From Start-Ups to Wealth Creation

As perhaps the most creative idea of a successful entrepreneur, the Wharton School has had innovation in its blood since the beginning. Founder Joseph Wharton built a multimillion-dollar fortune in zinc, iron, nickel, and steel before bringing a spirit of innovation to the first business school. From its founding, the Wharton School incorporated entrepreneurship and the economics of small business systems into its curriculum.

It was no surprise, then, that Wharton established the first and largest center dedicated to the study of entrepreneurship. The Sol C. Snider Entrepreneurial Research Center is working around the world to advance understanding of entrepreneurship and global wealth creation. It is the co-home of The Journal of Business Venturing, the most influential publication in the field, and prolific Wharton researchers produce more studies of entrepreneurship than any of their peers.

Wharton has worked with national and senior business leaders in Latin America, South Africa, China, and other regions on initiatives to promote entrepreneurship and national wealth creation. Wharton's center and programs have served as a model for programs worldwide.

In 1973, Wharton became the first school to develop a fully integrated curriculum of entrepreneurial studies. Today, Wharton's Goergen Entrepreneurial Management Program is one of the largest and most diverse academic programs in the world. More than 2,000 students and executives participate in more than 20 courses every year. Courses are led by standing faculty and successful current or former business owners. Through study projects, students have worked with small companies and organizations in countries around the world, including Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Israel, Peru, Russia, South Africa, and the Ukraine.

Wharton students and graduates are successful entrepreneurs who have founded and led enterprises in virtually every industry and part of the world. They have generated billions of dollars in wealth and thousands of jobs. Wharton actively promotes this entrepreneurial spirit among students through education and initiatives such as its new business plan competition, which offers expert advice and seed capital to aspiring entrepreneurs.

In the classroom, Wharton continues to create new courses based on the latest industry trends. In the fall of 1999, the School offered a new course on Internet entrepreneurship. The course addresses the unique strategies and new business rules that come with Internet ventures by studying the hows and whys of successful Internet start-up companies.

Beyond studying the factors that lead to success in individual enterprises, the Wharton School is concerned with entrepreneurial issues that affect entire societies. We focus on the factors that lead to entrepreneurial success and the major forces that drive the creation of social wealth."
Ian MacMillan, Fred R. Sullivan Professor, Professor of Management, and Director of Wharton's Sol C. Snider Entrepreneurial Research Center

"We at Wharton were talking about and researching entrepreneurial issues before the field really existed in a formal way. We thought the future of the country depended on our developing business leaders who had the entrepreneurial instincts and the ability to actually plan growth and make decisions about growth. We created models that have led to today's changes in corporate structure. Companies today are flattened out, and this is essential to their survival and success. The entrepreneurial center, then, bridged the gap between the academic world and that of business and industry."
Dr. Edward Shils, Founding Director of Wharton's Entrepreneurial Center and George W. Taylor Professor Emeritus of Entrepreneurial Studies

MBA students provide consulting services to an entrepreneur at the Wharton Small Business Development Center (above), which aided more than 20,000 small businesses in the 1990s. In April 1999, Wharton's Goergen Entrepreneurial Management Program and entrepreneur Robert Goergen (2nd from left, below) provided advice and more than $40,000 in prizes to young entrepreneurs at the First Annual Wharton Business Plan Competition. Dr. Edward Shils (bottom) was the founding director of Wharton's entrepreneurial center, the oldest and largest center of its kind in the world.