Babson Entrepreneur Experience Lab


The Babson Entrepreneur Lab is an experimental platform created to transform the face of entrepreneurship in the United States.

The Lab places entrepreneurs at the center of an on-going effort to design, develop, and experiment with new education and support solutions that will help shape future generations of entrepreneurs.

Featured Work

Elements of the Entrepreneurial Experience

A first-person characterization the national entrepreneurial experience

  • Six months. 250+ entrepreneurs.

    Over the course of six months, the Lab engaged with over 250 entrepreneurs involved in all varieties of new venture creation across the United States to create a unique, first-person, national characterization of the entrepreneurial experience.

  • A first look at the work

    Organized into Elements of the Entrepreneurial Experience, this is a first look at the observations and insights gleaned from this first phase of research.

  • New stories. New Realities.

    We hope the experiences of this diverse group of business people will begin to evolve our understanding of entrepreneurship — to tell new stories that can shape new realities for all entrepreneurs.

Explore the Elements of Entrepreneurship
Recent Project

Eras of Entrepreneurship

An interactive map of the experiences of entrepreneurs throughout U.S. history

Featuring video commentary from Babson faculty.

How did we arrive at the current narratives about entrepreneurship?

To answer this question, we looked at entrepreneurs in the U.S. from the time of the first colonies to the present day, identifying five distinct eras based on the dominant characteristics of entrepreneurship and showing changes and key differences in these characteristics over time. Each era story is told through seven dimensions and include video commentary from Babson faculty.

Explore the Eras of Entrepreneurship