Invited Sessions

The Creative Destruction of Public Debt Sustainability

(Coord.: Amélie Barbier-Gauchard)

The Creative Destruction of Public Debt Sustainability highlights how growing challenges to fiscal sustainability trigger a process of institutional and policy reinvention. The erosion of traditional fiscal rules and fiscal frameworks forces governments to rethink the design and purpose of fiscal policy itself. As public debt becomes increasingly difficult to sustain, the legitimacy of existing surveillance mechanisms and performance metrics is called into question. This dynamic reflects a form of creative destruction, where fiscal and governance institutions must be reshaped to remain effective in a changing economic environment. Ultimately, the crisis of public debt sustainability and polycrisis becomes a catalyst for innovation in the architecture of public policy.

Gender Issues in Entrepreneurship. A Historical Perspective

(Coord.: Charlotte le Chapelain)

This session examines women's entrepreneurship through a historical lens, addressing a persistent gap between the growing body of research on women in contemporary business leadership and the relative invisibility of women's entrepreneurial roles in the past. By revisiting women's trajectories, their access to capital, their networks, and their strategies—including innovation—historical analysis offers critical insights into the foundations of today's debates on gender and entrepreneurship.

Bringing together theoretical and empirical contributions, it seeks to highlight the diversity of women's entrepreneurial experiences over time and to reconsider, from this perspective, the gradual construction of the entrepreneurial figure.

The session is organized by members of the ANR-funded project INDUSTRIFEM (ANR-24-CE26-4307), which investigates the economic activities of women entrepreneurs in nineteenth-century French industry. Drawing on an extensive corpus of administrative and private archives, the project highlights the often-overlooked presence and agency of women as entrepreneurs within industrial societies.

Beyond industrial policy - towards value creation policies

(Coord.: Christian Lerch)

This track explores new perspectives to understand the dynamics of value creation in complex value networks, and the role of policies supporting them. Traditional industrial policy is either horizontal, improving framework conditions, or vertical, targeting specific sectors. However, the dynamics of value creation – and innovation for that matter – have changed considerably, as the platform economy, digital business models or new pervasive technologies show. We invite conceptual and empirical work that deepens understanding of these dynamics and identifies policy approaches that go beyond traditional industrial policy.

Accelerating Net-zero Transitions: Dimensions, Interventions and Tensions

(Coord.: Karoline Rogge)

The urgent challenges posed by the global climate crisis demand rapid and fundamental net-zero transitions across all contemporary systems of production and consumption, including the accelerated scaling of innovative solutions. In this context, the notion of acceleration has emerged as a critical focus in innovation and transition studies. As recent scholarship has recognised, acceleration remains a multifaceted and still-evolving concept; despite growing interest, the emerging literature on accelerating net-zero transitions remains fragmented and conceptually ambiguous across disciplines. Building on the tradition of innovation studies, this proposed track aims to bring together cutting-edge contributions that mobilise conceptual, empirical, and methodological insights – particularly by bridging perspectives from innovation economics, business and management studies, socio-technical transitions research, sociology, and political science. It calls for contributions addressing the dimensions of acceleration, interventions for acceleration, and tensions in acceleration. Collectively, the track aims to offer diverse global evidence on the dynamics and challenges of accelerating net-zero transitions, thereby stimulating interdisciplinary exchanges at the research frontier and providing actionable insights for decision-makers.

Nicolas Georgescu-Roegen and the 'Universitas Schumpeteriana'

(Coord.: Patrick Llerena)

"Seeking some scope of activity, I naturally thought of contacting the professor who taught business cycles, whoever he might have been. This is how, quite unintentionally, I met Joseph A. Schumpeter, the man who directly and through his writings was to have an even greater influence on my thinking than Karl Pearson. Every one of his distinctive remarks were seeds that inspired my later works. In this way Schumpeter turned me into an economist – the only true Schumpeterian, I believe. My only degree in economics is from Universitas Schumpeteriana." (N. Georgescu-Roegen, 1999, p. 323).

NGR met JA Schumpeter in the early 1930s. It is likely that all of his economic work was influenced by his mentor: from his contributions on consumers, utility, uncertainty, competition, production, etc., to his later work on bioeconomics. The purpose of this invited session is to examine how NGR's work has contributed and may contribute in the future to the construction of Schumpeterian economics. We are inviting contributions related to the main challenges proposed by NGR – from microbehavior and organization to growth and sustainability.

Innovation as Practice

(Coord.: Thierry Burger-Helmchen)

This invited session explores "Innovation-as-Practice" as a complementary and distinctive perspective alongside economics of innovation and innovation management. By Innovation-as-Practice we mean the study of what people actually do when they innovate: the concrete activities, routines, tools and interactions through which new products, services, processes and organizational arrangements are conceived, experimented with, legitimated and diffused in specific contexts. In the spirit of Strategy-as-Practice, this perspective places practitioners (who does innovation), practices (how innovation is done) and praxis (how innovation unfolds over time) at the center of analysis, drawing on practice theory that has transformed research on strategy and, increasingly, on innovation.

