Opportunity recognition and SME performance: the mediating effect of business model innovation

Opportunity recognition is vital for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), but SMEs face challenges in capturing recognized opportunities. Given that opportunity recognition does not automatically lead to higher SME performance and that SMEs need to take appropriate actions to exploit recognized opportunities to achieve better performance, it is imperative to explore the mediators that enable SMEs to translate opportunity recognition into higher performance. This study proposes that business model innovation may be a key conduit through which opportunity recognition affects SME performance. Based on a dataset of 155 SMEs, we find that the positive relationship between opportunity recognition and SME performance is mediated by business model innovation. These findings not only aid SMEs in accomplishing the performance effect of opportunity recognition, but also provide some insights into the implications of business model innovation.     

Change by Design

Over the course of a century of professional practice, designers have mastered a set of skills that can be productively applied to a wider range of problems than has commonly been supposed. These include complex social problems, issues of organizational management, and strategic innovation. Conversely, non‐designers—those in leadership positions in companies, governmental and non‐governmental organizations, professionals in a broad range of services and industries—can benefit from learning how to think like designers. We offer some large‐scale and more finely grained ideas about how this might happen.     

Longitudinal analysis of self-employment follow-through

The Hungarian economy was based on central planning for several decades and in comparison with the dominance of the great organizations that consisted of many smaller units, the role of small-sized enterprises was marginal. The change in the political climate involved recognition of and belief in entrepreneurship and the new legal system increased the opportunity for setting up new enterprises established on private and joint capital. Nevertheless, the changes in the organizational system of companies within the national economy appear to concentrate in time and territory in Northern Hungary. Increasing unemployment inspires the start of numerous enterprises even when the experience of entrepreneurship is missing and, in addition, the inclination towards it. This may result in difficulties and danger and a study of North Hungarian small businesses is therefore useful.

The aim of this research is to examine the position of SMEs in the North Hungarian industrial area, concentrating on questions that can not be answered by means of traditional statistics. Data were collected by surveying questionnaires. The questions referred to the development of SMEs in North Hungary.

Finally, the elements in the economic environment that may hinder or help successful operation of the enterprises were analysed. With the experience gained by our investigation we would like to help in the reinforcement of SMEs working in Northern Hungary.     

Group competition for rents

This paper examines rent dissipation in a two-stage group rent-seeking contest without a predetermined distribution rule. the rent in this setting exhibits both public and private good characteristics depending on the stage of the contest. Focusing on the relationship between group size and aggregate rent seeking we find that social waste depends not only on total numbers but also on the distribution of population across groups. We show that group size asymmetry acts to reduce rent dissipation.     

The multi-market firm, transportation costs, and the separation of the output and allocation decisions

Despite the documented importance of transport costs for firmswith sales in geographically separated markets, theoreticalanalyses typically ignore such costs. This paper analyzes theeffects of transport costs for a risk averse, competitive firmselling a single good in a domestic (certain) and a foreign(uncertain) market, and shows that these effects are asymmetric.The effects on total output and the inter-market allocationof output depend on the behavior of marginal domestic transportcosts, but are largely independent of the form of the foreigntransport cost function. Moreover, regardless of the latter,if marginal transport costs in the domestic market are constant,the firm's total output is independent of its attitude towardsrisk and the parameters of the risky market. This suggests thatthe firm's activity can be insulated from foreign uncertaintiesby government policies that focus on the shape of the domestictransportation cost function.