The Journal of Innovation and Best Business Practices has issued a call for papers for a special issue on "R&D, Innovation and Management: The Road to Organizational Success."

• overview of R&D and its Role in Industry, Government, and Academia
• creativity and Innovation in R&D
• strategies for the Management of R&D People
• strategies for the Management of R&D Resources
• strategies for Managing R&D Environments
• the Future of R&D and the R&D of the Future
• regulatory issues involved in the Management of R&D
• the management of new product development
• challenges of technological innovation
• case studies of projects based on R&D
  

The National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) has issued a call for papers for the next meeting of the Entrepreneurship Working Group, which will held on Friday, December 11, 2009 in Cambridge, MA.

If you are interested in presenting a paper at the meeting, please upload a copy here http://www.nber.org/confsubmit/backend/cfp?id=ENTf09 by October 12, 2009.  Please contact Rob Shannon in the NBER's Conference Department if you have any further questions.  He can be reached at 617/868-3900 or
rshannon@nber.org.

The Business Ethics Quarterly has issued a call for papers on "Reviving Tradition: Virtue and the Common Good in Business and Management."  Included in the call is an appeal related to "How does the virtue of honesty play a role in financial reporting, or prudence in investing, or courage in entrepreneurship, or moderation in marketing?"  Due date: July 15, 2010. 

The Kauffman Firm Survey data collection continues to progress well.  Currently in its fifth collection period, we have received initial tabulations from Mathematica, the survey research firm executing the collection, that show continued responsiveness from our panel but also that the new or modified questions we added in the fourth survey (covering 2008 activities) are working well and getting interesting information.  It was an oversight on my part that I never posted the questions changes we made previously.  We expect to close data collection by the end of the year and to post the data for researchers a couple of months into 2010.

With that said, even though we are still finishing collection on the 2008 data, we are kicking off plans for the survey covering 2009 activities.  We have posted a call for suggestions on the questionnaire.  We have done this for three years and have gotten some interesting responses, some of which have been added.  While we would love nothing more to collect all the questions which researchers want to collect, we have a really high standard for accepting changes to the questionnaire.  We judge the questions based on relevancy to the rest of the data in the survey, the validity of collecting data on the time period we are currently surveying on (2009) vs. earlier activities, expected incidence within the KFS population, and other factors such as if the questions have ever been tested on other surveys or would help to demonstrate concepts which could be picked up by other ongoing surveys if successful. 

In addition, we are seeking a part-time research assistant on the KFS. 

The third international FINPIN conference has issued a call for papers. April 25-27, 2010, in Joensuu, Finland, this meeting and discussion forum for practicioners and researchers who want to exchange their know-how and best practices. Explore "Innovation and Entrepreneurship in Universities."  Deadline: September 30, 2009

The International Journal of Technoentrepreneurship has a new call out on "Challenges of Triple Helix Nexus in Managing Science Parks and Innovation Centers to Foster High-Tech Start-Ups."  Deadline August 15, 2010.  Read more.

The journal Entrepreneurship and Regional Development has put out a call targeting "the contribution of entrepreneurship education to regional development".  Deadline is November 1, 2009.  Read more. 

The World Bank's Doing Business has published data for 2010.  This effort "investigating the regulations that enhance business activity and those that constrain it" continues to be one of the most successful efforts to collect benchmark data and drive policy changes.  Additionally, as a recent Economist article notes, these indicators are now widely used in academic and policy research.  Also perhaps of interest is a more in-depth report from late last year on paying taxes across countries. 

I would highlight an upcoming conference that Kauffman and the World Bank are sponsoring looking entrepreneurship and growth.

The National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) is hosting a one-day workshop in Washington, DC on "Accelerating Energy Innovation: Lessons from Multiple Sectors".  The presentations will be held on October 23, 2009 the National Press Club, 529 14th Street, NW, Washington, DC.

The program can be found at http://www.nber.org/~confer/2009/EIf09/program.html.  If you would like to attend, please email Rob Shannon by October 9, 2009.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Technology Innovation Program (TIP) has posted a call for papers to inform future programs.  The Advanced Technology Program of NIST was featured in our 2007 Kauffman Data Symposium for some of the data it had available to researchers.  While this current call is pretty high-level, I wanted to highlight that NIST has a history of being open to collecting high-quality research data which also can be informative to their programs. 

The call highlights the following areas of particular interest to TIP:

• An area of critical national need means an area that justifies government attention because the magnitude of the problem is large and the associated societal challenges that need to be overcome are not being addressed, but could be addressed through high-risk, high-reward research.
• A societal challenge is a problem or issue confronted by society that when not addressed could negatively affect the overall function and quality of life of the Nation, and as such, justifies government action. A societal challenge is associated with barriers preventing the successful development of solutions to the area of critical national need. TIP’s mission is to tackle the technical issues that can be addressed through high-risk, high-reward research. The results of the high-risk, high-reward research should have the potential for transformational results.
• A transformational result is a potential project outcome that enables disruptive changes over and above current methods and strategies. Transformational results have the potential to radically improve our understanding of systems and technologies, challenging the status quo of research approaches and applications.

Papers are being accepted from November 9, 2009 through September 30, 2010.