Global Award for Entrepreneurship Research

At a seminar on 23 October 2008, IFN and its partners FSF and Nutek launched the Global Award for Entrepreneurship Research. The award, which will be given annually, honors outstanding research contributions furthering our understanding of the role and importance of entrepreneurship and small business development. The research award, which is the foremost in its kind in the world, consists of a prize sum of 100 000 Euros and the statuette “The Hand of God”, created by Carl Milles. The extensive prize sum has become possible thanks to a generous donation by the Swedish entrepreneur and industrialist Rune Andersson and his holding company Mellby Gård.

Global Award for Entrepreneurship Research is an upgrading of the FSF-NUTEK Award, which has been awarded since1996. As a new partner, IFN will focus on further increasing the quality in the nomination and selection process. An editor, Dr Mikael Stenkula, is responsible for this process at IFN.

The first award winner of the Global Award for Entrepreneurship Research will be announced at the FSF’s Annual Conference (“Small Business Days”) in the city of Örebro on January 28–29, 2009.
During the seminar, speeches were held by the donor Rune Andersson, Staffan Larsson, Director and Head of Development Division, Nutek, Pontus Braunerhjelm, CEO of FSF, and Magnus Henrekson, CEO of IFN and Chairman of the Prize Committee.

Rune Andersson pointed out that the Global Award for Entrepreneurship Research stands out, in a positive sense, when compared to other requests for support that he receives. “I seldom come across something that is as dear to my heart as this project. It is imperative to have a research-backed basis for informed political decisions”, Rune Andersson said in his speech.

“The role of entrepreneurship and individual entrepreneurs for job creation and growth is an underresearched area. For an issue to be taken seriously in policy discussions it needs to be thoroughly researched”, Magnus Henrekson said.