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Over several decades, the Vietnamese government has increasingly cut its investment in the public higher education system and has also introduced a cost-sharing mechanism. Under this scheme, Vietnamese public universities have been seeking other sources of revenue. Despite the bold emphasis on the need for revenue diversification in higher education in Vietnam, there is little empirical evidence of the status quo of Vietnamese public higher education finance. The purpose of this paper was to fill this research gap by using the Hirschman–Herfindahl Index to estimate the degree of financial diversity in 51 public universities in Vietnam between 2015 and 2017. Our findings revealed that all institutions in this study were unsustainable due to their weak financial diversity. Suggestions for policy makers and university leaders that may enhance financial sustainability include the adoption of performance-based financial allocations and the implementation of capacity-building programs for universities with regard to fund-raising and entrepreneurship skills.

Entrepreneurs face numerous challenges and experience conflicts in their daily lives. However, it is clear that female entrepreneurs have more conflicts than male ones due to society’s perception of women and various expectations from them, and consequently, these conflicts affect women’s investment decisions. In this study, especially conflict levels of female entrepreneurs at work and in family have been investigated. Also, this study dwells upon how the roles that female entrepreneurs play in family and at work shape their investment plans and how the conflicts they experience affect their investment decisions. In this study, a total of 348 face-to-face interviews with female entrepreneurs, from the four major cities of the most economically developed region of Turkey, have been conducted, and various questions about demographic characteristics, business characteristics, entrepreneurship densities, business, and family conflict situations and investment plans have been asked. The obtained data has been analyzed and classified via rough set theory. The correlative relationship between conflict and investment decision has also been demonstrated. This paper contributes to the extant literature - in which there is an essential gap relating to female entrepreneurs in Turkey - by describing their status, conflict levels and investment decisions with quantitative data. The study presents a new perspective on the classification of female entrepreneurs with a rough set theory which is considered to be superior to other classification methods in terms of classifying objects with the same characteristics according to different decision situations.

The purpose of this paper is to advance our understanding of core entrepreneurial competencies and their interdependencies. Developing entrepreneurial competencies is increasingly seen as important to foster entrepreneurship. Studies to date have highlighted different entrepreneurial competencies in the context of different sectors, regions and countries. However, there has been a lack of consensus in relation to the perceived relative importance of core entrepreneurial competences and their interdependencies among students, academic and entrepreneurs. Our paper focuses on two key questions: first, what are the core entrepreneurial competencies that need to be developed in educational contexts? Second, what are the interdependencies between these entrepreneurial competencies that need to be developed in educational contexts? Using a collective intelligence methodology a comparative study of Iran and Ireland was undertaken that involved three stakeholder groups of students, academics and entrepreneurs. This methodology was used to identify, rank, and structure entrepreneurial competencies considered important for university students. The results of the study indicated that productive thinking, motivation, interpersonal skills and leadership are core entrepreneurial competences that need to be developed in educational contexts. Findings also highlight critical interdependencies between entrepreneurial competencies and the relative influence of different competencies across groups and regions. We outline the implications of our findings for designing a curriculum for improving students’ entrepreneurial competencies.

This paper empirically investigates the key firm- and industry-specific restrictions to the performance of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in services trade. For this purpose, we use firm-level data from firms in France operating in different services sectors over the time period 1998 to 2007 and formulate two-part models consisting of (i) (dy namic) export equations and (ii) (dynamic) export share equations. Our results confirm the view that a relatively low share of SMEs engage in services trade. In line with the new-new trade theory, our results also corroborate that more productive SMEs have a higher export probability. The key finding of this paper is that the export decisions of SMEs in services sectors are estimated to be extremely persistent, implying that trade pol icy efforts, including the allocation of scarce trade promotion budgets, should be directed at addressing the barriers faced in establishing the first export operation. Finally, our sub-sectoral estimates reveal considerable heterogeneity across different types of services.

This paper contributes to explain the persistence of differences in levels of entrepreneurship within and across countries. We provide an explanation based on the dynamic interplay between purposeful intergenerational transmission of preferences for entrepreneurship and public administration efficiency. Individuals vote on taxes, and the collected taxes fund the civil servants’ wages. The performance of the administration generating an efficient normative and regulatory environment, affects the success of entrepreneurship. We show that an economy can reach two different long-run equilibria: a traditional equilibrium, with a low proportion of entrepreneurs, high taxes and an inefficient administration and, an entrepreneurial equilibrium with a high proportion of entrepreneurs and, lower taxes but enough to implement an efficient administration. The equilibrium achieved depends on the tax policy followed by the different generations. If decisions are made by majority voting in a myopic way, then the initial conditions of the society become crucial. This result explains persistence: an economy evolves around similar levels of entrepreneurship unless some reforms are implemented., G. Olcina and L. Escriche acknowledge financial support from the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness project, ECO-2014-58297-R, ECO-2017-87245-R and the ERC project-TECTACOM. E.M. Tur thanks the Broman Foundation for financial support.

The paper introduces the “BECOMe” project, winner of the PoliSocial Award 2018. BECOMe deals with sustainable affordable housing in developing countries. In particular, the research aims to deliver an integrated development plan for a new business ecosystem design model oriented to new sustainable settlements in Mogadishu (Somalia), involving local entrepreneurship, social facilities and renewable energies. Indeed, the topic of sustainable affordable housing in developing countries is gaining increasing importance for Somali and international stakeholders. Nowadays, the major gap in the provision of adequate and affordable housing is to build a social community and to go beyond just providing basic shelters, to create sustainable durable settlements. The fragile and uncertain nature of the social, political and economic context, characterized by the lack of common shared legislative references and business strategies within the housing sector, makes Mogadishu a complex and challenging reality to be explored and improved.

