Mærsk McKinney Møller Chair in Entrepreneurship

Department of Innovation and Organizational Economics is the proud host of a very prestigious donation from the ‘A. P. Møller og Hustru Chastine Mc-Kinney Møllers Fond til almene Formaal’. The Foundation has donated 40 million Danish kroner to the establishment of an Endowed Chair in Entrepreneurship and thus provided CBS with the opportunity to strengthen its research and education activities within entrepreneurship.

AP Møller fond

In the current economy, entrepreneurship is a crucial activity not only for the risk-taking founders of new companies but for most participants in a modern economy. Many fewer people are now employed in jobs where workers’ abilities, such as physical power, endurance, or precision, are directed by superiors. In modern economies, most employees constantly need to make decisions about their job functions. This tends to erase the distinction between the entrepreneur - as the founder of companies - and the ‘ordinary’ man, and widens the need for entrepreneurial skills to now also include a major part of the employees.

With this in mind, it is no wonder that entrepreneurship is now on everybody’s mind. The promotion of entrepreneurship has become a top priority in most societies. Education of the citizens to take on personal responsibilities of the entrepreneurial kind, as business founders or as idea generators or creative problem solvers in existing organizations, is on the agenda of all educational institutions. In addition, research on phenomena such as university spin-offs, serial entrepreneurship, venture capital, social entrepreneurship, personal traits of entrepreneurs, organizational creativity, and public support of start-ups, are all receiving growing interest from academic researchers.

Facts about the Endowed Chair of Entrepreneurship

The donation covers funding for the Chair, PhD and postdoctoral positions at CBS as well as support for research activities. The donation will be running until 2023 at which point the area will be an integrated part of CBS with a number of tenured positions.

The first Chair was Professor Mirjam van Praag, who took on the position as Maersk Mc-Kinney Moller Professor on January 1 2014. As of 1 March 2018 Mirjam van Praag returns to the Netherlands to take up a position as President of Vrije Universieit in Amsterdam.

To find out more about the current activities of the chair and the INO department go to the website dedicated to the entrepreneurship area of the Department of Innovation and Organizational Economics.

Sidst opdateret: Dean's Office, Research // 21/02/2018