Countries: Austria, Finland, Germany, Italy
Regions: Andalusia, Basque Country , Catalonia, Navarra (Spain), Flanders, Wallonia (Belgium) and Alsace (France).

- Improve participants' knowledge, insight, and exposure to key economic, political, and social issues globally.

- Improve participants' ability to design and deliver projects by giving them the concrete tools and skills they need to amplify their work.

- Support intercultural dialogue among young people from around the world.

- Serve as a platform to exchange knowledge, ideas and best practices of what works most effectively in global and local contexts.

- Grow and sustain the network of Global Changemakers.

Activities:
R&D and demonstration activities, training and dissemination, management, financial Support, IPR.

Overall objective:

■ To support SME led collaborative European research and development projects;

■ Projects should have civilian purpose and aim at the development of a new product, process or servicet (any technological area).

Beneficiaries:

■ At least two participants (legal entities) from two different Eurostars participating countries;

■ The main participant must be a research performing SME. At least 50% of the project’s core activity should be carried out by SMEs.

The call for proposals has two strands:

Strand 1: to develop public procurement of innovative solutions (preparation phase and implementation phase).

Strand 2: to create and run a European platform dedicated to “public procurement as tool for innovation”.

Papers submitted may be of theoretical or empirical nature (qualitative as well as quantitative studies) analysing heterogeneous approaches to managerial techniques.

Proposals from host institutions that are active members of and that have an established reputation within the EFMD network are warmly encouraged.  The potential to attract entrepreneurs and policy makers will be an important element for the selection.

The proposals should be sent before December 16, 2005 by email to Virginie.heredia-rosa@efmd.org or via regular mail to:
EFMD
Rue Gachard 88, box 3,
1050 Brussels, Belgium.

For any further information, please contact:
griet.houbrechts@efmd.org

Papers are invited on five themes:

1. Design and Implementation of Local Development Strategies;
2. Local Development: a Multilevel Governance Issue;
3. Tools for Better Governance;
4. Financing Local Development;
5. Fostering Participative and Representative Democracy.

Description of the themes to be developed and details on how to apply can be found on the OECD website at:
  http://www.oecd.org/

Applicants should submit a one-page abstract in English by 30 November 2004. The deadline for submitting complete papers is March 2005.

The aim of this international conference is to enrich and enhance the quality of innovation studies so as to find and exchange insights on how to develop innovative capability and competence building of nations and firms in rapidly changing business environment of Asia.

Organisers hope to attract the expertise of practitioners, policy makers and
academics both in and outside Asia across a wide range of disciplines.

The full call for papers is available as a download:
  http://globelics.org/downloads/CallForPapersAsiaLics2.pdf

The conference website is available at:
  http://www.stepi.re.kr

• Collaboration systems and technology
• Decision technologies for management
• Digital Media: Content and Communication
• E-Government
• Information Technology in  Health Care
• Internet and the Digital Economy
• Knowledge Management Systems
• Organizational Systems and Technology
• Software Technology

For further information please visit:
  http://www.hicss.hawaii.edu/HICSS39/apahome39.htm

Papers sought are analytical (not descriptive), covering any aspect of change and/or learning within any organizational context, with a methodological focus. Research approaches may include cases studies, action research, ethnography, grounded theory, oral history, interviews, archival research, narrative analysis, discourse analysis and approaches integrating both qualitative and quantitative methods in innovative ways.

Some areas of focus include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Organisational change
• Internal or external drivers of change
• Practical concerns eg research teams and collaboration
• Innovative approaches to organisational research using qualitative methods
• Choice of method
• Critique of methods
• Methodological innovation
• Paradigm shifts in change and learning
• Observation, text, interaction, talk, visual data
• Issues of data analysis
• Ethical issues
• Organisational learning
• Knowledge creation, processes and transfer 
• Changing understanding of organisations or society
• New approaches to research design or qualitative analysis
• Cross-disciplinary methods
• Single discipline
• Multiple methods
• Functional studies
• Cross-functional studies
• Issues of validity
• Working with dynamic qualitative data

Authors should send a 100 word abstract as an e-mail attachment to:
Maureen Benson-Rea
m.benson-rea@auckland.ac.nz

Deadline for submissions: October 31, 2004.

Read full call at:
  https://www.inderscience.com/browse/callpaper.php?callID=103

• research and development organisations and the knowledge economy;
• intellectual property in the 21st century;
• stimulating regional innovation;
• technology transfer: threat or opportunity for developing economies;
• the impact of e-technology;
• challenge of sustainability;
• social and cultural aspects of making knowledge exploitation work.

Expressions of interest from potential authors should be made by email to the tti2004 Conference Secretariat. Guidelines and submission forms will be issued by return.

The closing date for submission of papers is Friday 28 November 2003.

Papers will be rigorously selected by a panel.

The proposals should be dedicated to the following issues:

• The concept of a regional innovation system and its relationship with the sectoral, national and global system. How do regional innovation systems work? What are the main factors that determine the regional conditions for innovation activity? What is the impact of national and international developments on regional innovation systems?
• Ways to scale down national innovation policy to a regional level. How can policy account for the regional dimension of innovation processes? How should responsibilities be allocated at the various state levels? What can be done at local level to improve innovation conditions?
• Appropriate strategies to improve regional conditions for innovation. What are the main bottlenecks for the relevant types of region? What are the appropriate policy measures to be taken?
• The relationship between regionalized innovation policy and regional development policy. Is regionalized innovation policy an appropriate tool to stimulate development in lagging regions?

The complete papers should be submitted electronically by January 15, 2004 or should be sent by April 30, 2004.
Some of the papers presented at the conference will be selected to be publish in a special issued of a scholarly journal.

For further information, please visit the DIW Berlin website.

The first conference, entitled Patent Policy: Using, Abusing and Reforming, is scheduled for Fall 2004 at Duke University.

The second conference, tentatively entitled Copyright Protection: Incentives to Create, Maintain and Exclude, will occur in Fall 2005 at the University of Southern California.

The final conference in this series, entitled The Great Balancing Act: Competition Policy and Intellectual Property Law, is to take place in Summer of 2006 at CIRANO in Montreal.

The conferences are designed as a series to bring together scholars in law and in economics to evaluate policies that simultaneously endeavor to promote innovation and to preserve the desired efficiencies of market competition. A balanced mix of conceptual, empirical, and policy studies will be presented at the three conferences.

Please download the Call for Papers for the first conference:
  http://www.cirano.qc.ca/gouvernance/Callforpapers.pdf