We invite papers that explore practitioners, that is who does innovation work (entrepreneurs, others, everybody?), with which roles, identities and boundary spanning activities; practices, that is how knowledge, learning, collaboration, tools, indicators and digital agents are used in innovation work; and praxis, that is how innovation episodes and trajectories unfold over time, how futures are made in response to challenges, and how local innovation work connects to wider markets, industries and systems.

Power in the Age of AI: Data, Innovation, and Inequality

(Coord.: Ingrid Ott)

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has become a defining force in the global economy, influencing not only productivity and innovation but also the structures through which economic and political power are created, distributed, and exercised. This session seeks to explore how AI is transforming traditional power relations—among firms, sectors, and nations—and to assess the implications for innovation systems, governance, and global order.

AI and the Redistribution of Economic Power.

Control over data and algorithms has become a central source of market dominance. Platform-based business models enable unprecedented economies of scale and scope, concentrating innovation capabilities in a few global actors. The measurement of such power—through markups, price elasticity, substitution parameters, or network centralities—provides new empirical challenges and opportunities for economists. Meanwhile, access to data is increasingly recognized as a form of investment, shaping long-term innovation potential across industries and regions.

The Role and Value of Data.

Data are unique as an economic resource: non-rival, mobile across borders, and laden with information externalities. Their generation, exploration, and exploitation raise issues of ownership, privacy, and competition. Assessing the "value of data" remains a frontier question, with approaches ranging from Shapley value metrics to open-source and FAIR data principles that challenge traditional proprietary models.

Governance and Regulation.

National, supranational, and international regulatory approaches—whether through competition policy, data protection, or emerging AI governance frameworks—seek to manage these new forms of power. Yet foundational models and cross-border data flows often render purely national solutions inadequate. Discussions might also engage with global governance initiatives, including the relevance of United Nations or Security Council debates on AI and international stability.

Global Political Dimensions of AI.

Beyond markets, AI redefines legitimacy and influence in governance. Data-driven decision systems and predictive analytics enhance state capacities in surveillance, security, and resource management but also raise concerns about autonomy, accountability, and inequality. As AI systems become embedded in international infrastructure—from earth observation and remote sensing to transport and communication networks—they affect both domestic and transnational power balances.

This session invites empirical, theoretical, and policy-oriented contributions that address these interlinked dimensions. By bringing together economists, legal professionals, innovation scholars, and political scientists, it aims to develop a clearer understanding of how AI transforms the foundations of power and how societies might govern these transformations to promote inclusive, transparent, and sustainable innovation.

Departing to Post-Schumpeterian Economics

(Coord.: Horst Hanusch & Andreas Pyka)

Economic prosperity is unthinkable without security that fully accounts for planetary risks. Even if market prices were adjusted to internalize externalities and become so-called true prices, innovation-driven dynamics would still require a commitment to a security-oriented, future-focused perspective.

Post-Schumpeterian Economics seeks to address Schumpeterian innovation processes responsibly, ensuring that global security risks are not overlooked. Achieving this requires policy to assume a supervisory and guiding role.

The transition toward prosperous and secure socio-economic systems demands strengthened collaboration among all actors—both nationally and globally—alongside emerging lifestyles and entrepreneurial creativity. By emphasizing these elements, Post-Schumpeterian Economics both acknowledges and harnesses the full complexity of long-term development.

With this special session we ask for contributions that further develop Schumpeterian thinking and address the challenges of the 21st century.

Integrating Open User Innovation with Schumpeterian Innovation

(Coord.: Isabel Almundi)

One major challenge in economic theory of innovation is the fragmentation between producer-driven (Schumpeterian) innovation studies, and user-driven (Open user) innovation approaches.

These paradigms operate under different institutional logics – markets and firms versus communities and households – but are historically and functionally interdependent. Innovations often originate in user communities before being adopted and scaled by firms as user discoveries are refined and scaled by producers. Conversely, firm innovations that drive down costs or increase performance on 'dimensions of merit' can enable new waves of user experimentation (von Hippel 2006). Although both paradigms show important complementarities, a fully-integrated framework is still pending. Our session seeks to explore this gap by presenting new insights in which both innovation paradigms can become gradually integrated. We seek to discuss the topic from complementary methodological approaches. Thus, case studies, real experiences in practice, theoretical or historical work, new initiatives in the field, policy implications studies, multidisciplinary applications, models and quantitative techniques, applications to specific fields as computer science or psychology, are all welcome.

Organizers:

Eric von Hippel (Prof. of Technological Innovation, MIT Sloan School of Management, USA)

Jason Potts (Prof. of Economics, Alfaisal University, KSA)

Francisco Fatas-Villafranca (Prof. of Economics, University of Zaragoza, SPAIN)

Isabel Almudi (Prof. of Economics, University of Zaragoza, SPAIN)

Transformative Innovation Policy - Previous developments and challenges

(Coord.: Uwe Cantner)