How to Make an Entrepreneurial State: Why Innovation Needs Bureaucracy, the Yale University Press book written by TalTech’s Rainer Kattel, Wolfgang Drechsler, and Erkki Karo, has won what is seen as the ultimate prize for management books globally, the Academy of Management’s 2023 George R. Terry Book Award. The Terry Award goes to the book judged to have made the most outstanding contribution to the global advancement of management knowledge during the last two years.
“We are very proud that the work of TalTech's trio of professors over many years has been recognized by one of the most worthy global community of management scholars. It is a great pleasure that the ground-breaking ideas that have germinated in our university speak to the world's leaders in management sciences, and the idea of the agile stability of public management is inspiring readers from different backgrounds around the world” noted the Dean of TalTech’s School of Business and Governance, Dr. Mari Avarmaa.
In reviewing the book, the committee noted that it draws “from classic and contemporary organization theory, economic sociology, and political economy to move away from the prevailing narrative of the state as a passive facilitator of private sector innovation. Instead, the book proposes a new model of the ‘entrepreneurial state’ – a state that actively invests in and coordinates innovation and entrepreneurship through a variety of means, including direct investment, public procurement, policy, and strategic partnerships with private actors. Taken together, this view is a groundbreaking contribution to global management knowledge.”
The authors, all current or former full professors at TalTech, are a three-generation academic team that has been working together since a long time, with Rainer Kattel (now primarily at University College London) being Wolfgang Dreschlers first PhD and Erkki Karo Rainer’s first. The book is the result of almost a decade of their thinking and writing together on the crucial question of how the public sector must be optimally organized to bring innovation about.
This year’s distinguished award committee membership included Julian M. Birkinshaw, London Business School; Todd Bridgman, Victoria University of Wellington; Tiziana Casciaro, University of Toronto; Matteo Cristofaro, University of Rome Tor Vergata; Mattia Gilmartin (Chair), New York University; and Paula Jarzabkowski, The University of Queensland.
The Academy of Management is the preeminent professional association for management and organization scholars. Founded in 1936, the AOM’s global community today is nearly 18,000 strong and spans over 120 countries.