Dr. Stephen Anderson

Tenaciously Dedicated to Helping Entrepreneurs in Developing Countries Thrive

Dr. Stephen Anderson’s drive and commitment have made him a leading scholar in entrepreneurship and marketing in developing countries. As the inaugural recipient of the Dr. Leonard L. Berry Chair in Services Marketing, Anderson is now poised to deepen Mays’ commitment to developing leaders across the world.

Dr. Stephen Anderson has a profound understanding of what it means to be the underdog. He pulled himself out of poverty through a ferocious intellect and tenacious willpower, so he knows what’s possible — and he’s committed to helping entrepreneurs in emerging countries do the same.

The need is there. Currently, Africa, Asia, and Latin America are home to approximately 400 million small businesses — and these businesses create about 60% of the jobs and 40% of the GDP in their respective nations. “Improvements in these businesses provide a way for entrepreneurs, and the employees they lead, to enhance their lives,” the Mays Business School professor said.

To better understand the inherent challenges facing this group, Anderson— who joined Mays’ faculty in summer 2023 — is doing research and creating business support programs (e.g., training, technology, tools) to help these entrepreneurs thrive. “I’m excited to work on topics with the potential for broader impact,” Anderson explained. “All scholars do research that is impactful in different ways, but for me, there’s always been a need to move beyond focusing on S&P 1500 companies and helping them to get bigger and make more money.”

Planting the Academic Seed

Anderson, who is Canadian, spent his early years in the projects of East Vancouver with his mother and three sisters. “Growing up, my family depended on social systems and welfare,” he remembered. “At some point when I was 7 or 8, it hit me that if I study hard, it’s a way to get out. I became super driven to study, study and study, and play basketball. I realized that I could control how hard I work and how much time I invest so I could make something happen.”

That combination of drive and commitment led to Anderson’s multi-year selection to the all-state basketball team and recognition as his high school’s valedictorian — and he didn’t stop there. The first-generation college student enrolled at the University of Victoria in British Columbia where he majored in economics and international business with plans to pursue a career in business or business law.

However, his path started to shift during his senior year of college when he wanted to participate in a study abroad program to Malaysia but couldn’t afford it. With his characteristic determination, Anderson applied for and received a research grant that funded his trip. His field study compared the differences in consumer behavior between Malaysia’s diverse population of Malays, Indians and Chinese, and Canadians and Americans, which became his undergraduate thesis — and began to lay a different career path. “I initially saw the grant as a means to an end by allowing me to go on this trip — but at the end of it, the professor who sponsored my research told me, ‘You really should think about being an academic,’” Anderson noted. “She planted the seed for my academic career.”

After graduation, Anderson worked in product and business development roles in various early-stage companies, but soon headed to graduate school where he earned two master’s degrees before traveling to the United Kingdom to earn another master’s degree and a Ph.D. from London Business School.

His doctoral work coincided with the early “development economics” movement toward investing in the private sector as a new lever for alleviating poverty — and that emerging area of study aligned with Anderson’s interest in entrepreneurship and marketing in developing countries, as well as his passion for the “raw, real experience” of conducting field studies. Soon, his field work on these topics began to differentiate Anderson, leading academics, policymakers, and NGO and business leaders to take notice.

A Worldwide Focus

Over the years, Anderson’s scope of work has expanded  Since 2010, he’s worked with the World Bank and collaborated with a range of business-support NGOs on research projects across developing economies in Sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America, India and Eastern Europe.

His projects are incredibly varied. One of his areas of focus involves using technology and energy innovations such as green entrepreneurship and digital solutions to stimulate more sustainable and scalable growth in developing economics.

Anderson also has another focus area: doing research and providing business support to develop entrepreneurs’ business skills and managerial capital using a marketing angle. For example, he has organized virtual business coaching for 900 Ugandan entrepreneurs that helped them improve their strategies and sales; in another project, he offered tactical marketing and financial training to South African entrepreneurs that resulted in increased sales and profits.

In another project, he worked with a microfinance institution in Ghana on designing and testing a product innovation for loans. Anderson noticed that some small-scale business owners were using their funds from traditional microfinance loans in areas unrelated to their business. His field research enabled him to see that some of these decisions were caused by internal pressures, such as a medical emergency or a desire to pay for a child’s education, while others were due to external pressures, such as when an abuser takes this money from a female business owner.

To mitigate diversion pressure, Anderson designed a locked loan product, which allows the owner to apply for a loan and designate a business asset for purchase. However, with these loans, the owner never receives cash; instead, the lender buys the piece of identified equipment for the business owner. This specific type of loan has proven to be popular among Ghanan small business owners, with a 12% higher adoption rate than a conventional microloan.

Finding a New Home

Previously on faculty at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business and The University of Texas’ McCombs School of Business, Anderson feels his work is aligned with Mays’ commitment to the Aggie Core Values. “Mays is on this upward trajectory of growth and is sitting in the epicenter of these three cities that are the fastest growing and most interesting economic areas,” he said. “The combination of Mays’ leadership, its focus on growth and its commitment to being fast and aspirational makes it a very dynamic place.”

As the inaugural recipient of the Dr. Leonard L. Berry Chair in Services Marketing, he also appreciates the school’s willingness to seek out new research paradigms. “It was really humbling that they thought of me when I am this young in my career,” he said. “To be in a group that has an interest in making a societal or broader kinds of impact beyond just business is important to me.”

Unwilling to rest comfortably on his laurels, Anderson already has begun contemplating his next steps. “My dream is to get through this research program I’m finishing now and then think about how to use all these different studies, lessons, and connections to build some sort of social enterprise in the Ed-Fin-tech space in 10 years,” he said. “Is there some way to scale up the best of all this research and have a bigger impact outside of just academic papers or policymaker advising? I don’t know what that looks like yet — but I do know that I’m passionate to get there one day.”