SMS Special Conference in Rome

Strategy Challenges in the 21st Century: Innovation, Entrepreneurship and Coopetition

Investigation on entrepreneurship and innovation has received increasing attention in strategic management in the last decade. While the two areas have been experiencing incredibly rapid growth, we perceive two clear gaps hindering further advance: (1) developing the intellectual links between entrepreneurship and innovation (e.g., the most creative aspect of entrepreneurship); (2) the condition that most extant research focus on entrepreneurship and innovation in competitive or in cooperative settings.

In its recent advancements of user innovation and open innovation, innovation is worthy of deeper attention in strategic management, especially as concerns the interconnections with entrepreneurship in different settings. While entrepreneurship has lately turned into a popular issue in management, the role of creativity as well as of key entrepreneurial capabilities, associated with the purpose of either seizing existing or creating new opportunities, request additional attention.

Correspondingly, little has been done in exploring the two main themes within coopetitive settings; i.e., contexts in which competition and cooperation merge together to give birth to a different kind of strategic interaction. Yet, since they show themselves increasingly entangled and intertwined in the business worlds, today competition and cooperation cannot be considered as secluded spheres. This condition calls for investigation on entrepreneurship and innovation in coopetitive settings.

In this view, coopetition may be considered in a double perspective: (a) it is a setting within which to analyze entrepreneurship and innovation, and (2) it is a specific strategy (i.e., coopetitive strategy) that may turn into a source of innovation and new entrepreneurship and, therefore, of value creation and competitive advantage for firms, industries, and the whole society. Such considerations, on one side, allow to enlarge the overall context in which innovation and entrepreneurship develop. On the other, they provide room for a further strategic option that impinges on both governance choices and competitive advantage.

By thoroughly detecting the potential links between innovation, entrepreneurship and coopetition, the Strategic Management Society Special Conference in Rome intends to delve into and grasp the opportunities for detecting the relationships and reciprocal influences between the relevant research areas and their impact on competitive advantage and performance. With the Rome Conference, we seek to gather an array of empirical and theoretical contributions that significantly add to our understanding of the multiple unfilled connections between coopetition, innovation, and entrepreneurship.

The city of Rome is truly unique. It is the key hub in Italy for culture and archeological sites, as well as the capital city and the political and administrative center of the country. Several Italian state-owned and private companies are headquartered in Rome. The Conference will be held in the premises of LUISS University campus located in the city center. Conference attendees will have the chance of visiting some of Southern Europe’s key cultural attractions coming from a range of ages since the old Romans’ era to the long-lived Papal domination and after the country unification in mid-1800s. Rome is also home of the Vatican City State, featuring St. Peter’s Square, the Sistine Chapel, and its entire set of stunning attractions.

Program Chair Welcome Message

Dear Colleagues:

With great enthusiasm we request the honor of your presence at the SMS 2016 Special Conference in Rome!

In convening this Special Conference, we draw on the success of the 2010 SMS Annual Conference, as well as the eternal city’s time-honored position of being the gateway to multiple cultures and peoples. Rome’s prominent history attracts wide intellectual attention in a diverse variety of fields, such as arts, science, and spirituality. Since its founding in 753 BC, the city’s history spans nearly three millennia. It is Italy’s capital city; a world’s religious center that hosts St. Peter’s Square, the Sistine Chapel, and the Vatican City State; the third most visited city in the European Union; and is listed as one of the twenty most visited cities on earth. It has the status of a global city and its unique historic center, with the Coliseum and a wealth of distinctive Roman vestiges, is a UNESCO world heritage site.

In this conference, we are looking at some of the twenty-first century’s most fundamental challenges in the strategic management realm: exploring the interfaces of innovation, entrepreneurship, and coopetition. In essence, we shall try to respond to a range of momentous questions. Since entrepreneurial communities foster open communication, creativity, experimentation, intellectual curiosity, and tolerate failure as well as celebrate successes, how are they organized? What type of organizational structure and management practices are most conducive to absorbing knowledge from competitors? How do technological forces drive the process of coopetition? How can entrepreneurs and entrepreneurial managers benefit from pursuing coopetition strategies? What are the main enablers of cooperation and coopetition in creative industries? How is it possible to support value creation and value appropriation in creative business models? How differences in culture and approach between partners affect cooperation and coopetition in creative industries?

We hope to see a good mix of proposal submissions that contain both theoretical approaches and empirical analyses dealing with these significant questions, as well as represent a diverse crowd of researchers and institutions from around the world. The Rome conference will present the opportunity to discuss the active junctions of innovation, entrepreneurship, and coopetition with established scholars and experienced practitioners in a striking set of stimulating sessions on state-of-the-art prowess, undertaking, and investigations. Its doctoral consortium will offer young scholars the possibility to investigate issues that rest at the very edge of today’s strategic management research.

