---
id: "pisquared:interview/goldfarb-brent"
type: "Pi-Squared interview"
title: "Anita McGahan in conversation with Brent Goldfarb"
url: "https://pisquared.theburnescenter.org/interviews/goldfarb-brent"
date: "2026-03-31"
people: ["Anita McGahan","Brent Goldfarb"]
summary: "Brent Goldfarb is Dean’s Professor of Entrepreneurship and Academic Director of the Dingman Center at the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of..."
recording: "https://vimeo.com/1179063031"
source: "Pi-Squared (pisquared.theburnescenter.org), The Burnes Center for Social Change"
licence: "none stated"
---

# Anita McGahan in conversation with Brent Goldfarb

Brent Goldfarb, Dean’s Professor of Entrepreneurship, University of Maryland · 31 March 2026

## About the guest

Brent Goldfarb is Dean’s Professor of Entrepreneurship and Academic Director of the Dingman Center at the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business. He holds a PhD from Stanford University, where he studied economics. Brent also holds a degree from Tel Aviv University in economics and computer science. His research bridges the areas of entrepreneurship, economics, strategy, management, and finance. Recent projects include a book on bubbles and crashes in new technology industries, with a focus on how narrative – stories – influence entrepreneurial investment and beliefs. He also studies how team composition affects entrepreneurial outcomes. Brent also develops solutions to the reliability crisis in science. In his teaching, he has developed a “Real Entrepreneurship” course structure where students run real businesses. Brent is a co-founder of a deep tech startup, and is the Academic Director of the Dingman Center for Entrepreneurship at the Smith School.

## Reflections from the interview

**Anita **talks with **Brent Goldfarb**, Dean's Professor of Entrepreneurship and Academic Director of the Dingman Center at the University of Maryland's Smith School of Business. They cover three main topics:

**1. Short-Termism and Innovation** Goldfarb discusses his *Management Science* paper on how short-term investor pressure is causing fewer firms to pursue radical, long-term innovation. Rather than a general decline in breakthrough innovation, the finding is that such innovation is becoming increasingly *concentrated* among a smaller number of firms. He argues that radical innovation requires time to solve the many sub-technological problems that make a breakthrough viable — time that short-term-oriented firms simply don't have.

**2. The Reliability Crisis in Science** Goldfarb reflects on how scientific research suffers from a phenomenon called "optional stopping" — researchers find a promising result and stop looking, which distorts statistical findings. He describes this not as malicious behavior, but as a natural human tendency reinforced by publication incentives. His proposed remedy is for researchers to make more modest claims, treat results as curious starting points rather than definitive conclusions, and triangulate findings with qualitative and historical context.

**3. Entrepreneurship and Inequality** The conversation touches on a paper arguing that entrepreneurship can deepen inequality by luring people — particularly from lower-income backgrounds — into ventures (like gig work) that promise upward mobility but often don't deliver it. Goldfarb acknowledges the concern while noting that no better alternative economic system has been found, and that innovation-driven capitalism has produced remarkable improvements in human welfare and longevity.

The conversation closes with Goldfarb reflecting on what energizes him: the privilege of academic life and his current fascination with epistemology — how we know what we know.

## Related resources

- [Brent’s website at the University of Maryland](https://www.rhsmith.umd.edu/directory/brent-goldfarb)
- [Brent on Google Scholar](https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=xIpumboAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=sra)
- [Brent’s recent paper on the changing nature of corporate innovation](https://pubsonline.informs.org/doi/full/10.1287/mnsc.2022.00857)
- [Dingman Center for Entrepreneurship](https://www.rhsmith.umd.edu/centers/dingman-center)
- [Brent’s paper on replication](https://sms.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/smj.3714)

## Recording

Video: https://vimeo.com/1179063031

## Category

[Where Do We Go From Here?](https://pisquared.theburnescenter.org/category/where-next)

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Original page: https://pisquared.theburnescenter.org/interviews/goldfarb-brent · Licence: none stated