The RENT XXIII Conference took place in Budapest, Hungary, on November 19-20, 2009. The conference was hosted by Corvinus University, Budapest, and co-organised by ECSB and EIASM. The main theme for the conference was "Entrepreneurial Growth of the Firm".

The growing participant figures supported RENT’s claim of being the premier European research conference in entrepreneurship. More than 260 registered delegates participated and over 150 papers were presented in the conference. There were many interesting papers from various perspectives, such as growth, corporate, network, innovation, regional development, ethnic & family, finance, education, incubation etc.

This year there were three events organized before the conference: a Pre-RENT Policy Forum “Entrepreneurship Policy in Times of Crisis”, a Doctoral Seminar as well as an ECSB Collaborative Research Round-Table. All pre-events were successful and they will be organized again in conjunction with the next RENT conference.

The Best Paper Award, which was named after the first Fellow of ECSB - professor José Veciana, who sadly passed away this autumn - was divided into two: the awards went to Franziska Günzel & Helge Wilker on their paper Patterns in Business Models: A Case Survey, and to Faems Dries & Fleur Lamers & Klaasjan Visscher on their paper Exploration Patterns in Gazelle Firms: A Multiple Case Study in the Internet Technology Industry. Congratulations to the winners!

The sixth Inter-RENT “From the university environment to academic entrepreneurship” was officially launched at the final plenary session. Also, the annual general meeting of ECSB was held in the closing session and was run by the President of ECSB, Thomas Cooney. At the AGM, the two new Fellows of ECSB were announced: professors Hans Crijns and David Smallbone, which both are former Presidents of ECSB and long served members of the ECSB Board.

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