Strategies for 2021 Entrepreneurial Growth and Innovation after COVID-19

Dear Colleagues,

In early 2020, the deadly COVID-19 virus started spreading globally, triggering a major crisis. After slowing down particularly during the third quarter of 2020, a new global wave of infections started in October/November, aggravated by the mutated and seemingly more contagious versions of COVID-19. Uncertainty about its future development and whether protection offered by the developed vaccines will cover the new variants, and its long-term effects, are genuine.

It seems likely that the virus will have long-lasting effects on society, influencing welfare systems, education, the way we organize production, governance, as well as entrepreneurial endeavors and innovation. Trade has been impaired, global supply chains disrupted. The measures taken by governments around the world to abate the diffusion of the virus led to the closure of thousands of businesses and put millions of people out of work. As reported by the OECD, it also hampered entrepreneurship and innovation. The decline in new ventures and the potentially negative effects on innovation risk slow down the societal restructuring needed to cope with COVID-19. In early autumn 2020, there were feeble signs of an upswing in new ventures, but it is unclear whether those can be considered necessity- or opportunity-based.

This Special Issue focuses on strategies to foster increased entrepreneurial endeavors and innovations while strengthening sustainability and mitigating climate change. Since Sustainability is a cross-disciplinary leading journal devoted to the study of different aspects of sustainability, we welcome contributions from several disciplines focusing on entrepreneurship, innovation, and sustainability in the aftermath of the COVID-19 outbreak.  We define entrepreneurship to include new venture creation, corporate entrepreneurship or intrapreneurship, social enterprises, etc., while innovations refer to new products, processes, organizations, inputs, and markets. Both theoretical, empirical, and policy-oriented submissions will be considered for publications at different levels such as:

• The individual/inventor level
• The nascent entrepreneurial level
• The level of young firms
• The network level
• The system level, e.g., innovation or technological systems
• Industry and sector levels (e.g., travel, tourism, infrastructure, housing, etc.)
• Policies at the global, national, and regional levels

The analyses should thus emphasize strategies that induce more entrepreneurial efforts and higher innovative activities aiming at providing sustainability. Such strategies, depending on the level, may imply rethinking corporate strategies, initiating new alliances, or financing new ventures and innovations in novel ways. New forms of and channels for entrepreneurial activities, networks and organizational structures are conceivable. Economic policies, involving incentives and/or regulations, and their optimal design and deployment is another critically important area.

Given the complex nature of the area emphasized in this Special Issue, we are open to a wide range of studies provided that there is an explicit link to entrepreneurship, innovations, sustainability, and the COVID-19 crisis. Hopefully, the contents of this Special Issue will provide useful insights to entrepreneurs, firms, and policy-makers.

Prof. Pontus Braunerhjelm
Dr. Per Thulin
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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• COVID-19
• crisis
• entrepreneurship
• innovation
• policy
• climate
• transformation
• sustainability