Mini Tracks – Calls for Papers

Entrepreneurship and Policy-making
Open Innovation in High-tech Sectors
Venture Capital, Entrepreneurship, and Economic Development
Entrepreneurial Learning
Chinese Entrepreneurship: Institutions, New Venture Creation and Growth
Service Innovation and Design

Mini track on Entrepreneurship and Policy-making
Track co-chairs: Claire Auplat, Imperial College, London, UK and Dr Renaud Redien-Collot, Advancia, the School of Entrepreneurship of  Paris Chamber of Commerce, France

Recent research in entrepreneurial cognition has started emphasizing the influence of policy-making on entrepreneurship. However, there has until now not been a systematic analysis of the nature of the interactions between the two. This track aims to be a meeting point for research initiatives that seek to shed some light on how policy-making may foster, or conversely impede, entrepreneurship.

Several orientations of research can be imagined, and we welcome submissions coming from various disciplinary or methodological horizons. We are keen to encourage practitioners to contribute as well as academics and we would like to encourage proposals dealing in particular with one of the following aspects.

Topics include, but are not limited to:-

• Entrepreneurship and regulatory issues
• Environmental policies and ecopreneurship
• Entrepreneurship and development policies
• Entrepreneurship in new technologies and risk management
• Entrepreneurship and innovation policies
  
  

The list above is not comprehensive as policy-making may cover a wide range of topics relating to entrepreneurship. We welcome contributions in the form of empirical or theoretical papers, surveys as well as case studies. We particularly look forward to submissions that may contribute to the emergence of new business models.

For mini track submission details, see the Ucall for papersU page

Claire Auplat


Renaud Redien-Collot

Mini track on Open innovation in high-tech sectors – how to engage innovative European SMEs?
Track co-chairs: Brendan Galbraith and Professor Maurice Mulvenna, University of Ulster, Northern Ireland

Internet-enabled technologies and emergent disruptive platform technologies have challenged existing business models in numerous market sectors and offered innovation opportunities to a variety of stakeholders – not least SMEs. High-tech services and products are becoming more complex with shorter life-spans and increasingly more companies are seeking out value added partners to maintain and grow their portfolio. In this climate, an apparent new model of open innovation has stimulated the interest of company CEOs, policy-makers and academics. The open innovation model is essentially an anti-thesis of the traditional linear, staged model of innovation. Instead of having an internal and closed system of innovation, companies are instructed to open up their innovation processes and engage with the external environment in a purposive way. The open innovation model has been championed by large multinational corporations such as Proctor and Gamble, IBM and Nokia. In contrast, there is still a dearth of empirical work that explains how innovative SMEs have added value in the open innovation landscape. Agile SMEs have a key role in high-tech innovation and improving our understanding of how the most innovative SMEs engage in this process is important. Moreover, there is much interest to unearth how policy-makers, practitioners, industry and other intermediaries can promote and facilitate the involvement of increased numbers of innovative SMEs, especially, in relation to exploiting emerging platform technologies and addressing important EC lead markets such as healthcare, energy and others. This track is accessible to a variety of stakeholders including, academics, business owners, policy-makers and practitioners, and welcomes illustrative case studies/EC projects, empirical research studies, policy research and theoretical contributions.

Topics include, but are not limited to: -

• Policy considerations to facilitate innovative SMEs to engage in collaborative and open innovation.
• Case studies or Innovation projects (EC or other) that illustrate how SMEs engage in open innovation
• SME involvement in open innovation intermediaries such as the living labs (ENoLL)
• Theoretical papers that contribute to our understanding of SME involvement in open innovation activities
• Case studies of how emerging high-tech markets and platform technologies demand more collaborative innovations and are ripe for innovative SMEs.
  
