Ayman El Tarabishy

Dr. Ayman El Tarabishy is a Teaching Professor at the George Washington University School of Business, President of ICSB, and Chief Editor of the Journal for Small Business Management.

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New Addition Published September 12

A new series titled: The Measure of Nations by Dr. Ayman El Tarabishy

Part 5 of the Series September 12, 2026

5 columns

The Measure of Nations

In 1934 Simon Kuznets handed the United States Senate the instrument that became GDP — and warned, on the same page, that it could not tell you whether life was going well. The warning was in the founding document. For ninety years we have behaved as though it wasn't.

›If You Were a Minister ›Something You Did ›What Kennedy Forgot to Ask For ›The Man Who Attacked His Own Numbers ›The Number That Came With a Warning

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If You Were a Minister

A minister gets two numbers every Monday and knows what to do with both. A third one arrives and she stops reading. It does not tell her the country is struggling. It tells her she has been solving the wrong half of it. Picture a minister on a Monday morning with two numbers in front of her. The first is GDP. It went up a little. She knows what to do with that one. There is a paragraph in a speech already written around it. The second is her country's human development position. It held. She knows what to do with that one too. Neither number has ever made her uneasy. Not because the country…

2026-09-12 · The Measure of NationsRead this column

Commentary

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2026-09-19•Ayman Eltarabishy

The Socratic AI, three years later

Permission was never the question. What we teach is. Three years after I argued against banning AI in the classroom, higher education has accepted that half. The harder half is what replaces the ban.

2026-07-29•Ayman Eltarabishy

The business plan was never the point

A student can now produce a market analysis, a financial model, and a brand identity in an afternoon. AI did not create the gap between the polished document and the actual founder. It collapsed the cost of the document to nearly zero and made the gap impossible to ignore.

2026-07-23•Ayman Eltarabishy

The Builder's Dilemma

The UN MSMESs day is the world's. The making of it belongs to the makers. This is the story of both.

2026-07-21•Ayman Eltarabishy

Five Million Founders. One Missing Question

America just set a record for new business applications, and I am excited by it. But as a professor and President of ICSB, my job is to ask what the numbers do not answer. Are five million founders flourishing, or escaping? A response to the New York Times.

2026-07-20•Ayman Eltarabishy

What Comes After GDP and HDI?

GDP measured what we produce. HDI measured the foundations of a good life. The next measure has to capture something both leave out. A look at the question behind my new work with Ki-Chan Kim and ICSB, from Washington to Seoul to the ICSB-OECD SME World Forum in Paris.

2026-07-17•Ayman Eltarabishy

The Day Small Business Was Heard in Congress

The U.S. Congress issued a Congressional Proclamation honoring ICSB, the 2026 World Congress at GW, and our historic Day at the United States Congress. A reflection on what this recognition means after 70 years of championing small business.

Today's Dispatch

By July 2026, my work over the last decade began to feel less like a series of professional obligations and more like a necessary shift in how we understand the entrepreneurial spirit.❖Ki-Chan Kim and I looked back at our efforts to center the individual in the entrepreneurial story, we realized our framework was ready to move from theory to a shared movement.❖In The Idea of a Human-Centered Entrepreneurship Summit , we explored the possibility of gathering global leaders in South Korea to refine this vision.❖After seeing the impact of the HCE Index, it became clear that we need a dedicated space where researchers, policymakers, and founders can grapple with what it means to build an economy that treats entrepreneurs as people first, rather than as mere economic units.❖This momentum took on a more personal dimension when I read the official document honoring the International Council for Small Business in The Day Small Business Was Heard in Congress .❖That congressional proclamation was not just a piece of paper; it was a recognition of seventy years of effort by thousands of educators and scholars who believed that small business owners deserved a seat at the table.❖Standing in the halls of Congress, I felt the weight of that history and our ongoing responsibility to keep pushing for better, more human representation in public policy.❖Being in those chambers forced me to think deeply about the metrics we use to judge our collective success.❖We have spent too long relying on outdated tools that only tell half the story.❖I wrote What Comes After GDP and HDI? to challenge the status quo, arguing that while production and health statistics are essential, they do not capture the actual human experience of flourishing.❖By July 2026, my work over the last decade began to feel less like a series of professional obligations and more like a necessary shift in how we understand the entrepreneurial spirit.❖Ki-Chan Kim and I looked back at our efforts to center the individual in the entrepreneurial story, we realized our framework was ready to move from theory to a shared movement.❖In The Idea of a Human-Centered Entrepreneurship Summit , we explored the possibility of gathering global leaders in South Korea to refine this vision.❖After seeing the impact of the HCE Index, it became clear that we need a dedicated space where researchers, policymakers, and founders can grapple with what it means to build an economy that treats entrepreneurs as people first, rather than as mere economic units.❖This momentum took on a more personal dimension when I read the official document honoring the International Council for Small Business in The Day Small Business Was Heard in Congress .❖That congressional proclamation was not just a piece of paper; it was a recognition of seventy years of effort by thousands of educators and scholars who believed that small business owners deserved a seat at the table.❖Standing in the halls of Congress, I felt the weight of that history and our ongoing responsibility to keep pushing for better, more human representation in public policy.❖Being in those chambers forced me to think deeply about the metrics we use to judge our collective success.❖We have spent too long relying on outdated tools that only tell half the story.❖I wrote What Comes After GDP and HDI? to challenge the status quo, arguing that while production and health statistics are essential, they do not capture the actual human experience of flourishing.❖

July 2026

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