Entrepreneurship PhD candidate Pankaj Patel continues to add honors to his considerable accomplishments at the College of Business.
     Patel has been named the winner of the University of Louisville’s 2009 John M. Houchens Prize for the Outstanding Dissertation, signifying the best dissertation completed at UofL during 2009.  He also will receive a Graduate Dean’s Citation for his overall performance as a graduate student.

     The university-wide Houchens honor is awarded annually by the UofL School of Interdisciplinary and Graduate Studies and includes a $250 stipend. Patel, who is scheduled to graduate in May, will be the first student to complete the entrepreneurship PhD program.
     Professor James Fiet, the college’s Brown-Forman Chair in Entrepreneurship and also Patel’s dissertation advisor, believes his work will have an immediate and lasting impact on entrepreneurship research.
     “There is an emerging consensus in research that the nexus between an entrepreneur and an opportunity is a key relationship that may lead us to understand how new wealth is created,” said Fiet.  “What makes Pankaj's dissertation important is that it consists of four related, theory-driven studies, using very rigorous research methods that focus exclusively on the fit between an entrepreneur and an opportunity. The result is that it not only informs us about opportunity but urges us to reconsider what we thought that we knew about entrepreneurs.”
     A research paper co-authored by Patel recently won two awards at the 2008 Southern Management Association Conference, including one of the SMA’s highest honors. The paper—Family Firm Commitment and Performance: A Moderated Mediation Analysis—was judged Best Doctoral Student Paper and Best Paper Overall by the SMA, the largest and most prestigious conference in the southern United States.  In addition, during the last year, he has won two other best paper awards from the United States Association of Small Business and Entrepreneurship (USASBE) and also from Small Business Administration (SBA).
     “The college can be very proud of Pankaj’s work,” said Fiet.  “This sort of recognition does not come around very often.”
     Upon graduation, Patel plans to take a position with the Ball State University entrepreneurship program.