Scholars and policy makers have devoted growing attention to innovative entrepreneurship, i.e. the development of new products/services or new methods to produce/deliver existing goods at a lower cost (Baumol et al., 2007). Academics have centered their investigation on the entrepreneur- and firm-level characteristics that facilitate the identification and exploitation of innovative business ideas (Zahra and Wright, 2011; Autio et al., 2014), whereas policy circles (e.g., OECD, European Commission) have focused on the role of innovative entrepreneurship in favoring new jobs creation and economic growth.
Despite these efforts, there is still a rather poor understanding of innovative entrepreneurship along several dimensions. First, the definition of innovative entrepreneurship is still quite fuzzy (Low & Isserman, 2015). Second, extant literature lacks widely accepted measures of innovative entrepreneurship. As a consequence, current works provide incoherent figures on the size of the phenomenon: the share of innovative ventures on the overall number of new venture ranges from less than 10% to about 50%, depending on the measure used. Finally, there is a compelling need for research about the determinants, the outcomes, and the economic impact of innovative entrepreneurial ventures.
Moving from these premises, the idea and scope of this two-days conference is to bring together the ongoing research and policy debate on innovative entrepreneurship. Discussions will provide an overview of the trends, challenges, and policy implications with the aim of improving our understanding of this complex phenomenon. Paper presentations will be enriched by keynote speeches of leading scholars in the field.
Some broad topics that might be addressed in papers submitted to the conference include:
- Identification and exploitation of innovative business opportunities
- The role of technology in the creation of innovative entrepreneurial ventures
- The role of knowledge and human capital in fostering innovative entrepreneurship
- The sources of finance for innovative ventures
- The organization of innovative entrepreneurship
- Behavioral aspects of innovative entrepreneurship
- The role of universities to stimulate the creation and development of innovative entrepreneurship
- Multi-level policies to promote innovative entrepreneurship
- Innovative entrepreneurship driven by societal challenges