Making the big time

Donna Kelley and Irv Rhodes teach Junior Achievement at Crocker Farm School

So forget those stodgy A rated, peer reviewed, academic journals so many professors are enslaved to, my lovely wife just made the really b-i-g time for publishing: The Huffington Post. Yikes!

Excuse me while I slip into unbiased reporter mode:

Yesterday at the World Bank in Washington, DC, Babson College professor Donna J. Kelley helped to launch the "Global Woman's Report," which she was lead author. A comprehensive study of women entrepreneurs in 59 countries, the report verified an age-old truism: necessity is the mother of invention.

Since starting a business is one way create a life line, it makes sense that in countries where women have less opportunity handed to them their motivation to succeed is higher.

And in countries like America, where desperation is less prevalent, woman correspondingly have less incentive to risk going it alone with a start-up business.

Kelley just returned to her Amherst home on Saturday after a prestigious Fullbright Scholarship took her to Indonesia for three weeks to teach entrepreneurship while she simultaneously coordinated a Junior Achievement business course at Amherst Crocker Farm Elementary school, where her daughters are enrolled.

The Washington Post also reports

Business Week joins the pack

Providing hope to developing nations via business

So my lovely wife Donna Kelley, a Professor of Entrepreneurship at Babson College and proud Umass MBA, is giving a presentation in Washington D.C. on "Entrepreneurship and Economic Development" this morning to the State Department and other government agencies advancing the idea of entrepreneurship as a solution to unemployment problems in developing nations.

Many of these countries, like Egypt, have invested heavily in higher education, producing well educated college graduates who then find less opportunity in the job market. Entrepreneurship stimulates the overall economy by providing more--and oftentimes higher paying--employment opportunities.

Individuals can create their own jobs as well as build firms that can employ others when society cannot provide enough jobs. And when people are gainfully employed, they are less likely to engage in desperate, destabilizing activities.

The presentation is based on Global Entrepreneurship Monitor research data culled from 59 economies worldwide.