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SAVE THE DATE

3rd International Conference on New Business Models
"New business models with impact: focused, scalable and international".
27-28 June, 2018  | Sofia, Bulgaria

After another successful edition of NBM @ Graz 2017, we are thrilled to announce NBM @ Sofia 2018 conference under the topic of "New Business Models with impact: focused, scalable and international". The conference will take place at The University of National and World Economy in Sofia, Bulgaria on June 27^th and 28^th 2018.  Authors are invited to submit their extended abstracts of 700-1200 words by 28 February 2018 to NBMSofia@vub.be.

Background

Society faces a broad range of sustainability challenges (environmental, social, health, energy, and so on), even to which the United Nations set up the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development Goals (SDG's), calling governments, business and civil society to transform the world into a more sustainable place (United Nations, 2017). For businesses, it is no longer a question "whether" they should endeavour for more than just financial values,  but "how" they can integrate multiple value creation with respect to, for example, ecological or social values (Jonker, 2016). This shift in meaning and focus of value creation brings forth not only possible alterations in current existing business models, but also the conception of "new business models", which can also be referred to as sustainable business models.

Rauter (2017) explains the meaning of NBM, sustainable business models or business models for sustainability by referring to Schaltegger et al. (2016). "A business model for sustainability helps describing, analysing, managing, and communicating (i) a company's sustainable value proposition to its customers, and all other stakeholders, (ii) how it creates and delivers this value, (iii) and how it captures economic value while maintaining or regenerating natural, social, and economic capital beyond its organizational boundaries." And whilst NBM follow the principles of collaborative, shared and multiple value creation (Jonker, 2016), it is very much clear that NBM are set on creating an impact on society.

Even though research on business models benefits from a broad range of research streams, the aspects of impact and scalability of NBM still holds a lot of questions. Indeed, the realization, increase, measuring and reporting (amongst other things) towards the classical business model of financial value creation have been extensively documented over the years; however, for NBMs, which aim for creating collaborative, shared and multiple value, to a lesser extent. Even though NBMs challenge our current understanding of business models, they hold promise to deal with socio-economic challenges currently left undealt with (Dentchev et al., 2017). Next to this, whilst scalable solutions towards sustainability challenges seem intrinsically very much welcome (who would not appreciate more or better solutions towards a problem?), it seems to be very difficult to choose, create and maintain these solutions.

Types of contributions solicited

We want to keep the tradition for this international conference on NBM regarding the submissions. We're looking forward to receive:

• Theoretical, conceptual, empirical papers.
• Literature reviews, qualitative and quantitative research.
• from a broad variety of scholarly disciplines (e.g., management, entrepreneurship, innovation, environmental studies, organization theory, transition theory, change management).
• and from a broad variety of domains that have been studied in the context of business models (e.g., energy, health, agriculture, food, finance, retail).

With this call for papers, we invite scholars and practitioners to elaborate and contribute, but not limit themselves, to the following research questions:

• How do NBMs realize impact?
• How to increase the impact of NBMs?
• How to measure the impact of NBMs?
• How to report the impact of NBMs?
• How to create international impact with NBMs?
• Under what circumstances do NBMs decrease their impact?
• What are the determinants of scalability of new business models?
• What are the barriers for scalability?
• Small is beautiful – how to focus on resolving local sustainability issues?

Submission Procedures

Authors are invited to submit their extended abstracts of 700-1200 words by 28 February 2018 to NBMSofia@vub.be  while clearly mentioning to which session they want to apply (detailed information about sessions will follow).

Deadlines

Publication Possibilities

Accepted abstracts will be distributed to the conference participants. After the conference, conference participants are invited to revise their ideas and submit papers for the conference proceedings.

Conference participants will have the opportunity to submit to two special issues in Business & Society (IF 3.298) on:

• "Collaborative Cross-Sector Business Models for Sustainability" with guest editors Esben Rahbek Gjerdrum Pedersen (Copenhagen Business School), Florian Lüdeke-Freund (ESCP Europe Business School), Irene Henriques (Schulich School of Business), M. May Seitanidi (Kent Business School) – deadline for full paper submission to the special issue is 1 December 2018.
• "New Perspectives on the Bottom of the Pyramid Strategies" with guest editors Nikolay A. Dentchev (Vrije Universiteit Brussel), Alain Verbeke (U Calgary), Jeremy Hall (Notthingam U), Laura Michelini (LUMSA U), Jenny Hillemann (Vrije Universiteit Brussel) - deadline for full paper submission to the special issue is 1 April 2019

Conference Fee

The conference fee for this international conference in Bulgaria:

Student 135 EUR

Regular 185 EUR

Scholars with Bulgarian Affiliation only 20 EUR

Conference Venue

University of National and World Economy

Address: 1700 Sofia, Student Town, UNWE, Bulgaria

Follow us on Social Media

LinkedIn:
https://www.linkedin.com/company/new-business-models-conference/

Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/International-New-Business-Models-Conference-1048370908637724/  

References

Dentchev, N., Baumgartner, R., Dieleman, H., Jóhannsdóttir, L., Jonker, J., Nyberg, T., ... van Hoof, B. (2016). Embracing the variety of sustainable business models: Social Entrepreneurship, Corporate Intrapreneurship, Creativity, Innovation, and other approaches to sustainability challenges. Journal of Cleaner Production, 113(1), 1-4.

Jonker, J. (2016). New Business Models, creating value together. Doetinchem (NL): Our Common Future Foundation.

Rauter, R. (2017). 2nd International Conference on New Business Models; Call for Contributions.

Schaltegger, S., Lüdeke-Freund, F., Hansen, E.G. (2016). Business Models for Sustainability: A Co-Evolutionary Analysis of Sustainable Entrepreneurship, Innovation, and Transformation. Organization & Environment, 29(3), 264-289.

We are looking forward to seeing you in Sofia!

Best regards,
also on behalf of all the members of the scientific committee and of the entire team,

You can help our social entrepreneurs @ http://platform.vubsocialentrepreneurship.com/