Leslie E. Palich is Associate Professor of Management and Entrepreneurship and the Ben H. Williams Professor of Entrepreneurship at Baylor University, where he teaches courses in small business management, international entrepreneurship, strategic management, and international management to undergraduate and graduate students in the Hankamer School of Business. He is also Associate Director of the Entrepreneurship Studies program at Baylor. He holds a Ph.D. and an M.B.A. from Arizona State University and a B.A. from Manhattan Christian College. His research has been published in the Academy of Management Review, Strategic Management Journal, Journal of Business Venturing, Journal of… International Business Studies, Journal of Management, Journal of Organizational Behavior, and several other periodicals. He has taught entrepreneurship and strategic management in a number of overseas settings, including Cuba, France, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and the Dominican Republic. His interest in entrepreneurial opportunity and small business management dates back to his grade school years, when he set up a produce sales business to experiment with small business ownership. That early experience became a springboard for a number of other enterprises. Since that time, he has owned and operated domestic ventures in agribusiness, automobile sales, real estate development, and educational services, as well as an international import business.
Frank Hoy is the Paul R. Beswick Professor of Innovation and Entrepreneurship in the School of Business at Worcester Polytechnic Institute. He was most recently director of the Centers for Entrepreneurial Development, Advancement, Research and Support at the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP), also serves as director of the Collaborative for Entrepreneurship & Innovation (CEI), WPI's nationally ranked entrepreneurship center. Hoy joined the WPI faculty in August 2009, and holds a BA from the University of Texas at El Paso, an MBA from the University of North Texas, and a PhD in management from Texas A&M University. He was a faculty member in the Department of Management at the University… of Georgia for ten years, where he founded and directed the Center for Business and Economic Studies, coordinated the entrepreneurship curriculum, and served as director of the Georgia Small Business Development Center. In 1991 he returned to Texas to join UTEP as a professor of management and entrepreneurship and dean of the College of Business Administration. Hoy is a past president of the United States Association for Small Business and Entrepreneurship and past chair of the Entrepreneurship Division of the Academy of Management. His research has appeared in the ACADEMY OF MANAGEMENT JOURNAL, ACADEMY OF MANAGEMENT REVIEW, JOURNAL OF BUSINESS VENTURING, FAMILY BUSINESS REVIEW, and he is a past editor of ENTREPRENEURSHIP THEORY AND PRACTICE.