Guest Editors:

Phillip Phan, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
Donald S. Siegel, University of California, Riverside
Mike Wright, University of Nottingham

The teaching of technology management has a long history in business schools.  However, the nature of such education and its focus has changed in recent years.  For example, the emphasis on entrepreneurship, venture capital, and emerging technologies has reinvigorated the discipline and brought new issues and new educators to the forefront.  The rise of a knowledge-based economy has also focused greater attention on innovation and the commercialization of intellectual property.  New institutions (e.g., incubators and science parks) and new organizational forms (e.g., research-based joint ventures, and technology alliances) have emerged that may have profound effects on technology management education.  Non-profit institutions, most notably, universities and federal laboratories, have become much more aggressive in protecting and exploiting their intellectual property.  They are also working much more closely with industry and government.

The involvement of government and non-governmental institutions has led to growing international recognition of the narrowness of technology education. This has resulted in the creation of new courses and programs related to technological entrepreneurship at many universities. Some countries (e.g. Japan, Singapore, and Ireland) are developing ‘bilingual engineers’ with capabilities in technology and business.  A concomitant trend is the rapid growth in knowledge and innovation management as a professional field.  In many countries, national governments have supported these initiatives by enacting legislation to facilitate public-private research partnerships, technology transfer from universities to firms (e.g., the Bayh-Dole Act of 1980), and collaborative research.  For example, the European Union, China, and Singapore have established technology-based venture funds to stimulate the development of technology-based start up companies.   Government is also providing subsidies for research-based joint ventures involving universities and firms (e.g., the U.S. Commerce Department’s Advanced Technology Program), shared use of expertise and laboratory facilities (e.g., the U.S. National Science Foundation’s Industry-University Cooperative Research Centers), and programs to promote management and entrepreneurship education among scientists and engineers (e.g. the Science Enterprise Challenge in the U.K.). Technology managers’ organizations are also establishing education programs to professionalize their members (e.g., UNICO and BIOTECHYES in the U.K.).

The purpose of this special issue is to assess the educational implications of these trends for business schools.  Some research questions, controversies, and interview topics that contributors might address include, but are not restricted to, the following:

• What is the appropriate mix between theory and practice in the classroom, with regard to teaching issues pertaining to technology management?
• Should technology in the classroom be taught as small “t” or big “T,” and if so, how should the content be introduced and integrated into a traditional business education?
• What are the appropriate pedagogies to teach innovation management and innovation-related topics?
• How can industry/government linkages most effectively be incorporated into pedagogy and curriculum? 
• How does university technology transfer affect the propensity of faculty members to teach, the quality of their instruction, and the curriculum? 
• How does the rise of technology commercialization affect the culture of “open science,” knowledge exchange, and graduate student education?
• What is the appropriate way to advance technology-based, entrepreneurship education on the campuses of comprehensive universities? 
• What are the educational implications of the rise of collaborative research?
• What is the nexus between science/technology-based programs (e.g., engineering) on the one hand, and business programs (e.g., entrepreneurship and general management) on the other?
• What are the challenges in fostering spanning between technology-based schools and business schools that may be required to develop technology management education? 
• What are the implications for the recruitment of different types of faculty in technology and business schools with different career trajectories?
• What is the evidence on the types of new initiatives to support technology management education and their effectiveness? What are the managerial and policy implications of these initiatives for universities, business schools and government?
• What are the challenges for and how effective are technology management education programs provided by professional and industry organizations?
• What are the implications of recent advances in entrepreneurship education (e.g., the 2004 AMLE's Special Issue on Entrepreneurship Education) for research on technology management education?

Submissions should be received by September 1, 2008 and should be accompanied by an assurance of originality and exclusivity.  Two types of submissions are being solicited: (1) Essays, Dialogues, and Interviews that focus upon well-thought-out or documented positions and viewpoints concerned with one of the topical themes; and (2) Research and Review manuscripts presenting original empirical research and the extension of theory.

Manuscripts must adhere to the “Style and Format” guide for authors, which can be found at the AMLE web site at http://journals.aomonline.org/amle/.   Manuscripts should be submitted to http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/amle, and designated under Manuscript Type as “Special Issue-Technology 2009”.  Authors are encouraged to discuss ideas for submission with the guest editors in advance. For further information, please feel free to contact the special issue editors, Professor Phil Phan at pphan@rpi.edu, Professor Donald Siegel at donalds@ucr.edu, or Professor Mike Wright at  mike.wright@nottingham.ac.uk.

All submissions will be subject to a rigorous double-blind peer review process, with one or more of the guest editors acting as action editor, and final approval coming from the journal editor.  Invitations to revise and resubmit will follow initial submissions in approximately 3 months. Final acceptances will be made by June, 2009.

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