You are invited to join us for an exciting program that will expose attendees to a fascinating combination of tradition and modern vitality in one of the most mesmerizing city’s on the planet.

Theme A : Building Entrepreneurial Communities That Create the Future

Sharon Alvarez, University of Pittsburgh

Entrepreneurial communities don’t just happen – they are created and fostered. People in these communities know that entrepreneurship is not about an “ah ha” or “eureka” moment. These communities understand that entrepreneurial progress sometimes goes forward and sometimes it goes backward. Entrepreneurship is an iterative process with often difficult to explain outcomes that are even more difficult to quantify ex-ante. This process typically involves more than a single entrepreneur, it includes the team, potential customers, and relevant stakeholders. Entrepreneurial communities foster open communication, creativity, experimentation, intellectual curiosity, and tolerate failure as well as celebrate successes.

Theme B : Organizing to Innovate with Competitors

Massimo Colombo, Polytechnic University of Milan

This track will address the general issue of how firms should design their organization and strategy to effectively innovate while collaborating with actual and potential competitors. This type of collaborations are both very valuable and very dangerous, especially for entrepreneurial ventures. How can entrepreneurial ventures alleviate the misappropriation risk inherent in these collaborations? What is the role of the institutional context in which firms are embedded, including rules, norms and social relations? Does this role vary depending on firms’ characteristics and strategy? What type of organizational structure and management practices (e.g., hiring and training practices) are most conducive to absorbing knowledge from competitors? Does distance (e.g., geographical, cognitive, organizational) matter? How can third parties (e.g., regulators and policy makers, financial intermediaries, innovation users, other stakeholders) facilitate the success of these collaborations?

Theme C : Coopetition Strategy at the Crossroads: The Challenge of Entrepreneurship and Innovation

Valentina Della Corte, University of Naples Federico II
Giovanni Battista Dagnino, University of Rome LUMSA

This track aims to unveil the key strategic relationship between innovation, entrepreneurship, and coopetition. It is also directed to grasp the role of innovation and entrepreneurship in coopetitive settings. Why do firms decide to “coopete”? How do coopetitive settings foster innovation processes? How do technological forces drive the process of coopetition? What are the implications of coopetitive settings on technological advancement and adoption of technological standards? How can entrepreneurs and entrepreneurial managers benefit from the pursuit of coopetition strategies? Can coopetition strategies involve both large firms and small and medium enterprises? How can the capability-based view of the firm contribute to a dual coopetition and entrepreneurship perspective? How can the cultural perspective have a say in a dual coopetition and entrepreneurship approach?

Theme D : Coopetition and Innovation in Creative Industries

Paolo Boccardelli, LUISS Guido Carli University

This track targets papers that deal with the management of coopetition and innovation of in creative industries. What are the main enablers of cooperation and coopetition in creative industries? How is it possible to support value creation and value appropriation in creative interorganizational business models? How can firms overcome the intricacies related to the economic evaluation of creative products, which often raises problems with intellectual property protection and funds attraction? To what extent, differences in culture and approach between partners affect cooperation and coopetition in creative industries?

Theme E : Coopetitive Ecosystem Dynamics: Emerging Trends and Opportunities

Elias Carayannis, George Washington University

This track focuses on the nature and dynamics of coopetitive ecosystems in a knowledge-based and knowledge-driven environment. We aim to address questions such as: what is the nature and dynamics of coopetitive strategies in knowledge-driven environments? How can these can apply to open innovation ecosystems? How do the various types of formal and informal knowledge acquisition processes affect the dynamics of a coopetitive ecosystem? What is the role of learning in an institutional context for coopetitive ecosystems? What is the role of co-evolution and co-specialization of complementary and reinforcing players in coopetition ecosystems? How can co-creation, coopetition, co-evolution, and co-specialization competences help business models to evolve into more effective and efficient mechanisms of value creation within ecosystems?

Theme R : Research Methods

Brian Boyd, Northern Arizona University
Karen Schnatterly, Virginia Tech

This track is focused on critiques, commentaries and discussion about key methodological research issues in the field of strategic management. When examining topics such as entrepreneurship, innovation and coopetition, measurement and methodological issues are of critical importance. Measurement of the levels of each of these as well as the results of actions in these areas is difficult for the organization and for researchers. How do we measure outcomes? Where are unobtrusive measures necessary? Are measures being tested for consistency and validity? What methods (research and analytical) give us the best chance to build understanding of these important strategic concerns?

2016 - Rome

SMS Special Conference in Rome

Strategy Challenges in the 21st Century: Innovation, Entrepreneurship and Coopetition

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2016 - Rome

SMS Special Conference in Rome

Strategy Challenges in the 21st Century: Innovation, Entrepreneurship and Coopetition

CONFERENCE SPONSORS

SIGN UP FORSMS UPDATES!

SIGN UP FOR
SMS UPDATES!