2022 Industry Studies Association
Annual Conference

June 24-25, 2022 | Philadelphia, PA, USA

Join us in Philadelphia for the 2022 ISA Annual Conference!

The Future of Innovation: New Roles, New Rules, New Responsibilities

Amid the uncertainty and disruptions imposed on the world by COVID over the past two years, we’ve also seen shining examples of the power of innovation. From widespread remote and hybrid technology-mediated work to private space travel, from virtual medical visits and COVID-19 vaccine development to autonomous and electric vehicles – new developments in types of innovations, pathways to them (including financing and regulating), technologies and supply chains underlying them, and outcomes, both desired and unanticipated, are spurring dialogue and debate and informing both research and policy.

We saw how innovative technologies, practices, and policies enabled responsiveness and resilience across many industries. We also saw that new roles, rules and responsibilities emerged to guide innovation, beginning to reveal what the future may look like as calls increase for innovation to be more purpose-driven, responsible, efficient, and inclusive for workers, organizations, and industries as a whole.

This year’s ISA conference provides an opportunity to reflect on the future of innovation with the depth of an Industry Study lens. It will also show the value of research conducted using this lens more generally. The two-day in-person conference will shed light on and discuss observations across industries.

This year’s plenaries will center on “new rules for innovation” and “innovations driving new industry disruption and emergence.” We’ll also have a variety of special sessions highlighting unique themes (e.g., the role of sci-fi in shaping the new space age; “meet the author” of new ISA-related books), and combining senior and junior scholars for discussions of big and persistent problems for which ongoing research across generations is essential.

The conference will also host parallel paper and panel sessions that reflect the diversity of our community, and a separate professional development workshop (PDW) for students and junior faculty. We’ll announce and celebrate this year’s ISA award winners, from best dissertation to best published Industry Studies paper. ISA’s leadership will also tell you about exciting initiatives launched in the past year and plans for its future.

Come join the conversation -- meet (or greet again) like-minded colleagues in ISA’s great network of researchers and practitioners -- contribute to the growth of industry studies research -- and help us build innovative ideas and insightful findings that can improve practice.

Registration is Open! Register Today

Register Here

Your invitation:

Join us not only as attendee but also potentially on the conference program as a speaker. ISA cordially invites your submissions of abstracts for individual papers and multi-speaker panels for the 2022 ISA Annual Conference. The conference will be held June 24-25, 2022 in person at The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, PA, USA, provided COVID-19 trends remain positive. Virtual participation will be available for key sessions. Abstracts for paper and panel submissions are due Thursday, January 27, 2022, 5pm.

The conference will provide a forum to share industry studies research with fellow researchers, industry leaders and policy makers; provoke dialogue on industry challenges and opportunities; and form new collaborations related to industry studies research. Industry studies research is grounded in observations of firms and workplaces and in a deep understanding of the markets, institutions, and technologies that shape the environment for organizations, workers, and policy makers. It draws on a range of academic disciplines/fields including sociology, psychology, economics, history, and other social sciences; organization and management science; marketing; policy analysis; operations research; engineering; labor markets and employment relations; among others. Industry studies scholars invest deeply in learning the industry context and enjoy sharing what they learn with like-minded others!

The conference welcomes research from all disciplines that incorporates an industry focus. ISA is especially interested in organized panels and papers that are unique in their emphasis on observation and insight into a particular industry or that consider how knowledge gained in studying one industry can provide insights into other industries.

Topics of interest relevant to this year’s theme include but are not limited to:

New roles:

Private-public collaborations for innovation (e.g., Operation Warp Speed)
Innovation and industry studies in the age of big data and new technologies
Resilient supply chains and process management in a dynamic, global world

New rules:

Financing innovation
Evaluating innovation through social and economic lens - What's different? What's not?
The new regulatory climate for technology and data use globally

New responsibilities:

Responding to climate change via innovation
Purpose-driven, responsible innovation
Building equitable, inclusive, and sustainable labor markets amid technological advancements like artificial intelligence

New organization:

Innovation work in virtual and hybrid worlds: the roles of teams and leaders
The structure of innovation: Platform, industry and/or or ecosystem
Innovations driving new industry creation

While the ISA welcomes papers and panels related to the conference theme, a tie to theme is not mandatory. Any papers or panels that build upon the ISA’s foundational interest in organizations and industries are welcome.

The deadline for all submissions is Thursday, January 27, 2022, at 5:00 PM

Abstracts should be submitted through the ISA submission forms: