DENTON (UNT), Texas —The University of North Texas and the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay are launching a new effort – the International Conference on Entrepreneurship and Family Business  – aimed at tackling challenges facing small and medium enterprises and family firms around the world.

The conference will be held Jan. 8-10 on the IIT Bombay campus in Mumbai, India.

UNT’s College of Business and the IIT Bombay Shailesh J. Mehta School of Management have created what may be one of the first such events of its kind, designed around the increasing attention surrounding entrepreneurship in emerging economies. Scholars, policy makers, academics and business practitioners from different countries are expected to come together to discuss the ways in which entrepreneurship can help individual companies and the larger, worldwide economy grow.

“From a global standpoint, emerging economies are growing at a much faster rate than the other economies,” said Manjula Salimath, an associate professor in the UNT Department of Management and event organizer. “That is where opportunities lie for businesses to sell products and services. A lot of businesses are going global to meet this mark, but the question is how they can do this most effectively.”

“Everyone has entrepreneurial talent within, and that begins from the family,” said S. Bhargava, a professor at IIT Bombay. “Organizations in the new digital era of knowledge economy will find it hard to sustain if people and leaders are not entrepreneurial.”

Salimath added that an event focusing on entrepreneurship for emerging economies has been needed for some time.

According to media reports, emerging economies are performing increasingly well. The MSCI Emerging Markets Index is up nearly 30 percent this year – beating both the S&P 500 and the FTSE Europe. Additionally, investors are expected to bring another $1.2 trillion into emerging markets in 2018.

“Entrepreneurship is critically important for the world economy because it spurs innovation and is the engine of change, creativity and growth,” she said. For example, “millennials have these amazing ideas to shape the future and that’s how change happens in the business world. That’s what I hear from my students. They want to be future business leaders.”

Details about the conferences are at https://cob.unt.edu/icefb.