Promoting entrepreneurship has become an important policy strategy in Europe in the hope to stimulate the crisis-shaken economy. In this paper, we caution against undue expectations. Using data from the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor for 17 European countries, we find that a considerable proportion of the new entrepreneurs have started a business despite a negative perception of business opportunities as well as lack of confidence in their own entrepreneurial skills. This proportion has increased during the economic crisis, especially in those countries which were particularly affected by economic downturn and rising unemployment. We extend existing entrepreneurship theories to account for this phenomenon, which we call “nons-entrepreneurship”. Testing the hypotheses derived from our model, we find that the primary motivation for these people to turn to entrepreneurship is the lack of other options to enter the labour market during the economic crisis. Still, this sort of “desperate” entrepreneurship does not equal necessity based entrepreneurship, warranting further research.

The growth of new technology-based firms (NTBFs) is usually restricted by their limited ownership and management structures. This paper explores whether acquisition, particularly that by multinational enterprises (MNEs), promotes the growth of NTBFs. Based on Swedish micro-level longitudinal data, this study further distinguishes between Swedish MNEs and foreign MNEs as acquirers and disentangles their different acquisition effects on the growth of NTBFs. Based on a large sample of Swedish NTBFs entering from 1997 to 2002 and being followed until 2009, this paper uses fixed-effects model combined with inverse-probability-of-treatment weights to account for endogeneity of acquisition arising from both time-invariant and time-varying heterogeneity across firms. The findings show that acquisition by Swedish MNEs significantly improves the growth of NTBFs, but only when it comes to the growth in employees. In contrast, acquisition by both foreign MNEs and Swedish domestic enterprises is not found to have any significant effects on the growth in either employees or sales of NTBFs.

The term ‘smart cities’ is a widely used, but at the same time a highly fuzzy concept. The fuzziness hinders our understanding on the benefits of its adoption, and explains the existence of many relevant activities with fragmented or distorted views of what a truly smart city is. The aim of this paper is to undertake a comprehensive review of how smart cities are perceived in the literature and in the light of the findings propose a clearer definition. Overview of the key terms, concepts and definitions associated to smart cities, reported in this paper, demonstrates that the definitions found in the academic literature have limited scope, and are overly focused on strategic drivers and specific actions, instead of making explicitly the connection between the concept of smart cities and the creation of environments that promote happiness and wellbeing of their residents—which should be the main function of a city. Following the thorough review on the smart cities literature, the paper proposes a comprehensive, human-centred, and context-free definition for smart cities. This definition brings an endogenous view on smart cities in which the central element is the direct participation of local actors and stakeholders in the process of thinking, defining, planning, and executing social, technological and urban transformations in cities.

The importance of entrepreneurship to a nation development is unneglectable. Malaysian government has carried out various supporting activities to promote entrepreneurial activities in the country. However, the results were less embracing, especially among the young adults. As such, understanding of what influence young adults' intention towards entrepreneurship is important in the effort of entrepreneurship development. This study was carried out to address the university students' level of entrepreneurial intention and the influence of individual entrepreneurial orientation (IEO) on entrepreneurial intention. A questionnaire survey was conducted on 176 undergraduate students from a public university with 'entrepreneurial university' status. The results indicated that university students demonstrated intention towards entrepreneurship and were quite positive towards becoming entrepreneurs. In addition, university students' entrepreneurial intention was found to be positively affected by their quality of proactiveness and innovativeness. However, risk-taking ability was not an influential factor on entrepreneurial intention. Theoretically, this paper confirmed the importance of studying EO at the individual level. Practically, it suggested that higher learning institutions should pay careful attention in designing their entrepreneurship education curriculum. Specifically, the entrepreneurship training should focus on enhancing students IEO ability and increasing their entrepreneurial intention. Recommendations for future researchers have also been put forth at the end of this paper.

