Center for L.I.F.E., Faith Driven Entrepreneur partner to bring data to entrepreneurs
Collaboration intended to make academic research on faith-based entrepreneurship more readily available and accessible
Center for L.I.F.E., Faith Driven Entrepreneur partner to bring data to entrepreneurs
Collaboration intended to make academic research on faith-based entrepreneurship more readily available and accessible
One of the purposes of the Leading the Integration of Faith and Entrepreneurship Research Lab at the Farmer School of Business is to conduct and collect research about the intersection of faith and entrepreneurship, ultimately to get that research out to the millions of entrepreneurs who could make use of the findings.
Which is easier said than done, director and professor Brett Smith said, because entrepreneurs often don’t spend much time looking for academic research.
“Entrepreneurs aren't going to read an academic article, and even if they read it, they're not going to understand it because we write it in such a way that no one else can understand it,” he said. “What they look to are podcasts. Podcasts are awesome, but those are usually one-off stories from one person’s perspective. We want to help entrepreneurs understand the value of rigorous knowledge.”
Smith said that information derived from research could help entrepreneurs expand their products, find new markets, or give them some new ideas – if they could find it and understand it.
That’s why the Center for L.I.F.E. has partnered with (FDE), an organization with a purpose of encouraging, equipping, and empowering entrepreneurially minded people worldwide with world class content and community based on faith.
“They said, ‘We have too many stories and not enough data, so let's have some data to actually make this both practically relevant and scientifically or academically rigorous,’” he said.
FDE and L.I.F.E. are working together to turn academic research into actionable and relevant information that entrepreneurs can use. Smith said L.I.F.E. is working to curate the research, its own and others’, while FDE to its members, its followers, and beyond.
Smith said the hope is not just to get research results into the hands of faith-driven entrepreneurs who can use them, but to get feedback about what to study next.
“We want to scale. I want more research. I want more people reading the research. I want to push it out. I want FDE’s click-through rates to go through the roof. And then I want the entrepreneurs to tell us what the next thing that we should study,” he said. “When the research questions come from the entrepreneurs themselves, we’ll know they’re practically relevant.”