RENT XXXIII, the Research in Entrepreneurship and Small Business Conference, took place in Berlin on November 28th and 29th, with a pre-conference day at ESCP Berlin campus on November 27th. The Jean-Baptiste Say Institute co-organized the conference with the European Institute for Advanced Studies in Management (EIASM) and the European Council for Small Business and Entrepreneurship (ECSB).
In a keynote panel discussion, Saras D. Sarasvathy from the UVA Darden School of Business, who is one of the most renowned entrepreneurship researchers, and Gerd Gigerenzer, director of the Harding Center for Risk Literacy at the Max Planck Institute of Human Development in Berlin, discussed uncertainty and heuristic decision making. This year, RENT was dedicated to “Embracing uncertainty: entrepreneurship as a key capability for the 21st century.”
The concept of uncertainty has been considered a central determinant of entrepreneurship since the beginning of its academic discourse. With RENT XXXIII, we aimed at revisiting this foundation, and advance our understanding around how uncertainty interplays with the entrepreneurial process. We thus opened new avenues for research on entrepreneurship and uncertainty in order to respond to practical challenges and to develop answers to the pressing problems of our times.
The conference hit a record high with close to 300 attendees from 30 countries and 369 submissions, out of which RENT XXXIII featured 162 papers and 23 posters. The featured content covered topics from culture and community to intrapreneurship and strategizing, from opportunity generation to support systems and infrastructure.