Call for Papers: The 8th Uddevalla Symposium & the 8th McGill International Entrepreneurship Conference

The 8th Uddevalla Symposium & the 8th McGill International Entrepreneurship Conference
on
Innovations and Entrepreneurship in Functional Regions

15-17 September 2005

to take place at the University of Trollhättan/Uddevalla in Uddevalla, Sweden

CALL FOR PAPERS

Initial Proposal and Abstract Submission Deadline: March 15, 2005

Completed Papers Submission Deadline for Conference Presentation: August 10, 2005

Technological development and fast structural adjustments have characterized industrial economies for more than a hundred years, and still they feature pronounced structures. One fundamental observation is that economic activities are clustered in space, i.e., clustered in specific functional regions. According to many authors the geographic concentration of production is evidence for the pervasive influence of some kind of increasing returns. While the understanding of the effects of increasing returns due to internal economies of scale at the firm level as well as external economies of scale at the industry level and the urban level is well developed, much less is known about the dynamic processes that drive the concentration of economic activities to specific functional regions. It is obvious that attempts to explain these dynamic processes must take their starting point in the conditions for innovation and entrepreneurship in different functional regions as well as in the mobility behaviour of labour, in particular skilled labour, firms and entrepreneurs. The purpose of the 8th Uddevalla Symposium and the 8th McGill International Entrepreneurship Conference is to create an arena where new theoretical and empirical analyses of these dynamic processes can be presented and discussed. Within the overall theme of "Innovations and Entrepreneurship in Functional Regions" the symposium will be organized around five sub-themes:

1. International Entrepreneurship
2. Innovation, Entrepreneurship Policy and Regional Development
3. Entrepreneurship in the Public Sector and in the Non-Profit Sector
4. Innovation, Academic Entrepreneurship and High Technology Firms in Functional Regions
5. SMEs, Immigrant Entrepreneurship and Local Economic Development