Editorial(2)

摘要

This issue of IJEBR is being finalised shortly after the end of the Institute for Small Business & Entrepreneurship (ISBE) Annual Conference in Dublin, which took place in November 2012. The ISBE Conference has become a landmark event for entrepreneurship researchers and those most interested in the development and support of new and small businesses. The Dublin Conference was especially significant because, being held outside the UK for the first time, it attracted an increased international audience and positioned the conference as an international, rather than principally UK event. Hopefully this move will continue in future years. The 2013 Conference returns to Cardiff, which hosted it most successfully in 2006. The choice of Dublin was also significant because the city's banking industry had both been one of the principal agents in the financial crisis of 2008 and Ireland has suffered disproportionally from the ensuing recession and austerity programme. I had been invited to present to Trinity College students at the Dublin Innovation Festival prior to the conference and, walking along the Liffey, it was clearly visible where inner-city investment had led to major urban regeneration and renewal, as well as the point where this had stopped abruptly. Yet although there is certainly no boom, there were many signs of a revival in business confidence and entrepreneurial activity in Dublin - much of this centred on Higher Education at Trinity College, Dublin City University and the Dublin Institute of Technology.