The Liguori Entrepreneurship Analysis & Development (LEAD) Lab at Florida State University is advancing entrepreneurship research and education through a focus on interdisciplinary collaboration and real-world impact.
Eric Liguori, professor and associate dean of the Jim Moran College of Entrepreneurship, leads the LEAD Lab. The lab’s mission centers on producing rigorous academic research while developing programs that benefit both the community and society.
“The genesis was to try and build something that would apply to entrepreneurship, allow us to bridge across disciplines, and borrow the structure and the idea from other places on campus,” said Liguori.
Liguori’s vision includes engaging students in practical research experiences, training future researchers, and emphasizing projects with tangible effects outside academia. Students are encouraged to work together across different fields of study, gaining skills by applying research methods to real-world situations.
A notable project from the LEAD Lab involved interviewing Ukrainian entrepreneurs to understand how they adapt their businesses during conflict. These interviews were presented at the Morehouse Symposium in April. Liguori explained: “I started to have our students attend different events and network the rooms they were in, talking to other entrepreneurs. They would get up at 6 a.m. and do Zoom interviews with Ukrainian entrepreneurs, and we originally started doing them together but then they adjusted and would do them on their own. We’ve pushed them out of their comfort zone quite a bit and they rose to the occasion.”
He added: “With entrepreneurs operating their businesses in Ukraine, we were trying to understand what’s been the impact of this conflict on these businesses and these people. We realized as we started talking to them that they were genuinely interested in shining a light on their sort of lived experience in this unique context.”
Another area of research for the lab is evaluating the economic impact of the Jim Moran Institute for Global Entrepreneurship. The lab is also working with Universal AI University in Mumbai, India, exploring opportunities for global partnerships focused on artificial intelligence and family business studies.
“We’re just starting to scratch the surface on what we can do,” Liguori said. “Universal AI University is an interesting university. It’s focused solely on AI. They want to interject entrepreneurship across everything they do. When we were talking with them, we were really looking at this saying, ‘Is this a way for us?’ We think that there’s a tremendous amount of opportunity to study family firms in that region and grow the reach of Jim Moran College.”
Ethical practices are central to all LEAD Lab activities. According to Liguori: “Ethics is the foundation on which we work. Everything we do complies with ethical principles and university policy.”
For more details about ongoing projects or involvement opportunities at Florida State University’s LEAD Lab, visit https://jimmorancollege.fsu.edu/research/labs/lead-lab.
