IFN Stockholm Conference 2018 - Entrepreneurship and Innovation: Past, Present and Future

Business sectors in most developed countries have recently struggled with both low productivity growth and lack of dynamism in the innovation process. Entrepreneurship and innovation have long been recognized as a key determinant for economic development and growth. Firms of very modest size have been responsible for most pioneering breakthroughs, and new entrants without a commitment to incumbent technologies have been responsible for a substantial share of truly revolutionary industrial products and processes. Many countries have therefore recently pursued policies that encourage entrepreneurship. Moreover, encouraging individuals to become owners of firms, that is, promoting entrepreneurship, is on the agenda of many politicians.

To advance research in this area, IFN organized, in June 2018, an international two-day conference on “Entrepreneurship and Innovation: past, present and future”. The workshop had two aims. The first was to advance research on both the determinants and the implications of different entrepreneurial activities and changes in entrepreneurial policies. Topics of particular interest include research on how entrepreneurial and innovative activity are determined by institutional settings and how they affect society through interactions with the political process, financial markets, labor markets, and product markets. The second aim of the conference was to enhance the interaction between researchers in industrial organization, economic history, entrepreneurship and innovation interested in these issues.