  

For mini track submission details, see the Ucall for papersU page

Brendan Galbraith


Maurice Mulvenna

Mini track on Venture Capital, Entrepreneurship, and Economic Development
Track co-chairs: Liang Guo, Ina Freeman and Sebastien Tran, Groupe Sup de Co La Rochelle, France

The mini track looks to accessing the acquired wisdom of participants regarding the financing of small and medium enterprises (SME) to drive the economic engines necessary to move into the future. With 99 percent of companies in the European Union (EU) SMEs, governments acknowledge their national value by providing funding and programs designed to assist them. However, this limited funding often is not sufficient. Given the limitations on banks in the economic crisis of 2008, entrepreneurs look to venture capitalists and angel financers for help. By providing the crucial funding for economic development by creating new businesses, jobs, products, and sources of income that provide expendable income to stimulate the economy, venture capital (VC) and angel financing facilitate not only the development of national commerce, but provide growth opportunities for investors, innovators, and society-at-large. The VC industry serves as the growth engine of today's new and knowledge-based economies by pulling capital from pension funds, endowments, individuals, and corporations. Angel financing facilitates the development of new ventures and new products that may not fit the high-yield parameters of VC, but proffer the means through which innovation and 'out-of-the-box' thinking parlays the next cutting-edge concept into an every-day reality.

While there is a vast body of research on VCs and less on angel financing across a number of disciplines, most of these studies are North American-based. The VC and angel financing industries in much of Europe remains largely unexplored, despite the UK ranking as the world's third and France the fourth largest destination for VC investments in 2006 after the United States and China (Kollewe, 2007). Given the cultural differences between the United States of America and Europe, we wonder if the existing literature encapsulates the experience of the Venture Capitalist, the angel financer, and the entrepreneurship in Europe. Thus, we invite exploration of the relationships among VC, entrepreneurship and economic development.

The track opens a new facet within your agenda by looking at the management of Entrepreneurships funded through both Venture Capital and Angel financing. These modalities of funding present unique challenges, especially throughout Europe due to the many differences among the 27 countries. As there is little research in this area, we hope to stimulate interest into looking at one of the growth engines necessary to the economy of the EU.

Topics include, but are not limited to:-

• What is the management of VC and/or angel financing in Europe? Does it compare with existing literature from the United States?
• What are the behaviours of Venture Capitalists and/or Angel Financers in Europe? That is, do they promote good management for the entrepreneurship?
• How international is VC and/or angel financing in its practices including management, financing, and operation?
• Does VC or angel financing promote entrepreneurship in Europe?
• What impact do VC and/or angel financed entrepreneurships have on the European marketplace?
• Does the VC and/or angel industry promote economic development in different countries in the EU?

For mini track submission details, see the Ucall for papersU page

Liang Guo

Mini track on Entrepreneurial Learning
Track co-chairs: Dr Alexandros Kakouris, University of Athens, Greece and Dr Heather Fulford, Robert Gordon University, Scotland, UK

The mini track will seek to discuss aspects of entrepreneurial learning. Entrepreneurial learning concerns both the way that entrepreneurs learn and methods of Entrepreneurship Education which is an increasingly important field worldwide. Entrepreneurs are thought to learn from experience, thus, “learning from failure” or “trial and error methods” are relevant. Moreover, according to the Kirznerian approach to entrepreneurship, “entrepreneurial alertness” is also important and possibly related to innovation. Modelling in decision making and the way that entrepreneurs react or plan activities in practice is a key topic of the track. Case studies worldwide may reveal key entrepreneurial mechanisms. Recent research focuses on styles, either entrepreneurial or learning, as a means to understand entrepreneurial behaviour.

Furthermore, Entrepreneurship Education has to define and optimize its procedures. University entrepreneurship is different to academic entrepreneurship that usually refers to the diffusion of new technology through university spin-off companies. In university entrepreneurship, inexperienced students follow practical ways to learn about business venturing through action learning. A need for innovative teaching methods has been addressed by several authors and examples include: game, social, situational, peer-to-peer learning. Trainers’ training is also important for the effective provision of Entrepreneurship Education. Discussion of appropriate learning environments (offline and online) is also an important theme in entrepreneurial learning. Finally, the motives of participating students, the impact of entrepreneurial courses as well as methods of assessment complement the topics of the mini track.

