Rate My Professor Harold Welsch

Harold P. Welsch is a professor emeritus in the Department of Management & Entrepreneurship at DePaul University’s Driehaus College of Business, within the Business & Economics faculty. He holds the Coleman Foundation Endowed Chair in Entrepreneurship and founded DePaul’s entrepreneurship program and the Coleman Entrepreneurship Center, launched in 2003 with a grant exceeding $5 million from the Coleman Foundation. Welsch earned his PhD in Management from Northwestern University in 1978, an MBA in Industrial Management from DePaul University in 1968, and a BS in Commerce from DePaul in 1966. Prior to taking emeritus status in 2019, he served as professor of entrepreneurship, actively promoting entrepreneurship development worldwide as an educator, researcher, consultant, author, editor, and entrepreneur for more than 30 years. He is also principal of Devon Enterprises, a real estate investment and management firm, and has directed the Small Business Institute at DePaul while serving on the executive committee of the MIT Enterprise Forum and various boards of directors.

Welsch’s research specializations encompass entrepreneurship education, gestation patterns, privatization, technology commercialization, entrepreneurship career paths, formal and informal strategic planning, information seeking and decision behavior, ethnic entrepreneurship, economic development, and small business problems. His key publications include books such as Strategic Entrepreneurial Growth (2nd ed., Thomson/South-Western), Entrepreneurship: The Way Ahead (Routledge), and The Strategy of Entrepreneurship (in Chinese, Thomson), alongside articles in Journal of Business Venturing, Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, Journal of Small Business Management, International Small Business Journal, and others. He received major awards including the United States Association for Small Business and Entrepreneurship Max S. Wortman Lifetime Achievement Award in 2008, Doctor Honoris Causa from the Estonian-American Business Academy, Doctorate in Humane Letters from Estonian-American University for introducing entrepreneurship in Estonia, Harold Washington Community Service Award in 1988, and Best Paper Award at the 27th World Congress on Small Business in 1982. Welsch chaired the Academy of Management Entrepreneurship Division, served as president of the International Council for Small Business and USASBE, acted as national judge for awards like the Blue Chip Enterprise Initiative’s Entrepreneur of the Year and KPMG’s Hi-Tech Entrepreneur of the Year, and contributed to editorial boards of journals including Journal of Developmental Entrepreneurship, Journal of Small Business Management, and Family Business Review. He secured grants from the Coleman Foundation, NASA, Booz-Allen-Hamilton Foundation, U.S. Department of Transportation, and others, and was instrumental in establishing small business development centers in Poland and an MBA program pilot in Prague, Czech Republic.