Given the economic squeeze world over, search for what we call frugal grassroots innovations in Honey Bee Network, has become even more urgent and relevant in the recent years. And, to shape this search, models and concepts like open innovation, reverse innovation (GE, Market-Relevant Design: Making ECGs Available Across India, 2009); (Govindarajan, Reverse Innovation: a Playbook, 2012); (Govindarajan and Ramamurti. Global Strategy Journal, 1: 191–205, 2011); (Govindarajan and Euchner, Res. Technol. Manage, 55: 13–17, 2012, Govindrajan and Trimble, 40(5), 5–11, 2012), embedded innovation (Simanis and Hart, Innovation from the Inside Out, MIT Sloan Management Review, 2009), extremely affordable, low-cost, frugal innovation (Honey Bee Network, 1989–2016, Gupta, 2000); (Gupta AK, How Local Knowledge can Boost Scientific Studies, 2007); (Gupta AK, Indian Hidden hotebd of invention, 2009a; Gupta AK, http://anilg.sristi.org/harnessing-stimulus-for-promoting-innovations-and-entrepreneurship/ , 2009b) etc., have emerged over time. We wish to trace the evolution of the Open Innovation Theory (Urban and Von Hippel, Manag. Sci. 34(5), 569–582, 1988) in the context of the Honey Bee Network working on such ideas for over 26 years. The idea is to study the different strands of relationships between knowledge providers and seekers which make the system truly reciprocal, responsible and responsive. When systems become open, search cost for inclusive innovation will automatically come down and the knowledge system will also become more symmetrical and inclusive. Inclusive innovation for social development implies that new solutions should help in dealing with one or more of the five factors of exclusion: spatial, seasonal, sectoral, skill and social. These should also be accessible, affordable, available and adaptable to varying and differentiated user endowments and needs, besides being circular. One has to understand the interaction between natural, social, ethical and intellectual capital, situated in the institutional context of innovations: at, from, for and with grassroots level communities for defining inclusivity in the innovation ecosystem. A company or a community, when in need of an innovative solution to a local problem, may seek it from outside, develop it inside, or co-create/contract it out. The nature of reciprocity between knowledge and innovation exchange partners may have different types of asymmetries (Bansemir and Neyer 2009). Different ethical principle enunciated in the Honey Bee Network may or may not be followed. The discourse on open innovation has been biased in the favour of corporates seeking ideas form outside rather than sharing their own innovation/knowledge as a public good or commons, or even at low cost with less-advantaged industry actors. In this paper, we reflect on such biases that companies and scholars have developed and propose a framework to temper it. The need for such a correction becomes even more important when various kind of climatic, institutional and market risks are making socio-economic systems more fragile and vulnerable to various uncertainties and fluctuations. Coping with risks is significantly related to malleability of innovations. The process of evolving and nurturing innovations may have a bearing on their eventual adaptability to user. We argue that when both technology platform and application domains are known well, the incubation model works. Generally, through this process, incremental innovation grows better. But, when both are unknown or are ambiguous, sanctuary model works better. In incubators, the chaos is outside and the order is inside. In sanctuary, it is the opposite. It is not very surprising that sanctuary nurtures innovation which is more suited to fluctuating climate and market-uncertain environments. Innovations don’t have relevance only at artefactual level. One can learn at metaphorical, heuristic and gestalt levels too. Building bridges between formal and informal knowledge systems poses a unique challenge in designing reciprocal and responsible open innovation platforms? This paper pleads for more reciprocal, respectful and responsible exchanges of knowledge between formal and informal sector adding value to the contributions of grassroots green innovators.

In this paper, a descriptive case study of a social entrepreneurial firm is used to demonstrate stakeholder salience and stakeholder social issue management valence. The methodology is to use a semi structured interview with a social entrepreneur to identify and map the firm’s stakeholders’ salience and stakeholders’ social issue management valence. The resulting map uses spheres, sized proportionally to social issue management valence, to represent the various stakeholder groups. Each map shows the positioning of stakeholders according to their salience at critical points in the life of the social entrepreneurship. This paper contributes to stakeholder theory through its use of an innovative methodology to combine and view the stakeholders and their importance to the social entrepreneur on a single map. This map incorporates the elements of stakeholder salience with stakeholder social issue management valence. This mapping approach enables us to visualize how salience and valence positions change at critical times. Social entrepreneurs applying this mapping method can balance the allocation of their time and attention to stakeholders while simultaneously keeping with their social mission.

This paper presents new results obtained from investigating the data from a 2015 Vietnamese entrepreneurs’ survey, containing 3071 observations. Evidence from the estimations using multinomial logits was found to support relationships between several sociocultural factors and entrepreneurship-related performance or traits. Specifically, those relationships include: (a) Active participation in entrepreneurs’ social networks and reported value of creativity; (b) CSR-willingness and reported entrepreneurs’ perseverance; (c) Transforming of sociocultural values and entrepreneurs’ decisiveness; and, (d) Lessons learned from others’ failures and perceived chance of success. Using geographical locations as the control variate, evaluations of the baseline-category logits models indicate their varying effects on the outcomes when combined with the sociocultural factors that are found to be statistically significant. Empirical probabilities that give further detail about behavioral patterns are provided; and toward the end, the paper offers some conclusions with some striking insights and useful explanations on the Vietnamese entrepreneurship processes., SCOPUS: ar.j, info:eu-repo/semantics/published

Due to a high level of uncertainty, entrepreneurship is generally considered a risky endeavor. This paper explores the factors impacting entrepreneurial behavior in order to identify new educational opportunities for its development. The paper explores perceived feasibility and desirability for students in 10 countries. The entrepreneurship role is gender tested against desirability and feasibility. The requirements for developing this skill set are also studied. A survey instrument was developed, and data was collected from 4281 students. The results indicate that gender impacts entrepreneurship intention and the way it impacts is influenced by which country the students are from.

Innovation is a process of integrated thinking. The interactions between technology, market and the need for technology remain unconnected. Connecting these unconnected dots leads to a market disruption, paving the way for an economically viable innovation. India has various national-level programmes that foster innovation environments for the creation of economic empowerment. This paper looks at one such innovation: the soleckshaw: solar electric rickshaw. The emergence of these electric rickshaws came from enhancing the design of already existing cycle rickshaws to create better rickshaws, which are socially acceptable as they reduce human drudgery and are environment friendly, leaving a low-carbon footprint. The case being highlighted here, that existing knowledge connected with existing technology to address a need, leads to new consumers and new markets and eventually causing a technology-led policy intervention. The paper also looks at the role non-exclusive licencing plays in the absorption and dissemination of an innovation.

