In recent years, academics and policymakers in Europe have rightly emphasized the phenomenon of entrepreneurial creation: of new firms, new products, and new markets, and the corresponding facilitating mechanisms such as entrepreneurship education, fiscal incentives, support systems such as seed capital, and infrastructure development. However, we believe that it is equally important for the success and prosperity of firms, sectors, and regions to sustain the entrepreneurial spirit over time. With entrepreneurial sustainability as the conference focus, we provide below some suggestions (by no means exhaustive) of the contexts and topics under which this theme can be studied.

Topics that can serve as vantage points for the study of entrepreneurial sustainability over time

1. Innovation
2. Venture Finance
3. Networks
4. Alliances and coalitions
5. Public policy
6. Values
7. Emotional support systems
8. Organizational learning
9. Organizational development
10. Corporate governance

Contexts in which the conference theme can be explored

1. Established companies: How can established companies sustain the entrepreneurial spirit, so necessary for sustaining competitive advantage and profitability?
2. Family businesses: What role can founding families play in ensuring the sustainability, over time and even over generations, of the entrepreneurial spirit of their firms?
3. Young companies: How can young, high growth firms tackle the inevitable tensions that arise between maintaining their creativity on the one hand, and introducing systems and processes to achieve scale and efficiency on the other?

Academic research papers, project, program and policy case studies are welcomed. The process of submission will be double-blinded.

There will be a maximum of three best paper awards for each category. A further selection of papers will be published in ARPENT and in a Gate2Growth Academic Network publication or special EC research series. Amongst them will be the papers selected for the G2G Best Paper Award competition (including the award winning papers).

Papers received after the deadline will not be considered for the best paper award. The awards are sponsored by the Gate2Growth Academic Network in Entrepreneurship, Innovation and Finance.

• Griet Houbrechts
• Neus Martínez
• Liliana Petrella
• Julia Prats
• Amparo de San José
• Juan Luis Segurado
• Rama Velamuri