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Entrepreneurship and Collaboration Conference

University of Colorado – Boulder

Please join us in Boulder, Colorado for a conference aimed at bringing together scholars from across disciplines to discuss the central role that collaboration can and does play for phenomena and theory related to entrepreneurship.  

Collaboration has always played a central role in entrepreneurship, as resource constrained entrepreneurs and young ventures strive to leverage resources that they do not necessarily own or control.  Recent developments such as the explosion of accelerators, crowdsourcing and funding platforms, and emerging hybrid organizational forms present new opportunities related to how we conceptualize collaboration, and notions about firm boundaries and the value creation activities that take place within and across these boundaries.

At this conference, we aim to bring together scholars whose work has primarily focused on collaboration in its many forms to discuss applications of this work to the realm of entrepreneurship as it is evolving, as well as entrepreneurship scholars with research and interests in the role of collaboration in entrepreneurial decisions, dynamics and outcomes.  The conference will include keynote panels and presentations from scholars such as Kathy Eisenhardt (Stanford University), Gillian Hadfield (Univ of Southern California's Gould School of Law)  and Ben Gomes-Casseres (Brandeis), as well as more traditional sessions.

We encourage work that, for example, examines:

•    Collaborative organizational forms (e.g., accelerators) in the context of entrepreneurship and innovation, and their outcomes, processes, structures and challenges (e.g., intellectual property protection, contracting, motivation and incentive alignment, and knowledge externalities);

•    How collaboration with different types of investors affects value creation and appropriation in entrepreneurial ventures;

•    The role of networks in opportunity creation, discovery, and exploitation; or

•    How collaboration affects resource acquisition, access to markets, governance, and capability development trajectories.

Our goal is to bring together scholars from the fields of management, entrepreneurship, law, and finance at this conference to exchange insights across fields to advance research in this area.  As such, we are seeking early stage work as well as more advanced projects.

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES AND REQUIREMENTS:

We are accepting two forms of submissions:

--Paper proposals:  Please submit an abstract of up to 1000 words on current research on this topic.  Proposals selected will be presented in paper or poster sessions. Only original, unpublished work, please.   (If you prefer to submit a full paper, that is also acceptable.)

--Panel proposals:  Proposals for panel sessions should include the topic the panel will cover, a list of participants and their contribution to the panel, and a summary of the key objective of the panel.  Panel proposals should not exceed 5 pages (single spaced).

Please visit our conference website for additional details and to submit your work:  http://www.colorado.edu/ecc/