This paper introduces the evolving understanding and conceptualization of innovation process models. We categorize the different approaches to understand and model innovation processes into two types. First, the so-called innovation management approach focuses on the evolution of corporate innovation management strategies in different social and economic environments. The second type is the conceptual approach which analyses the evolution of innovation models themselves as well as the models' theoretical backgrounds and requirements. The focus in this second approach is the advantages and disadvantages of different innovation models in how far they can describe the reality of innovation processes. The paper focuses on the advantages and disadvantages as well as the potential and limitations of the approaches. It also proposes potential future developments of innovation models as well as the analysis of the driving forces that underlie the evolution of innovation models. The article concludes that the predominant open innovation paradigm requires rethinking and further development towards an "active innovation" paradigm.

This paper evaluates a youth internship program in the Republic of Yemen that provided firms with a 50 percent subsidy to hire recent graduates of universities and vocational schools. The first round of the program took place in 2014 and required both firms and youth to apply for the program. The paper examines the demand for such a program, and finds that in the context of an economy facing substantial political and economic uncertainty, it appears there is an oversupply of graduates in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, and a relative undersupply of graduates in marketing and business. Conditional on the types of graduates firms were looking to hire as interns, applicants were then randomly chosen for the program. Receiving an internship resulted in an almost doubling of work experience in 2014, and a 73 percent increase in income during this period compared with the control group. A short-term follow-up survey conducted just as civil conflict was breaking out shows that internship recipients had better employment outcomes than the control group in the first five months after the program ended.

This paper investigates the factors affecting the creation of ethnic ventures in the enclave in order to determine whether immigrants can be considered opportunity or necessity entrepreneurs. The results are helpful to proceed with further reflections on how immigrants perceive the context they are in and on what should be done to foster their social and economic integration. In order to achieve the final aim, three categories of factors - pull, push and socio-demographic - affecting the creation of ethnic ventures in the enclave are considered and tested. Data were obtained from a questionnaire survey that was administered to Ukrainian entrepreneurs in the Municipality of Caserta in southern Italy. The results of a logistic regression model indicate that the factors affecting the creation of new Ukrainian ventures are housing area and age: if immigrants live outside the enclave and they are younger than forty years old, then they are more likely to create new ethnic ventures in the enclave. These results demonstrate that the Ukrainians in Caserta perceive the context they are in as unfavourable: they are necessity entrepreneurs who create new ventures just to overcome the discrimination and exclusion that they experience. Implications for policy makers and suggestions for future research are discussed in the last part of the paper.

Over the past decade or so, there has been widespread recognition that a large and growing proportion of the global workforce is employed in informal sector enterprises. To explain this, neo-liberals contend that enterprises operate in the informal sector due to high taxes, public sector corruption and too much state interference in the free market and that the remedy is therefore to reduce taxes, public sector corruption and the regulatory burden via minimal state intervention. To evaluate critically this neo-liberal policy approach, this paper explores whether cross-national variations in the share of the workforce in informal sector enterprises are associated with cross-national variations in the level of tax rates, corruption and state interference. To do this, International Labour Organisation data on the share of the workforce in informal sector enterprises in 43 developing and transition economies is compared with cross-national variations in tax rates, corruption and levels of state intervention using World Bank development indicators. The finding is that there is little or no evidence to support the neo-liberal policy approach that decreasing tax rates, public sector corruption and the regulatory burden via minimal state intervention, reduces the share of the workforce in informal sector enterprises. Instead, higher tax rates and levels of regulation and state intervention are found to be associated with lower (not higher) levels of employment in informal sector enterprise. The paper concludes by discussing the theoretical and policy implications.

The knowledge spillover theory of entrepreneurship seeks to explain the fundamentals and consequences of entrepreneurship with respect to economic performance. This paper uses the knowledge spillover theory to explain different innovation outcomes. We hypothesize that a high rate of entrepreneurship facilitates the process of turning knowledge into new-to-the-market innovation but has no effect on the relationship between knowledge and new-to-the-firm innovation. Our results using European country-level and pooled OLS, fixed- and random-effects regressions show that a high rate of entrepreneurship increases the chances that knowledge will become new-to-the-market innovation. The findings highlight the importance of Schumpeterian entrepreneurship in the process of the commercialization of knowledge. We discuss the implications for entrepreneurship and innovation policy.

This paper extends the (Lucas, Bell J Econ 9:508–523,1978) model of occupational choices by individuals with different skills, beyond the simple options of self-employment or wage-employment, by including a second choice for the self-employed. That is, an option to hire employees and so become self-employed with employees (SEWEs), or to be self-employed without employees (SEWNEs). We solve for the market equilibrium and examine the sensitivity of relative sizes of occupational groups, and of the level of productivity, to changes in the exogenous parameters. The results show that the positive (negative) association between number of SEWEs (SEWNEs) and productivity, observed in the Spanish data, can be explained, under certain conditions, as the result of cross-region and time differences in average skills. These findings point to the importance of distinguishing between SEWEs and SEWNEs in drawing valid conclusions concerning any link between entrepreneurship and economic development.

This paper uses social learning theory to examine the influence of parental role models in entrepreneurial families. We distinguish between paternal and maternal role models and investigate how their influence on offsprings’ decision to become self-employed is moderated by personality, specifically the offsprings’ openness. We use data on 461 alumni from eight German universities. Our results show not only that the presence of a parental role model increases the likelihood that individuals become self-employed, but that the influence of role models also depends on the individual’s openness. We discuss the implications of our findings for research on entrepreneurial families, role models, and the psychology of the entrepreneur.

