A week of international entrepreneurship research events at Leeds

Three international research events were recently organised and hosted by the Enterprise Centre. The first of these was a two-day mini-conference which focused on advancing entrepreneurship research through diverse philosophical perspectives, including multi-disciplinary approaches. Over 80 researchers attended from the UK, France, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Netherlands, Norway, Slovenia, USA and Canada. The talks from 20 internationally-renowned professors and interactive discussion groups chaired by Enterprise Centre staff during the day focused on a number of important research subjects including gender, employment relations in small firms, venture capitalist relationships, social enterprise in post-disaster regions and entrepreneurship education. Feedback from the event was very positive and as a result a new Entrepreneurship Studies Network has been formed at the Institute of Small Business and Entrepreneurship (ISBE) and a number of future events and academic publications are being planned. To find out more, you can join the group’s new LinkedIn and Mendeley groups.

Later in the week, an ISBE doctoral day was hosted by the Enterprise Centre at Leeds University Business School, with keynote speakers from the UK, Denmark and USA supported by Dr. Richard Tunstall, Dr. Sally Jones and Dr. Matt MacDonald from LEC . This event was attended by 50 doctoral students from across Europe interested in applying qualitative research methods to their research into entrepreneurship and small businesses. Feedback was very positive and participants particularly enjoyed the opportunity to work in discussion groups with others sharing similar concerns.

We were also fortunate to be joined by Professor William B. Gartner, of Clemson University, USA, who is a world-renowned scholar of entrepreneurship. Bill stayed on to provide a keynote speech on entrepreneurial failure and government startup investment policies to the faculty of Leeds University Business School as well as a special small tutorial with Leeds’ own PhD students.

Overall it had been a busy but successful week which involved the Enterprise Centre in supporting the development of both new international research communities and the development of future scholars. These have resulted in a number of opportunities to develop future research activities which directly support our research-informed courses, such as the new MSc Enterprise programme which begins in September 2013.