The importance of the track is to involve both educators and entrepreneurship researchers in a discussion on understanding and enhancing entrepreneurial learning. Topics include, but are not limited to:-

• Entrepreneurial learning from experience
• Fostering entrepreneurial alertness
• Creativity, heuristics, intuition, cognition and decision making
• Game and organizational learning in entrepreneurship
• Innovative teaching in Entrepreneurship Education
• Assessment and impact of Entrepreneurship Education

For mini track submission details, see the Ucall for papersU page

Alexandros Kakouris


Heather Fulford

Mini track on Chinese Entrepreneurship: Institutions, New Venture Creation and Growth
Track co-chairs: Dr Jun Li, University of Essex, UK and Professor Chunlin Si , Fundan University, China

China as an emerging economy is characterised by an increasing market orientation, an expanding economic foundation, and high rate of entrepreneurship in an environment in which formal institutions are evolving. North (1990) and Ahlstrom & Bruton (2006) asserted that entrepreneurial goals, behaviours, and effectiveness of actions are not only constrained by institutional and cultural forces in their environment but they also enabled, as opportunities are opened for those who can understand and make the most of the local institutional regime. In a sense, entrepreneurs are embedded in ongoing institutional structures that have an effect on their activities and act to shape their institutional environments. In China, formal and informal institutional actions have different impacts than those in the USA and Europe.  Tan (1996) characterised the Chinese entrepreneurial environment in the early economic reform period as one with weak market structures, poorly specified property rights, un-codified information, unspecified regulations, and lack of institutional support. Peng (2000) depicted the uniqueness of China’s institutional environment as a combination of socialist legacy, high context culture and transition economy. Krug and Hendrischke (2002) described the Chinese institutional environment as possessing a high degree of non-tradable inputs and resources, complemented by a lack of contractual security and relational risk, ill-functioning information markets and relatively weak property rights.  Paradoxically, the complexity of, and lack of stability in, institutional environments offered considerable opportunities for entrepreneurs to experiment and explore and inflicted a range of penalties upon individuals who stepped out of the line. Evidence from the literature shows that the exact nature of institutional forces in China is not yet well conceptualised (Ahlstrom & Bruton, 2006; Bruton et al, 2008). This mini track would call for papers to explore issues such as how institutions impact transaction costs, resources, and cognitive maps of entrepreneurs. There is a possibility that Journal of Chinese Entrepreneurship can sponsor a best paper for this track and that selected papers can be considered for publication in this peer-reviewed journal.

Topics include, but are not limited to:-

• Regulatory environment, new venture creation and growth
• Institutions, cognitive maps and behaviours of entrepreneurs
• Institutional entrepreneurship and evolution of institutional structures
• Culture, networks and entrepreneurship
• Institutions, entrepreneurship and economic growth

For mini track submission details, see the Ucall for papersU page

Jun Li


Chunlin Si

Mini track on Service Innovation and Design
Track chair: Jukka Ojasalo, Laurea University of Applied Sciences, Finland

This track focuses on advances and contemporary issues in service innovation and design. High quality papers of theoretical as well as managerial value in all areas of service innovation and design are invited. Services cover about 70% of the GNP of Western countries. As manufacturing industries rapidly move to the cost efficient Asian countries, service industries have even greater importance in European, USA and Japanese economies. While service industries drive the success of Western countries, innovation drives the success of services industries. The role of service innovation and design is more important than ever. Service innovation and design essentially deals with developing insights into customers, business environment and future trends in services. Most importantly, it is about developing new service concepts and value propositions as well as improving existing ones. Fluent processes and well designed customer interaction are in the heart of excellent customer experience. Efficient and effective earnings models are required for ensuring the long- term success of service innovation in the marketplace. Innovative culture and leadership are needed to enable continuous innovation and learning. Technology, and particularly ICT, is increasingly important element of new services.  This track offers researchers and practitioners an opportunity to present and discuss latest research on service innovation and design.

Topics include, but are not limited to:-

• Service concept development: methods in understanding and anticipating customers needs, involving customers in service innovation process, earnings models, processes, resources, stakeholders, service recovery approaches, testing and prototyping services, integration with existing service portfolio, etc.
• Designing service interaction and customer experience
• Technology in service innovation
• Managing the service innovation process, innovative culture and leadership, enhancement of creativity
• Cases of innovation in different services industries: industrial services, professional and knowledge intensive services, creative industries, travel and leisure, public services, IT-services, banking, etc.
• Education in service innovation and design

For mini track submission details, see the Ucall for papersU page

Jukka Ojasalo

Publication opportunity
Papers accepted for the conference will be published in the conference proceedings, subject to author registration. Selected papers will be considered for a special issue of the International Journal of Entrepreneurial Venturing, a journal published by Inderscience.