Entrepreneurs Enabled: A Comparison of Edelman Prize-Winning Papers

A study of 10 years of Edelman prize-winning papers (1977–1986) has yielded a wealth of information regarding applied contemporary managerial theory. We have distilled the core theory of seven authors who write about management principles and applied it in depth to the 40 papers that contain enough data about the client companies to lend themselves to the analysis. The first-prize winners are clearly superior, and all the finalists tend to exhibit these principles to a greater degree than would be expected by chance. The study provides fodder for future study of applied entrepreneurial activity and lends credulity to the Edelman award process as it has been conducted in the past.