The rise of space entrepreneurship: Trends in the entrepreneurship and investment committee

The Entrepreneurship and Investment Committee (EIC) of the IAF was created in 2007 in order to collect relevant inputs from researchers and practitioners on the evolution of commercial space across the world and hosted its first paper session at the 2008 IAC in Glasgow. It has historically included three or four paper sessions, with each up to around 10 -15 papers selected for presentation at each conference. In recent years, as commercial space has become an international reality, space entrepreneurship and related investment opportunities have garnered increasing attention and the paper submissions to the committee have risen substantially. In this paper we analyze the submissions of the past 11 years and extrapolate key trends, relating them to the broader new space revolution. We include analyses of the authors, the main topics, the contents and the outlooks of the papers and make some suggestions for the committee to guide future submissions to maintain a comprehensive reflection on the state of space entrepreneurship and investment.