The Center for Entrepreneurial Thinking grew out of the lifetime of work professor Stevenson has spent in the field of entrepreneurship and an independent study undertaken by Eric Sinoway and Stevenson during Sinoway’s time as a student at Harvard.

What began as a creative study focused on how universities can operate more entrepreneurially between a professor and a student grew into a professional relationship when Stevenson hired Sinoway upon his graduation – and then into a decades-long friendship and ongoing set of business and academic collaborations.

Inspired by Stevenson’s remarkable career and perspective on taking control of all aspects of one’s life and career by thinking entrepreneurially, Sinoway wrote a book titled Howard’s Gift: Uncommon Wisdom to Inspire Your Life’s Work to capture and share what he describes as lessons from “the wisest person he ever met.”

The interest in Howard’s Gift—by corporations that adopted it for employee engagement and training, universities that integrated it into their curriculum, and individuals who followed it as a guide for their life’s path—attracted entrepreneurial thinkers globally and led Stevenson and Sinoway to co-found the Center for Entrepreneurial Thinking.