The International Entrepreneurship Forum (IEF) was founded in October 2000 and has members from 25 countries.

The IEF is a forum of academics, policy makers and practitioners, who are brought together to discuss and interact with each other on issues related to entrepreneurship policy, research, education and training.
 

 
The IEF is now working in conjunction with the OECD Local Economic and Employment Development (LEED) Forum for Entrepreneurship.

The LEED Forum is chaired by Mr Francois Hurel, and Professor Jay Mitra is the Scientific Co-ordinator. Within the framework of the LEED Forum’s activities and its new OECD Trento Centre, and important new initiative on ‘Education and Enterprise and the Role of Universities’ has been launched in 2003-4.

This IEF conference is intended to provide an input to this new initiative, which is part of the overall OECD Bologna Process for fostering clusters and SMEs whose significance was highlighted at the 2nd Ministerial Conference on SMEs taken place in Istanbul on 3-5 June, 2004
 

 
Mr Sergio Arzeni
Head of LEED, OECD
Paris, France

Dr Catherine-Léger Jarniou
Paris Dauphine University
Paris, France

Professor Y. K. Bhushan
General Director of the Institute of Management Studies
Bombay, India

Professor Tom Boyle
Business School, Pennsylvania State University
USA

Professor Chen Zhicheng
Director of the Institute of National Economic Management,
China Academy of Management Science, China

Professor Eugenio Corti
University of Napoli
Federico, Italy;
Chairman of Italian Science Parks Association

Professor Allan Gibb
Former Director of the Small Business Centre
University of Durham Business School
UK

Dr. Yutaka Kuwahara
Director of Walseweb.com of Hitachi
Japan

Professor Lu Zheng
Director of the Institute of Industrial Economics
Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, China

Dr Harry Matlay
Reader in SME Development , Business school
University of Central England, UK

Professor Mathew Manimala
Chair Professor of Entrepreneurship
Indian Institute of Management Bangalore, India

Professor Jay Mitra
Professor of Business Enterprise and Innovation
University of Essex,
Director IEF, and Scientific Co-ordinator, Entrepreneurship Forum
OECD LEED Trento Centre

Professor John Miton Smith
Deputy Vice Chancellor of Curtin University of Technology
Perth, Australia

Professor Christian Friedrich
University of Cape Town, South Africa

Ms Irina Sennikova
Riga Management School
Riga, Latvia