing topics such as entrepreneurial failure and emotions and by investigating entrepreneurship under challenging environmental conditions and adversity, he has led the way in asking and answering important but traditionally overlooked aspects of entrepreneurship, says Ivo Zander, Professor Uppsala University and Chair of the Prize Committee.

Professor Shepherd’s contributions further include:

• • An exceptionally productive engagement with researchers and research groups and tireless mentoring of young entrepreneurship researchers, which has fortified the position of entrepreneurship as a distinctive and vibrant domain of research within the social sciences.
• • Encouragement of research that is close to the researcher’s personal interests, thus underscoring the key role and gratifications of genuine engagement in the creative processes that result in high-quality research.

As a role model, promoter, and ambassador of entrepreneurship research at the highest theoretical and methodological levels, Professor Shepherd has made truly outstanding contributions to the development of the field of entrepreneurship research.

The Award ceremony will take place in Stockholm on 2 June 2025. For further information, please visit our website, www.e-award.org.

For information and contact:
Pernilla Heed, for the Global Award for Entrepreneurship Research, +46 70 372 74 76. Ivo Zander, Professor of Entrepreneurship Uppsala University and Chair of the Prize Committee +46 18 471 13 55.

The Global Award for Entrepreneurship Research is the foremost global award for research on entrepreneurship. The Award honors significant contributions to theory-building on entrepreneurship and small business development. The Award consists of the statuette ”The Hand of God” by the Swedish sculptor Carl Milles and a prize amount of  100 000 Euros.

Founder of the Award: Swedish Entrepreneurship Forum. Sponsors: Vinnova – Sweden´s Innovation Agency and Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences (IVA)