Chair in Entrepreneurship
Roles and Responsibilities
Professor Francis Greene is Chair of Entrepreneurship at the University of Edinburgh Business School.
Background
His impact and engagement work has sought to practically improve understandings of entrepreneurship for start-up and scale-up entrepreneurs and the wider support and policy communities. He has worked for the OECD, the European Commission, the Federation of Small Business, major UK banks, as well as individual and national governments. He was also the Director of the Scottish University Scale up Consortium. This was a collaboration between the 16 Scottish University Business Schools and led to the successful creation of the E2 programme. This provided innovative scale-up education for Scottish scaling entrepreneurs. He also wrote one of the academic background papers on the impact of the pandemic on Scottish businesses.
He has written and taught on practical entrepreneurial matters for over 25 years for entrepreneurs, postgraduate and entrepreneurship students. His new textbook is: Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice.
His research interests are focused on the start-up, scale-up, planning and financing of entrepreneurial businesses. Prior research has focused on learning among serial entrepreneurs, how birth order affects the likelihood of entrepreneurial activity, what role do hormones such as testosterone play in entrepreneurship, and how does business planning practically help entrepreneurs to create a viable new business. His research also covers youth and graduate entrepreneurship, the role of entrepreneurship in regional economic development, small business finance and entrepreneurship policy.
He has held visiting positions at the economic consultancy ZEW in Germany, at Mannheim University and Swinburne University, taught at Erasmus University in the Netherlands, worked as a policy advisor to the New Zealand government, and worked at the SME research centre for one of the major UK banks. He is a consulting editor for the International Small Business Journal. He will be a visiting professor at the University of Vienna in the Spring of 2023.
His work has appeared in a variety of national and international media outlets including the Wall Street Journal, the Harvard Business Review, local and national BBC radio and various local and national newspapers.
Professor Greene is happy to consider PhD candidates. However, applicants need to have a very strong background in econometrics as he only takes students who exclusively focus on a quantitative approach to small business and entrepreneurship in developed economies.
Research Interests
- Start-ups, Growth and Closure
- Role of entrepreneurship, Economic Development
- Entrepreneurship Policy
- Youth and Graduate Entrepreneurship
- Entrepreneurial Finance