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Dear Entrepreneurship scholars:

Below please find a call for papers for a special issue of Industrial and Corporate Change on "New Developments in Innovation and Entrepreneurial Ecosystems" (see https://academic.oup.com/icc/pages/About).  I am co-editing this special issue with Professors Maryann Feldman (University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill) and Mike Wright (Imperial College Business School), along with Professor David Teece (UC-Berkeley) as the ICC editor . 

Best regards,

Don Siegel

Industrial and Corporate Change

Call for Papers for a Special Issue on: 

New Developments in Innovation and Entrepreneurial Ecosystems

Co-editors:

Maryann Feldman, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill

Donald Siegel, Arizona State University

Mike Wright, Imperial College Business School

Industrial and Corporate Change editor:

David Teece, University of California, Berkeley

An innovation ecosystem is typically defined as the full set of agents, institutions, activities, and surrounding culture relating to technological innovation.  Innovation ecosystems are also conceived in institutional, geographic, economic, industrial, or entrepreneurial terms and at different levels of aggregation (e.g., firm, university, region, and national levels). In recent years, we have witnessed a substantial rise in academic interest in this topic, especially in the analysis of entrepreneurial ecosystems.

For example, given the rise of technology commercialization at universities, via patenting, licensing, research joint ventures with private companies, and start-up creation, many academics and policymakers have weighed in on the development and expansion of entrepreneurial ecosystems at research universities.  Some key agents, institutions, and initiatives defining such ecosystems include faculty, post-docs, students, alumni, technology transfer offices, science and technology parks, incubators/accelerators, venture capitalists and angel investors, alumni commercialization funds, and a plethora of entrepreneurship programs and centers on campus. 

We also know that ecosystems are evolving, complex, diverse, and potentially quite fragile.  The open innovation movement and a growing consensus on the importance of collaborative research and the role of networks are also having a major impact on how academics analyze innovation ecosystems.  These trends have critical managerial and policy implications. The special issue seeks to bring together papers that address these issues. Some themes that papers in the proposed special issue might address are:

·         How should we characterize an innovation or entrepreneurial ecosystem?  Is there an appropriate taxonomy?

·         How do we evaluate the effectiveness of an innovation or entrepreneurial ecosystem? 

·         What is the role of public-private partnerships in such ecosystems? 

·         To what extent are innovation and entrepreneurial ecosystems different from biological ecosystems?

·         How do management theories, such as evolutionary theory, dynamic capabilities, and the resource-based view apply to the concept of innovation and entrepreneurial ecosystems? 

·         How do new developments in innovation and entrepreneurial ecosystems relate to national innovation systems?

·         How do "national systems of entrepreneurship" (Acs, Autio, and Szerb (2014)) relate to national innovation systems?

·         How are university-industry collaborations in such ecosystems negotiated and structured? What is their duration? How stable are these arrangements?

·         How do the roles of universities vary across innovation and entrepreneurial ecosystems and over time?

·         What is the life-cycle and longevity of innovation and entrepreneurial ecosystems? How do they renew themselves?

·         How do universities formulate and implement entrepreneurial/technology commercialization strategies in ecosystems?

·         How does the rise of such ecosystems affect the traditional academic culture of "open science"? What will the long term effects be for universities?

·         What is the impact of such ecosystems on economic growth at the regional and national levels?

·         What are the appropriate public policies to support such ecosystems?

·         How do intellectual property rights influence such ecosystems? 

·         What is the role of national/federal labs in such ecosystems?

·         What are the implications for geographical configurations of innovation and entrepreneurial ecosystems of open science?

·         How are innovation and entrepreneurial ecosystems 'coordinated'?

Editorial Process for the Special Issue

Scholars interested in the special issue should submit an extended abstract to the Guest Editors by July 1, 2017.  The abstract should be a maximum of three pages and contain a description of the research question addressed, data sources, and proposed methodology. If possible, the nature of the arguments and findings should be previewed. 

Authors whose abstracts are accepted will be invited to present a full paper at a special issue workshop to be held in conjunction with the 2017 Technology Transfer Society Meetings at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. on November 2-November 4, 2017.  Papers presented at this workshop should be suitable for immediate submission to external reviewers. Based on the Guest Editors' comments and those of an assigned discussant at the workshop, authors will be asked to re-submit their papers for review by the Guest Editors and external reviewers, with final decisions made on the next round.  Papers based on a wide range of methodologies are welcome, including survey research, fieldwork in the form of qualitative or quantitative case studies, and the use of archival data.  To submit your abstract for consideration, please email it to Professor Mike Wright at mike.wright@imperial.ac.uk and put "ICC Ecosystem Abstract" in the subject line.