AWARDS

During the Cross-Border Innovation Entrepreneurship Symposium the following prizes will be awarded:

• The Innovation Best Paper 2012,
• Best Student Paper Innovation 2012
• The Entrepreneurship Best Paper 2012
• Best Student Paper Entrepreneurship 2012 

BACKGROUND

Globalization is inevitable with the emergence of China, India and Eastern Europe as significant centers of highly educated manpower along with advances in Internet based communication technologies. Times and distances have shrunk and there is a shift in the market sizes from the West to Asia and the other East. No longer can traditional market leaders ignore these developments and they would do well to embrace, leverage and benefit from these changes in socio-economic dynamics., Agility and adaptability along with cross border innovation and entrepreneurship have become the main attributes that companies require for their expansion in the context of new realities.

This change, appears to be impacting the higher education sector with the thought leadership of enlightened higher education institutes. Academic exchanges, double degrees, intensive foreign languages courses, international internships are all tools of the modern education with the sole purpose of developing the adaptability in new generation of leaders including innovators and entrepreneurs.

Entrepreneurship as an academic track appeared at the beginning of 1990s in the US business schools as a pedagogical tool for developing a responsible, innovative and context adaptable young managers. But entrepreneurial education surpassed their initial plans and expectations. Entrepreneurship studies in universities have become an important platform to create start-ups and jobs driven primarily by those desiring independence and a desire to better this world. Today, entrepreneurship contributes directly to the development of a region and the reputation of higher education centres in that region. Entrepreneurial education has become an important advantage for the universities who offer such programmes. In 20 years entrepreneurship metamorphosised from an academic tool into a real career choice. The entrepreneurship centres are now present also in technical universities (MIT, Stanford - US, Ecole Centrale – France,…) where they are in the front line of the technological transfer and innovation process.