The Journal of Technology Transfer - Call for Papers: Critical Perspectives on Entrepreneurial Ecosystems

The Journal of Technology Transfer 

Special issue – Call for Papers

“CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON ENTREPRENEURIAL ECOSYSTEMS”

Guest editors: Alex Coad, Clemens Domnick, Pietro Santoleri, Stjepan Srhoj

Read the full Call for Papers here (this opens in a new tab).

Entrepreneurial Ecosystems (EE) are the focus of an explosion of research in the area of innovation, entrepreneurship, and regional competitiveness. It seems that few topics these days receive more research attention in the area of Innovation and Entrepreneurship (Alvedalen and Boschma, 2017; Mago and van der Merwe, 2023). EE is the latest wave in a series of theoretical frameworks of regional advantage including National Systems of Innovation (NSI; Lundvall, 1992; Freeman, 1995) and National Systems of Entrepreneurship (NSE; Acs et al., 2014), Regional Innovation Systems (RIS; Cooke et al., 1997; Fritsch, 2001), the cluster-based theory of competitive advantage (Delgado et al., 2010; Moretti, 2021), the Triple-helix approach (Etzkowitz and Leydesdorff, 2000), National Innovative Capacity (Furman et al., 2002), Competence Blocs (Henrekson et al., 2010), environments for entrepreneurship (Malecki, 2018), and many more (Malecki, 2018). Is the EE a passing traveller along the boulevard of broken dreams (Lerner, 2009), an intermediate step towards a new framework, or will it stand the test of time?

This Special Issue invites critical examinations of EE theory and its empirical applications, aiming to refine and advance EE research. The special issue is intended to be a ‘safe space’ for authors to engage in bold thinking and to revisit and challenge existing assumptions using rich data, in an environment that might be more sympathetic to new ways of thinking than the usual journal publication process. It will explore the challenges EE thinking faces, including ambiguities in its definition, the remarkable heterogeneity in empirical applications, and its relevance for policy. In encouraging submissions that address these issues head-on, this Special Issue will serve as a platform for dissecting the theory's current challenges, offering new perspectives, and proposing directions for future research.

DEADLINES
Initial submissions: from 1st May 2024 until 31st October 2024. Initial submissions should be emailed to Professor Alex Coad at: alex.coad@gmail.com (this opens in a new tab) with the title of the special issue in the subject line.

Authors can submit not only full drafts of papers, but also extended abstracts (although a preference will probably exist for full drafts of papers).

Guest Editors reserve the right to promptly desk-reject initial submissions that are not well motivated in the context of the existing literature. Guest Editors see the value in all disciplinary and methodological approaches, but may have a preference for econometrics and the pursuit of causal inference compared to qualitative research.

PEER REVIEW
There will be one or two online paper development workshops during the peer review process in an effort for authors to collect encouraging developmental comments from an audience of experts (i.e. authors comment on each other’s papers; to complement the usual peer review process), to enhance the coherence of the SI, and to foster knowledge cumulativeness while avoiding repetitions.