A growing number of empirical studies find a relationship between the outsourcing of activities and a long term loss of firm productivity growth. The paper addresses this outsourcing productivity paradox by examining the connection between total outsourcing and organisational innovation. We present a model of organisational innovation in which managers raise productive efficiency by identifying organisational architectures that more effectively integrate value-adding activities and administrative routines. As part of this process, managers can internally or externally source an activity. Simulations of the model show that large scale outsourcing restricts the scope for future organisational innovation, leading to lower productivity growth. The findings accord with the empirical data and provide a salutary warning for managers and policy-makers about the long term implications of total outsourcing.

This paper examines the relationship between business dynamics and employment effects in 320 U.S. Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSA). Much of the theoretical work on industry dynamics focuses on the role of noisy selection and incomplete information on entry and survival. We extend this research by looking at the impact of firm heterogeneity on employment persistence. We find that only start-ups with greater than twenty employees have persistent employment effects over time and only in large diversified metropolitan regions. Therefore, both the type of entry and the characteristics of the region are important for employment growth.

The present paper tries to answer analytically how much the reference group influence can affect an actual market share of a particular brand or product. It is found that the increase of the size of a reference group and the probability of following the majority within the reference group may lead to the temporary modest prevalence of one brand. This result requires a relatively large size of a reference group and a high probability of following the majority within the reference group. If these conditions are not satisfied the effect on the market share is negligible.

It is a familiar observation that entrepreneurship is not easily accommodated within the framework of neoclassical economic theory. Drawing inspiration from an ancient critique of neoclassicism by Veblen (Q J Econ 12(4):373–397, 1898), this paper attributes the difficulty to the tension between normative accounts of decision making (as in mainstream theory) and ideas of causation that are standard in the sciences. Normative theories naturally privilege the conjectured future over the experienced past in the quest for explanatory factors. Evolutionary theories elucidate instead the mechanisms of “cumulative causation” (Veblen) that perpetually produce the present from the past. Entrepreneurship of the innovative (Schumpeterian) kind seizes opportunities that emerge in complex, evolving contexts of technological and institutional change. A theory that gives due weight to cumulative causation sheds greater light on these processes than prevailing mainstream theory can, and that is a key advantage of an evolutionary theory.

This paper examines the relationship between new firm formation and regional employment change in the Netherlands. Using a new regional data base for the period 1988-2002, we examine the time lags involved in the relationship. We also investigate whether the relationship differs by time period, by sector and by degree of urbanization. We find that the maximum effect of new businesses on regional development is reached after about six years. Our results also suggest that the overall employment impact of new-firm startups is positive but that the immediate employment effects may be small in the Netherlands. Furthermore, we find that the relation between new businesses and regional development has been stable during the period under investigation, that the employment impact of new firms is strongest in manufacturing industries and that the employment impact of new firms is stronger in areas with a higher degree of urbanization.

In this paper I document that highway construction firms in California, particularly those owned by blacks and Asians, exhibit considerable racial segregation in that they are disproportionately located in zip codes with the greatest concentration of own-race residents. I find that segregated firms serve a larger market than minority-owned firms that are not segregated and that this effect is concentrated in black-owned firms. I next exploit the segregation of firms to examine the effect of affirmative action on the success of minority-owned firms. Following the significant curtailment of affirmative action in California due to a direct statewide ballot initiative, the number of highway construction establishments located in zip codes with the highest concentrations of black and Asian residents fell relative to the rest of the state, even conditional on the number of non-construction establishments. This suggests that affirmative action policies may play a role in the net survival rates of minority-owned firms.

This paper has three objectives: (1) to survey the relevant literature addressing the (apparent) paradox of Research & Development investments carried out within Small and Medium Enterprises; (2) to provide focused summaries of the articles in this special issue; (3) to draw some general conclusions in terms of policy implications.

Two alternative diversification strategies—the geographic diversification of export sales and key market concentration—are extensively discussed in management, strategy, entrepreneurship, and economics literature. However, no conclusive evidence currently exists as to how either of these strategies affects the performance of international sales. This paper contributes to a better understanding of geographic diversification as a key dimension of the internationalization process for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). In it, we analyze a comprehensive database of Polish exporters over a 3-year period to better understand the geographic diversification patterns of exporters. Based on this analysis, six propositions emerged from the export patterns examined and two viable strategies for exporting SMEs are identified: (1) concentrating on a single market and (2) a balanced approach aimed at targeting a small number of key markets, combined with a strategy of penetrating other markets. Implications for practice and future research are also discussed herein.

Persistent differences in the level of business ownership across countries have attracted the attention of scientific as well as political debate. Cultural as well as economic influences are assumed to play a role. This paper deals with the influence of cultural attitudes towards uncertainty on the level of business ownership across 21 OECD countries. First, the concepts of uncertainty and risk are elaborated, as well as their relevance for entrepreneurship. An occupational choice model is introduced to underpin our reasoning at the macro-level. Second, regression analysis using pooled macro data for 1976, 1990 and 2004 and controlling for several economic variables, yields evidence that uncertainty avoidance is positively correlated with the prevalence of business ownership. According to our model, a restrictive climate of large organizations in high uncertainty avoidance countries pushes individuals striving for autonomy towards self-employment. Regressions for these three years separately show that in 2004 this positive correlation is no longer found, indicating that a compensating pull of entrepreneurship in countries with low uncertainty avoidance may have gained momentum in recent years. Third, an interaction term between uncertainty avoidance and GDP per capita in the pooled panel regressions shows that the historical negative relationship between GDP per capita and the level of business ownership is substantially weaker for countries with lower uncertainty avoidance. This suggests that rising opportunity costs of self-employment play a less important role in this cultural environment, or are being compensated by increasing entrepreneurial opportunities.

