BRETT SMITH: REFRAMING THE RISK EQUATION

Brett R. Smith, Ph.D. is the Cintas Endowed Chair of Entrepreneurship; Founding Director, Center for Social Entrepreneurship; and Founding Director, Leading the Integration of Faith & Entrepreneurship (L.I.F.E.) Research Lab at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. His research interests focus on social and faith-based entrepreneurship. His research appears in a number of leading academic journals including Academy of Management Journal, Entrepreneurship Theory & Practice, Journal of Business Ethics, Journal of Business Venturing, Leadership Quarterly, and Long Range Planning.

Smith has won several international awards for teaching and research including the GCEC Award for Best Social Entrepreneurship Program, Ashoka Innovation Award, and Academy of Management’s Carolyn Dexter Award. He received more than $500,000 in grants from the U.S. Department of State to host seminars on social entrepreneurship and spoken around the world at the United Nations, Nelson Mandela Foundation, Tedx Youth, and a number of leading universities including Columbia, Duke, Harvard, and Oxford. His work was highlighted in Time, Business Week, Financial Times, CNN, MSNBC and 100 other media outlets.

Smith has been a startup, corporate, and social entrepreneur as well as an angel investor. Smith is a co-founder and advisory board member for Flywheel Social Enterprise Hub and a member of the Board of Directors of OCEAN Programs, a faith-based technology accelerator.

In Greg's conversation with Brett, Brett talks about this experience with piloting as a way to mitigate risks, the importance of partners when getting started, and his research on the intersection of faith and entrepreneurship.

Timestamps

• 6min applicable lessons from early career

• 9min failing forward & the risk equation

• 14:45min Miami University

• 17min Social Entrepreneurship

• 20min importance of early wins

• 25:30min key to partnerships

• 29:30min research

• 37min teaching approach

• 40:45min intersection of Faith and Entrepreneurship

• 46:15min Faith-based impact investing

• 51:45min entrepreneurial advice

• 58:30min advice for aspiring changemakers