The internationally recognized ranking, run by the TCU Neeley School of Business, marks Neeley as the highest ranked nondoctoral-granting program worldwide based on entrepreneurship research published in leading journals over the past five years.
July 19, 2022
By Rachel Stowe Master
The TCU Neeley School of Business ranked No. 6 out of 350 programs worldwide for the amount of research published in premier entrepreneurship journals over the last five years, according to the 2022 TCU Global University Entrepreneurship Research Productivity Rankings, an internationally recognized list created and run by Neeley School of Business faculty. TCU Neeley is the highest ranked nondoctoral-granting program on the 2022 list.
Launched by Keith Hmieleski, professor of entrepreneurship and academic director of the Institute for Entrepreneurship and Innovation at the Neeley School of Business, in 2009, the TCU Global University Entrepreneurship Research Productivity Rankings is the only research-focused ranking of entrepreneurial programs. The list tracks research articles in entrepreneurship journals according to authorship and university affiliation. The 2022 rankings comprise publication counts in the three leading entrepreneurship journals — the Journal of Business Venturing, Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice and Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal — over the most recent five-year period (2017-2021).
“The rankings are important because they reflect the degree to which an evidence-based approach is embraced and valued by entrepreneurship programs. At leading research universities, a substantial portion of the faculty are actively engaged in scholarly activities and are well-versed in the latest research findings, which ideally comes through in the content of their teaching. It’s not just ‘war stories’ that practitioners or guest speakers might share about their own experiences. Instead, theory and data underlie evidence-based teaching, along with an emphasis on developing critical thinking skills,” Hmieleski said.
Indiana University topped the 2022 list with 57 articles, followed by the University of Oklahoma with 25, Syracuse University with 24, Baylor University with 22, the University of Central Florida with 19 and TCU with 15. Imperial College London, the University of Tennessee and the University of Notre Dame tied with 14 apiece, and the University of North Carolina at Charlotte rounded out the top 10 with 13 articles. The ranking includes 350 schools that published at least one article in a leading entrepreneurship journal during 2017-2021.
For the prior global list, last released in 2019, TCU Neeley ranked No. 13 with 12 research articles published in premier entrepreneurship journals during 2014-2018.
The continual high research productivity is an indicator of TCU’s commitment to evidence-based entrepreneurship programming, Hmieleski said.
“We have tenure track faculty who are very productive in terms of entrepreneurship research, and we also have excellent faculty who don’t have terminal degrees or a research orientation but have significant experience as entrepreneurs. These other faculty are critical to supporting our co-curricular activities. We work hard to blend both research and practitioner sides of things to form a well-balanced program, and I believe that’s something that makes us stand apart,” Hmieleski said.
Going forward, the goal is to compile the rankings on an annual basis.
“More and more schools are asking for the rankings. Some schools like to use their standing on the TCU Global University Entrepreneurship Research Productivity Rankings to promote their programs on their websites, in faculty job ads, etc. In addition, the rankings help to institutionalize the value in supporting top-tier entrepreneurship research,” Hmieleski said.
The 2022 TCU Global University Entrepreneurship Research Productivity Rankings were compiled by TCU Neeley researchers along with Jose Lopez, a doctoral student at the University of Texas at San Antonio, who volunteered to help Hmieleski compile the data.
“He said he used the past rankings when he was looking at doctoral programs and they helped him select which schools were doing the most research in entrepreneurship,” Hmieleski said.
2022 TCU Global University Entrepreneurship Research Productivity Rankings
| Ranking | University | JBV | ETP | SEJ | Total |
| 1 | Indiana University | 29 | 19 | 9 | 57 |
| 2 | University of Oklahoma | 14 | 8 | 3 | 25 |
| 3 | Syracuse University | 11 | 12 | 1 | 24 |
| 4 | Baylor University | 12 | 5 | 5 | 22 |
| 5 | University of Central Florida | 4 | 9 | 6 | 19 |
| 6 | Texas Christian University | 11 | 4 | 0 | 15 |
| 7 | Imperial College London | 3 | 4 | 7 | 14 |
| 7 | University of Notre Dame | 10 | 4 | 0 | 14 |
| 7 | University of Tennessee | 9 | 2 | 3 | 14 |
| 10 | University of North Carolina at Charlotte | 6 | 7 | 0 | 13 |
| 10 | Washington State University | 9 | 3 | 1 | 13 |
| 12 | Babson College | 5 | 4 | 3 | 12 |
| 12 | Copenhagen Business School | 3 | 4 | 5 | 12 |
| 12 | Erasmus University | 4 | 5 | 3 | 12 |
| 12 | Free University of Bozen-Bolzano | 1 | 11 | 0 | 12 |
| 12 | HEC Montréal | 4 | 8 | 0 | 12 |
| 12 | Mississippi State University | 1 | 11 | 0 | 12 |
| 12 | University of Alberta | 5 | 7 | 0 | 12 |
| 19 | Aalto University | 4 | 6 | 1 | 11 |
| 19 | Northeastern University | 3 | 7 | 1 | 11 |
| 19 | Technical University of Munich | 7 | 3 | 1 | 11 |
| 19 | University of Warwick | 5 | 5 | 1 | 11 |
See the full TCU Global University Entrepreneurship Research Productivity Rankings list here.