This paper gives an overview of the empirical research on the effects of new business formation on regional development and introduces the contributions to this special issue. The effects of new businesses on regional development emerge over a longer time-period of up to ten years. A main focus of the contributions to this special issue is on the distribution of these effects over time and on the magnitude of the overall effect. While the basic pattern found for the different countries and regions is quite similar, the magnitude of the overall effect can be different and may even be negative. There are strong indications, that the type of entrants plays an important role in this respect.

Firm growth studies have been focused on the question of whether firm growth is independent of firm size. This shadow of Gibrat’s Law has drawn attention to the randomness in firm growth. However, it has also clouded relevant research avenues that enquire into the role of firm growth processes and strategies. This paper takes stock of the current state of the art of firm growth studies in small business economics, and makes a plea for more specific research approaches that highlight the nature of the firm, organization, and growth paths. This rejuvenation of firm growth studies comprises a search for necessary mechanisms and contingent conditions for the growth of firms.

In this paper, we compare two datasets designed to measure entrepreneurship: The Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) dataset and the World Bank Group Entrepreneurship Survey (WBGES) dataset. We find a number of important differences when the data are compared. First, GEM data tend to report significantly higher levels of early stage entrepreneurship in developing economies than do the World Bank business entry data, while the World Bank business entry data tend to be higher than GEM data for developed countries. Second, we find that the magnitude of the difference between the datasets across countries is related to the local institutional and environmental conditions for entrepreneurs, after controlling for levels of economic development. Our findings suggest that entrepreneurs in developed countries have greater ease and incentives to incorporate, both for the benefits of greater access to formal financing and labor contracts, as well as for tax and other purposes not directly related to business activities.

This paper explores differences in the proportion of export-oriented early-stage entrepreneurial activity in 12 Asian countries. Drawing on varieties of capitalism theory, we find that Asian countries with high quality institutions are more likely to have higher proportions of young export-oriented firms. However, analysis on a 51 country data set indicates that Asian countries have significantly fewer young export-oriented firms than do non-Asian countries. Furthermore, the multi-country study reveals that countries with higher proportions of export-oriented entrepreneurial activity tend to have flexible industrial relations, high quality vocational training, and confrontational labor-employer relations, however the proportion of export-oriented new ventures is not related to the quality of corporate governance and inter-firm relations.

In an evolutionary approach to macroeconomics, the market disequilibrium dynamics resulting from structural change need to be properly represented at the aggregate level. As suggested by the late F.A. Hayek, a suitable equilibrium concept required to this end as a frame of reference, is that of a flow equilibrium. The paper explores the corresponding flow dynamics that draw attention to variables not usually considered in macroeconomic theorizing. Using statistical estimates for these new variables for the West German manufacturing sector during the German unification process allows some important new insights on the relationships between structural change and macroeconomic performance.

The intellectual breakthrough contributed by the new growth theory was the recognition that investments in knowledge and human capital endogenously generate economic growth through the spillover of knowledge. However, endogenous growth theory does not explain how or why spillovers occur. This paper presents a model that shows how growth depends on knowledge accumulation and its diffusion through both incumbents and entrepreneurial activities. We claim that entrepreneurs are one missing link in converting knowledge into economically relevant knowledge. Implementing different regression techniques for the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries during 1981 to 2002 provides surprisingly robust evidence that primarily entrepreneurs contributed to growth and that the importance of entrepreneurs increased in the 1990s. A Granger test confirms that causality goes in the direction from entrepreneurs to growth. The results indicate that policies facilitating entrepreneurship are an important tool to enhance knowledge diffusion and promote economic growth.

A common phenomenon in entrepreneurship is that employees turn away from employment to found their own businesses. Prior literature discusses the former employers' characteristics that influence the creation of entrepreneurial ventures. An investigation of whether these characteristics also affect the success of the spawned ventures is missing so far. This paper contributes to the literature by showing that entrepreneurial ventures spawned by well performing firms are financially more successful than ventures stemming from poorly performing firms. This suggests that spawned entrepreneurs are able to exploit valuable knowledge from their previous employers which impacts their ventures' performance positively. The analysis is based on a linked employee-employer data set for the Netherlands for the period 1999-2004.

This paper provides the first empirical attempt of linking firms’ profits and investment in R&D revisiting Knight’s (Risk, uncertainty and profit,Hart, Schaffner & Marx, Boston,1921) distinction between uncertainty and risk. Along with the risky profit-maximising scenario, identifying a second, off-setting, unpredictable bias that leads to heterogeneous returns to R&D investments is crucial to fully understand the drivers of corporate profits. Consistently with the Knightian theory that relates risk to profitability, we model the impact of risk and uncertainty on profits and provide a first empirical attempt to model the effect of ambiguity, a particular type of uncertainty,on R&D returns.

