Presented by International Council for Small Business & National Women's Business Council

Purpose: The purpose of the Best Paper Award in Womens Entrepreneurship is to: encourage scholarly analysis and research in womens entrepreneurship; increase the level of understanding about the special challenges and needs of women business owners and their enterprises; and to make the connection between this analysis and understanding and public policy recommendations for action.

Nature of Award: The award shall consist of a certificate to the recipient and a cash award in the amount of $1,000 USD. This award is being sponsored by the National Womens Business Council, a U.S.-based, Federally-funded, public policy advisory body created to serve as an independent source of advice to the U.S. President, Congress, and others on economic issues of importance to women business owners. The Councils mission is to: conduct research on issues of importance to women business owners and their organizations; communicate these findings widely; connect the womens business community to public policy makers; and provide programs and platforms for change in order to expand and improve opportunities for women business owners and their enterprises.

Selection Process: To be eligible for this award, the paper must be submitted to and accepted by the International Council for Small Business for presentation at its annual World Conference, and subjected to the established awards submission process. The judging for this paper will proceed in two stages. First, ICSB will convene a Panel of distinguished international experts in small business and womens entrepreneurship from four different continents. This committee will review all submitted papers to determine which papers meet research standards and are deemed worthy of the award. Then, a committee of members of the National Womens Business Council will make the final award selection from among these qualified papers. The best paper award will be presented at the ICSB Conference in June 2005 in Washington DC.

The topic of investigation should be important to a significant segment of the womens enterprise community (educators, practitioners, trainers, policy makers, etc.)
Makes a contribution to better understanding the phenomenon of womens entrepreneurship, and contains a clear description of how practice and/or policy will benefit from the analysis and findings revealed in the study.
Meets accepted standards with respect to research design, methodology and analytical techniques.
Is creative or innovative in the theory tested or the analytical approaches taken.
Contains a well designed set of conclusions/recommendations for the area studied.

Further information will be available on the ICSB web site (www.icsb.org) and from the womens entrepreneurship track leaders. Any questions or suggestions concerning this award should be submitted to Annette St. Onge, Senior VP of Finance, International Council for Small Business and Chair of the ICSB Women in Small Business Committee. She can be contacted at astonge@ns.sympatico.ca.

Please consider submitting an abstract now (due by January 15, with paper due March 15)!