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Previous research on the financing of smaller innovative firms has established that being small per se creates problems in accessing finance, but being small and innovative adds another layer of difficulty. This new research explicitly questions whether the Covid-19 crisis has added to the debt access problems of an already disadvantaged group of firms. Using a unique Covid-19 period dataset of 9000 UK SMEs, we find that the most innovative firms had the highest demand for loans during the Covid-19 crisis and evidence that those firms trying to introduce new products and services faced more severe borrowing constraints. As the vast majority of Covid-19 loans in the UK were government guaranteed, we also find that several classes of innovative firms found it more difficult to access government supported loans. It was also not the case that those most impacted by the crisis had the most privileged access to government loan schemes despite a greater need for liquidity. These findings have potential implications for financing innovative firms in the post-Covid-19 world, such as proposing a specific innovation loan guarantee scheme with higher than conventional guarantee rates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Community businesses contribute to the economic and social well-being of the communities in which they operate. As a subset of hybrid organizations, community businesses have unique challenges and opportunities related to their community embeddedness. Our study adopts an institutional logic perspective to understand the evolutionary boundaries of community business, which we argue, are shaped by the interplay of tensions between the social, market, and community logics. While existing literature discusses institutional logics from a dichotomous angle, focusing mainly on the social and market logics, we argue that the introduction of a third logic (i.e., community logics) has ramifications for the evolution of hybrid organizations. The different trajectories may have implications for the social, community, and economic impact that organizations can have. We draw on 39 qualitative interviews to provide useful insights for policy and practice on supporting community businesses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How policymakers and academics organize and visualize core ideas affects how they define and perceive problems and generate policy solutions. While understanding complex ideas—such as productivity—as the product of a set of discrete inputs can help target inquiry and structure policy interventions, this can also lead to siloed thinking that neglects dynamic effects and interactions between elements. This paper explores how three organizations conceptualize the 'productivity puzzle' and suggests that they might be oversimplifying the roots of productivity. We present a systematic review of labour productivity literature using bibliometric coupling and network analysis to develop an alternative framework and map of themes and gaps. This work encourages policy to (1) adopt a systems lens and perceive productivity as the product of dynamic interactions and (2) think critically about how to structure future research on productivity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine the effectiveness of smartphone apps in fostering effectual thinking. The paper considers both the effectual development of entrepreneurial ideas and the associated change in entrepreneurial confidence and perceived entrepreneurial skills of students at a UK Higher Education Institution. Design/methodology/approach: The research was conducted with 60 first year undergraduate management students who had not previously undertaken enterprise education. Students were divided into three groups: the first was given a process-based briefing on developing entrepreneurial ideas; the second the process-based briefing and an additional method-based briefing on developing entrepreneurial ideas; while the third the same process-based briefing and use of the smartphone application as a method-based learning tool. Findings: The results show the value of method-based teaching and the potential value of smartphone based learning tool to support independent method-based learning. Compared to the process-based approach, the method-based approach is shown to have an increased effect on the development of entrepreneurial ideas, as well as increasing entrepreneurial confidence and entrepreneurial skill of the participants. Practical implications: Implications for the future development of enterprise and entrepreneurial education are presented, referring to factors which enable entrepreneurial ideas to be developed and how pedagogical approaches shape this. Originality/value: The study adds to the emergent literature on enterprise education by evidencing the need to develop new approaches and identify in what ways these may be informed by a more effectual approach.