The aim of this paper is to explore the scope of coaching in the context of organizational change considering peculiar issues associated with the use of coaching in Latvia and Lithuania. This two-stage study seeks to answer the following research questions. How is coaching defined? What is the aim of coaching? Who are involved in coaching? What coaching outcomes are expected? During the first stage, the definitions of coaching are extracted from the literature and analyzed to identify the distinctive features of coaching. During the second stage, the experts are interviewed to explore the views of practitioners in coaching about a place of coaching in organizations. Literature review, content analysis and comparative analysis are used for the purposes of this study. Triangulation of research results is obtained through cross verification from two sources. A total of 41 definitions of coaching were extracted from the literature and taken for analysis. Based on the established criteria for selection, nine experts participated in an interview. As a result, content analysis and comparative analysis have revealed that coaching is defined as a regular, synergetic, learning and development, goal-oriented process. Facilitation is a primary aim of coaching. Coaching is more beneficial for people who provide decisions. Achieved results and personal growth is considered as the key expected coaching outcomes. Coaching provides greater goal clarity, better alignment with the roles in the organization. However, the possible threats and challenges, such as stereotype and misunderstanding, lack of systematic approach to coaching engagements as well as its alignment with organizational change needs, have also been detected. It is difficult to explain how effective coaching can be because coaching is not homogeneous and it is difficult to measure the results of coaching.

Crowdfunding has enabled large crowds to fund innovative projects. This type of funding might tap into the wisdom of crowds who were previously disconnected from the funding process. We distinguish between in-crowd and out-crowd funders (with and without ties to project creators) in order to test for heterogeneity in their information use. Based on the analysis of a large-scale survey amongst project funders, this paper shows that in-crowd investors rely more on information about the project creator than out-crowd investors. Out-crowd investors do not seem to attach more importance to information about the project itself than in-crowd investors, except in the case of donation-based crowdfunding. For financial return crowdfunding, financial information becomes less important once a strong relationship with the project creator is established. Our study allows project creators to target information to specific audiences based on their relationship strength across different types of crowdfunding projects.

Knowledge and character play similarly important roles in knowledge organizations. This paper aims to propose a novel management theory, Intellectual Management (IlM), which is an integration of knowledge management (KM) and character management (CM). Through case study, the management practices in three famous Chinese enterprises were summarized and comparatively analyzed. Taking the results and findings of case study into consideration, the authors built a theoretical model of IlM. As a conceptual framework, the IlM model is proposed and analyzed in terms of definition, function, process, tool, and feature. It was found that (1) IlM is rich in meaning that is constituted of five management levels including component, structure, mode, method, and target; (2) IlM would be embedded into the existing management functions such as strategizing, organizing, decision-making, motivating and controlling, and management subprocesses including research and development (RD (3) an organization which properly engages in IlM would show some features, which could be introduced as evaluation criteria of IlM maturity; (4) the IlM could apply the prior management tools regarding to KM and CM or explore some new specific tool packages; and (5) currently, the organizational destiny is depended on the effective IlM which integrates and balances the roles of KM and CM. IlM is expected to be an effective management idea for knowledge-intensive organizations in future competitive environments.

This paper aims to study a set of entrepreneurial activities at a public university and the interaction with other universities, the business sector and government at Federal University of the State of Rio de Janeiro (UNIRIO), Brazil. The study sought an understanding of the dynamics and results of the research activities, the interaction with various organizations and the establishing of commercial, social, cultural and civic entrepreneurship developed by UNIRIO’s research groups. Analysis of the activities related to entrepreneurship, in a broad sense, offers the possibility of shedding light on less appreciated but equally important aspects of the activities performed by universities, representing an initiative focused on social and humanistic activities. It is this set of endeavors, aimed at the commercialization of technology and appropriation of knowledge, along with others aimed at creating social value, that comprise the entrepreneurial university.

A large part (85%) of Brazil’s population lives in urban areas. Roughly half of these dwellers are located in large cities, defined as having 750,000 or more inhabitants. The urbanization trend is due to historical migration movements that occurred mostly before the recent phenomenon of globalization. Nevertheless, the growth of these urban centers is characterized by insufficient public policies capable of ensuring quality of life to its residents. The main assumption of this paper is that large cities may adopt as a strategy the establishment of laboratories of innovation focused on urban development. This effort requires the municipal leadership to organize ways for stimulating the citizens or at least some segments of the population to use creativity and knowledge in order to propose feasible innovative solutions to the serious urban problems they face. In Brazil, Science and Technology Parks (STPs) have assumed the role of laboratories of urban pertinent innovation in several cases. The aim of this research is to study STPs and their possible contribution to sustainable transformation of cities and regions in Brazil, a large, heavily populated and countrywide diverse upper-middle-income economy. The research question is: what makes STPs contribute to improving the quality of urban development? The methodology unfolds according to the following steps: (i) preliminary diagnosis, (ii) learning process - good practice studies; and (iii) feedback - key lessons - revisiting STP models. Based on a review of the Brazilian experience, this article points out that (i) STPs in different parts of the country have been actually functioning as laboratories of innovation that generate solutions applicable to urban development; (ii) as in high-income economies - mainly in the USA, where they originated in the 1950s, STPs in an upper-middle-income economy were capable of rapidly becoming hubs of innovation ecosystems in diverse cities and regions (it should be noted that, with only a few earlier exceptions, the widespread emergence of STPs in Brazil is a phenomenon of the 2000s); and (iii) there is an essential need to use tools that assist STPs in the planning and coordination processes, in order to achieve a level of institutional articulation in the city or region that enables Triple Helix-alike innovation ecosystems to lever sustainable urban transformation.

This paper investigates entry decisions in industries where firms follow Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) behaviours. Provided that the market is sufficiently large, the key result is that the adoption of CSR rules acts, loosely speaking, as an entry barrier in the industry because the incumbent imposes a “penalisation” on the potential entrant’s profits which is more harmful the larger the social concern is. As regards social welfare, two interesting results appear. For relatively high fixed costs, a welfare reducing entry may happen; however, low levels of the social concern may reduce the likelihood of a welfare reducing entry, in line with the belief that CSR is pro-consumers. On the other hand, in sharp contrast with this belief, for a sufficiently high level of social concern, entry is deterred when duopoly is welfare improving: taking care about consumers’ welfare by firm brings upon a damage for consumers.

