Search

This article explores how leisure organisations developed entrepreneurial practices to enable innovation for the post-covid-19 pandemic era. Whilst entrepreneurship and innovation have been the subject of academic scrutiny in mainstream sport, there is a relative paucity of studies within the broader holistic context of leisure. Semi-structured interviews, conducted in the United Kingdom (UK), provide insights from nine high profile, globally recognised industry practitioners from across the leisure industry including the sport, entertainment, health and fitness, leisure, hospitality, arts and culture, events and tourism sectors. Four key themes emerged from the data including extending capabilities through (i) research and development (R&D) and (ii) digitalisation, and changing culture through (iii) diversification, and (iv) sustainability. These practices were shown to enable leisure organisations to create new customer value within an increasingly competitive environment. The paper concludes with an overview of theoretical and managerial implications and provides approaches for developing more entrepreneurial practices in leisure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Chilean doctoral programs in science and technology generally do not consider entrepreneurial training within their curricula. Taking an entrepreneurial competency approach, we explore the potential impact of introducing an entrepreneurship education course to doctoral students based within a non-commercial research environment. We identified two main areas of possible impact: the potential effects upon doctoral research projects and upon the doctoral students themselves. We followed the learning experiences of science and technology PhD students before, during, and a year after an entrepreneurial course through a multiple case study research design. Our results suggest that entrepreneurship education has a positive impact upon the development of student's creative problem-solving and communication skills. This was reported to have a generally positive effect upon the students' doctoral projects and on the student's self-efficacy and entrepreneurial intentions. We conclude that entrepreneurship education complements traditional doctoral training for students within a non-commercial academic setting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social networks are integral to the emergence and development of new ventures, but the temporal utility of networks is poorly understood. We consider the initial development of four university spin-offs and examine the formation and development of network ties to construct valuable entrepreneurial competencies. We develop a conceptual framework that explains how strong and weak network ties are strategically transformed in terms of strength and purpose depending on the type of competency sought and the business development need. We conclude that theoretical explanations of the new venture formation process need to incorporate not only network formation but also the role of network tie transformations. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In the management literature, tacit knowledge has been conceptualised in partial, divergent, and contradictory ways. This paper reconciles these different approaches by explaining how they address different aspects of the theory of tacit knowing developed through the seminal work of Michael Polanyi. To clarify Polanyi's work, we provide a more inclusive theoretical framework for scholars concerned with the creation and transfer of knowledge. Using this framework, we examine the implications for theory and practice of these different conceptualisations and suggest areas for future research. We conclude by proposing that new insights can be gained by reconsidering the concepts of knowing, tacit integration and indwelling where tacit knowing is developed by practical immersion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The development of entrepreneurial intentions by academics remains a relatively unexplored area. This study investigates the transition from intentions to career destinations in a group of early career bioscientists following their participation in a business plan competition. Despite a significant proportion of academics stating entrepreneurial intentions, very few were seen to subsequently create new ventures. Through a longitudinal analysis distinct patterns of changing aspirations are observed as academics attempt to develop ventures within academe or leave to pursue industrial careers. Propositions are developed explaining how the use of social capital influences changing ambitions and destinations. We observe that weak ties are used to reveal the specific skills needed to realise entrepreneurial intentions. By contrast, strong ties are used to either reinforce entrepreneurial intentions or change career aspirations altogether. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

By combining the strategic entrepreneurship perspective and resource orchestration theory we provide an integrated framework that explains the heterogeneity of growth across different types of university spin-offs (USOs). We show that appropriate resource accumulation, the bundling of resources to build competencies and the leveraging of those competencies into the market are all necessary but they also need to be synchronised with an appropriate growth strategy to realise sustainable growth. We discuss the differential resource needs at different stages of growth as USOs attempt to overcome critical junctures of entrepreneurial commitment and venture credibility. We explain the difficulties of accumulating an appropriate breadth of resources and competencies as they are contingent upon whether the USO should be aiming to sell their technology outright or whether they should be developing a product for a specific market opportunity. We conclude by proposing that universities and technology transfer offices should synchronise the depth of their organisational support to meet the growth contingencies of the USO. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

There has been an increase in research activity focused on the contribution of university spin-offs to economic competitiveness, yet the majority of the studies have considered the economic performance of universities or spin-offs in isolation. Such studies have cast some doubt on the extent to which spin-offs have generated expected performance benefits in terms of economic impact and have critiqued the role and capabilities of technology transfer offices in adding value to spin-off ventures. With a few exceptions, studies of academic entrepreneurship have tended to omit consideration of the role of the entrepreneur, and thereby neglected any economic contribution outside of spin-off venture creation. We propose that to better understand the economic impact of academic entrepreneurship, there is a need to explicitly recognize the academic entrepreneurs and their entrepreneurial behavior across different contexts. First, we suggest that academic entrepreneurship can occur in a wider range of contexts than previously examined, necessitating a consideration of the mobility of academic entrepreneurs back and forth between academic and commercial settings. Second, there is a need to better understand the microfoundations, that is, the behavioral and cognitive processes associated with academic entrepreneurs, as they create and develop enterprises within academe or industry. Third, there is a need to examine the heterogeneity of all universities involved in academic entrepreneurship, specifically looking outside the atypical group of leading research universities and considering the significant variance in entrepreneurial culture between schools within specific universities. Fourth, we propose that the nature of policy toward knowledge transfer and academic entrepreneurship needs to be sensitive to the individual and the context. We argue that policy can have unintended consequences upon the entrepreneurial behavior of individuals due to the significant moderating effect of the entrepreneurial legacy of different contexts. Implications for policy and further research are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper evaluates a fellowship scheme aiming to overcome attitudinal and operational barriers towards university technology transfer. We propose barriers exist because of the focus of many academics exclusively within a peer review research network. We explore the case of the Medici Fellowship programme that was implemented in biomedical departments across five universities located in the midlands of England. Our evidence suggests that such fellowship programmes, through the retraining of academics, may have a positive impact on the commercialisation of research. In particular, the fellows, through the enhancement of their social and human capital, are able to act as agents of attitudinal change in their host departments and are seen to build bridges into external business networks that can provide early stage funding, market and legal information and help identify potential customers for nascent academic entrepreneurs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper looks at the relationship between strategic themes (Fuchs et al., California Management Review, 42(3), 118-147, 2000), competitive performance and the processes firms used to support their ambitions. The research was under- taken in a small group of manufacturing SMEs. All the firms sought to achieve growth via the introduction of new products. Their strategic themes provided an internal focus while at the same time presenting the market with a clear position statement. Three of the Fuchs et al. (2000) themes were identified which, when applied solely and supported by appropriate process capabilities, led to sustained competitive positions. However, firms that attempted to pursue two of these themes concurrently were seen to experience conflict and inconsistency of direction. This identification of themes within SMEs provides a framework for SME managers to articulate realistic ambitions against which they can evaluate the effectiveness of their capabilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]