The RENT XX took place in Brussels on November 22-24 and was locally supported by Universiteit Antwerpen and Vlerick Leuven Gent Management School.

RENT XX was celebrating the 20th anniversary of what has become Europe’s premier research conference in the entrepreneurship field. The anniversary conference was held in Brussels, since this was where it all started 20 years ago. Over 200 attendees, mostly from European countries, participated in the event. Stories from previous events and other strolls down memory lane featured strongly in the sessions throughout the proceedings.

The main theme for the RENT XX was Entrepreneurship: a driver for sustainable growth in a global and knowledge-based environment. There were about 140 papers discussing broadly about entrepreneurship and small business, for example under the headers of family firms, new venture creation, SME success and business performance, entrepreneurship and human capital, entrepreneurship education, innovations in entrepreneurship and many, many more.

Doctoral Seminar was again successful and it was held on 21 November, in conjunction with the conference. It was chaired by Professors Poul Rind Christensen and Friederike Welter.

The Best Paper Award for a Junior Researcher Ceremony took place in the final plenary session. The awards went to Eva Cools from Vlerick Leuven Gent Management School, Belgium, on her paper “The Hunt for the Heffalump Continues: Who Is the Flemish Entrepreneur?” and to Silke Tegtmeier from University of Lüneburg, Germany, on her paper “Entrepreneurship and the Theory of Planned Behavior – Empirical Implications for Promoting Students’ Entrepreneurial Activity”.

The winners of the Gate2Growth Best Paper were announced at the Gala dinner in Palais de la Bourse. They were Piva Evila, Massimo Colombo and Diego D’Adda from Politecnico di Milano, Italy, on their paper "When do university-based knowledge spillovers influence the growth of new-technology-based-firms?" (best paper), Fabio Bertolini, Massimo Colombo and Annalisa Croce from Politecnico di Milano, Italy, on their paper "Venture capital and the investments of new-technology-based-firms" (second best paper), Vincent Molly, Eddy Laveren and Ann Jorissen from University of Antwerp, Belgium, on their paper "Financing and growth behaviour of family firms: differences between first- and next-generation-managed firms" (third best paper) and Erik Wetter from Stockholm School of Economics, Sweden, and Frédéric Delmar from Ecole de Management, Lyon, France, on their paper "Determinants of innovation in new firms, linking absorptive capacity to the performance of start-ups" (third best paper). Congratulations to all best paper award winners!

Dr. Thomas Cooney announced the results of the second ECSB case Study Competition in the final plenary session. The winners were as follows: Kent Thoren, KTH Royal Institute for Technology, Sweden, (1st prize), Christian Serarols and Jose Maria Veciana, Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona, Spain, (2nd prize), Thierry Volery and Martina Jakl, University of St Gallen, Switzerland, (3rd prize). Congratulations to the winners!

The third Inter-RENT Publication “DIVERSITY IN ENTREPRENEURSHIP” was officially launched on 24th and will be published soon on this website.

For more information on the programme, papers and events please visit the Official Conference Website.