Entrepreneurs seek opportunity, are organizational innovators, and engines of economic development. Pursuit of economic self-interest may manifest "guile," or deceit. As academics, we are charged by businesses (and society) to instruct students in functional topics as well as in the rules and policies of business, whether from a legalistic or procedural basis. This paper lays a literature and logic foundation for the culturally-influenced ethical differences having a significant impact on entrepreneurs and larger businesses due to differing ethical foundations and perspectives. Global differences in ethical values and practices combined with globalized markets, supply chains, and the labor workforce aggravate the likelihood of ethical conflicts. An outline of Western business education orientation, means and methods is presented, and initiates a call to collaborate with inquiry and understanding. While some readers may object to this article not further defining the problem beyond the domain of "Best Practices," and for not including elements of research design (methodology, instruments, or sampling technique), this author has attempted to define the need without injecting a bias or ethnocentric perspective. Global entrepreneurship research will benefit from understanding world-wide best practices in teaching business ethics, and such research is only valid if performed through true international collaboration; the essence of the Journal of Global Entrepreneurship Research.

Background: The traditional economic models are increasingly perceived as weak in explaining the bubbles and crashes in financial markets and the associated crisis. Thus, especially after the global financial crisis in 2008, agent-based model (ABM) is getting an attention as an alternative approach for a better understanding of complex dynamics of financial market. Methods: This paper develops an ABM to replicate financial instability, such as bubbles and crashes in asset markets, by introducing a simple idea of ‘heterogeneous expectation’ and ‘herding behavior’ by which agents in different groups have different expectations about a ‘tipping point’ where they expect the price to stop rising anymore but to begins to fall. Results: It is shown that, when the agents have different expectations on the tipping point, the collapse of the price does not emerge automatically, and price fluctuations are often small and even some (seemingly) flat intervals appear. We also verify the impact of the herding behavior by dividing agents into several groups of varying sizes but with the same expectations. By changing the size of groups, we establish that the more agents share the same expectations about the tipping point, the higher volatility of the asset price emerges. Conclusions: We confirm that bubble and burst of prices are more like to emerge when heterogeneous expectations about prices are combined with herding behavior among agents, so that agents in the same group share the similar expectations about the price changes.

Innovation policies are considered the long-term strategy to overcome the present systemic crisis. But this crisis is questioning such policies, their presuppositions and institutional arrangements. This questioning includes the Triple Helix theory and its impact on research and innovation policies. The goal is to examine how this theory can respond to theoretical and practical challenges, how the theory needs to evolve in order to fit the present context. The criticism focuses on growing worldwide standardization of research and innovation policies and their long-term impact on innovation. Restoring and increasing research diversity is urgent for sustained innovation. One solution is to add ‘society’ as a fourth helix. The problem is to clarify what ‘society’ stands for in this context. The paper studies three different institutional arrangements, France, Germany, and Japan, because these three cases can learn from each other and contribute to progress in the Helix theory itself. Potential reforms are summarized in some policy recommendations.

The focus in this paper is to study whether business incubation can provide entrepreneurial start-ups with critical network resources. We make a distinction between incubator-provided network resources and start-ups’ “own” external network resources that are unrelated to the incubator context. Although there has been an increasing number of studies examining incubated entrepreneurs’ network resources, to our knowledge, this is the first study that explicitly compares incubator-provided network resources and start-ups’ own external network resources. Analyzing the results from qualitative interviews with start-up tenants at a technology incubator in Bergen, Norway, we find that network resources acquired by the start-ups’ own efforts (rather than network resources facilitated by an incubator) were most critical in all phases of enterprise development. They played a crucial role in terms of idiosyncratic (non-generic) knowledge generation as drivers of innovation, catalysts for financial contributors, and as a means to organizational reputation and market access. Nevertheless, internal networking with other incubator firms and external network resources facilitated by the incubator were also helpful and complementary, but they were more generic in nature and provided limited idiosyncratic resources. We also found that incubator network resources tend to have traits similar to those of identity-based network resources because they are not mainly governed by economic interests, but at the same time, they are not path-dependent. Inter-tenant network resources, therefore, can have nonbinding weak-ties properties and provide non-redundant information.

In recent years, models for co-creating value in a business-to-business context have often been examined with the aim of studying the strategies implemented by and among organisations for competitive and co-operative purposes. The traditional concepts of competition and co-operation between businesses have now evolved, both in terms of the sector in which the businesses operate and in terms of the type of goods they produce. Many researchers have, in recent times, investigated the determinants that can influence the way in which the model of co-opetition can be applied to the football world. Research interest lies in the particular features of what makes a good football. In this paper, the aim is to conduct an analysis of the rules governing the “football system”, while also looking at the determinants of the demand function within football entertainment. This entails applying to football match management the co-opetition model, a recognised model that combines competition and co-operation with the view of creating and distributing value. It can, therefore, be said that, for a spectator, watching sport is an experience of high suspense, and this suspense, in turn, depends upon the degree of uncertainty in the outcome. It follows that the rules ensuring that both these elements can be satisfied are a fertile ground for co-operation between clubs, as it is in the interest of all stakeholders to offer increasingly more attractive football, in comparison with other competing products. Our end purpose is to understand how co-opetition can be achieved within professional football.