Entrepreneurship researchers participating in international conferences

​Babson College Entrepreneurship Research Conference 10–13 June 2015

 

The annual Babson College Entrepreneurship Research Conference was held in the outskirts of Boston, in Natick (MA) in June. As usual, the conference gathered together entrepreneurship scholars with years of experience and junior researchers with new impetus. Throughout the years, the conference has been compact with its 350 participant, and it is known for the conversational atmosphere and networking opportunities.

 

The University of Turku, School of Economics and its Entrepreneurship research group has been well represented at the conference. This year, senior researcher Pekka Stenholm attended the conference. He presented a research paper (Stenholm, P. – Nielsen, MS. – Klyver, K. (2015) Emotional support and passion matters: how emotional support impacts survival through entrepreneurial passion) on how obtaining public financial support impacts entrepreneurs’ passion and early-stage survival. The paper is conducted in collaboration with researchers from the University of Southern Denmark. The initial results suggest that the perceived positive emotional support, even as a small financial support, enhance entrepreneurs’ passion for entrepreneurship. This experience is mediated, in particular through the passion for developing the firm which again improves the early-stage survival among entrepreneurs.

 

Additional information about the research paper: pekka.stenholm@utu.fi  

 

 

 

60th Annual ICSB World Conference was held in Dubai, UAE on 6–9 June. The theme of this year’s conference was Entrepreneurship at a Global Crossroads and featured a variety of opportunities for conference participants to learn, network and share. The conference consisted in total of 7 plenary sessions.

 

Sanna Suomalainen from TSE Entrepreneurship participated in this conference by presenting a paper Suomalainen, S. & Stenholm, P. (2015). The Recognition of Entrepreneurship within a Multiversity. Although creating entrepreneurial mindset and culture in different academic fields has become an important assignment in European higher education policy, little attention has been paid on the grass-root level, sometimes even normative institutionalized settings’ influence on this mission. This building block was addressed in this paper by focusing on investigating the recognition of entrepreneurship within a multiversity. The particular aim of the paper was to analyze how the perceptions of entrepreneurship vary among students within a multiversity. 61st Annual ICSB World Conference will be organized in New York on 15–18 June 2016.

 

Additional information about the research paper from Sanna Suomalainen (sanna.suomalainen@utu.fi)  

 

 

 

23rd Nordic Academy of Management (NFF) conference was held in Copenhagen, CBS on 12–14 August. The purpose of the 23rd Nordic Academy of Management (NFF) conference is to strengthen the Nordic network in research areas of Business and Economics. The conference provides a meeting place for scholars, from the wide range of sub-disciplines within Business Studies. The theme of this year’s conference was Business in Society which embraces a context-driven, problem-focused and interdisciplinary research with the complex societal and business problems in contemporary society. The conference consisted in total of 17 tracks.

 

Laura Niemi from TSE Entrepreneurship participated in this conference and presented two papers. The first paper, Niemi L. & Kantola J. (2015) Creating value in contemporary small business environment, is a product of VIPSE (2012-2015) research project. The second paper, Niemi L., Aaltonen S. & Lepistö T. (2015) Negotiating and making sense of joint value proposition as part of service development process, is a product of Agile-research project (www.utu.fi/agile).

 

Both papers related to the value co-creation and innovation management and drew attention to how small companies can make a difference. Currently the question about knowledge and resources has come into focus, and different notions of interaction in networks, collaborations, exchange and user interaction is a growing area of interest. The track in which the papers were presented also involved several different types of empirical studies using different types of theories about innovation management and value creation.

 

Additional information about the research papers from Laura Niemi (laura.niemi@utu.fi)