Freelancing - The New Entrepreneurship

About the ESRI Seminar Series

The ESRI organises a public seminar series, inviting researchers from both the ESRI and other institutions to present new research on a variety of public policy issues. The seminar series provides access to specialised knowledge and new research methodologies, with the objective of promoting research excellence and facilitating productive dialogue across the policy and research fields.

The slides from the seminar are now available to download here HERE. 

Guest Speaker: Andrew Burke, Chair of Business Studies & Dean of Trinity Business School

Venue: ESRI, Whitaker Square, Sir John Rogerson’s Quay, Dublin 2.

Seminar Topic

In this seminar Professor Andrew Burke explores the evolution of entrepreneurship research and practice over the last 25 years.  He illustrates that while the impact of entrepreneurship has increased in importance for business and economic performance over this period, the understanding of entrepreneurship itself has changed dramatically in terms of the typical person, business organization and strategies that drive entrepreneurial performance.  He argues that a desire by aspiring entrepreneurs to mimic - and often governments to promote – the long-standing definitive characteristics of entrepreneurs as misfits, risk-takers, innovators and founders of start-ups are more likely to worsen rather than enhance business performance. Professor Burke provides an insight into ‘the new entrepreneurship’ and the increasing role for freelancers as both enablers and providers of entrepreneurship, innovation and business growth.

Speaker Bio

Professor Andrew Burke is Dean of Trinity Business School and the Chair of Business Studies. He is a Fellow of Trinity College, Dublin and a Board member of the University's Innovation & Entrepreneurship Hub. He is also Chairman of the Centre for Research on Self-Employment (www.crse.co.uk) - the London-based IPSE international think tank on freelancing. Previously he held the Bettany Chair of Entrepreneurship at Cranfield School of Management where he was founder and Director of the Bettany Centre for Entrepreneurship. He was also a Board Member of Cranfield Ventures Limited - Cranfield University's tech transfer unit - and Director of the Cranfield Business Growth Programme (BGP). He also served as Director of Graduate Programmes and a member of the Executive at Cranfield School of Management. He was a Visiting Professor at the Anderson School of Management, UCLA, USA in 2002 and 2012. He was a Research Professor at the Max Planck Institute for Economics, Germany from 2003-2009. He has also been on the faculty of Warwick Business School, the University of Edinburgh, Balliol College Oxford and the University of St Andrews.