Challenges for spatially oriented entrepreneurship research

During the past two decades, interdisciplinary oriented entrepreneurship research focused increasingly on spatial aspects of entrepreneurial activities and support policies. This paper takes stock of central themes in entrepreneurship research at and across different geographic scales, the preferred sources of data and information as well as methodological approaches. It sets out to discuss the shifting interest of research over time and to sketch out theoretical and methodological challenges for further research. This paper is based on a review of 18 international journals in small business and entrepreneurship research, economic geography, regional economics and neighbouring sciences for the period 1990–2007. Altogether, 348 relevant articles were identified, read and classified. The analysis reveals that the entrepreneur's socio-spatial contexts in which they operate on a daily basis are still absent from much of the entrepreneurship debate. We suggest intensifying research efforts on the linkage between entrepreneurial activities and localities in order to reach a better understanding of the everydayness of entrepreneurship.     

创新教育在物理教学中的实施

创新需要人才,随着教学改革的不断深化,全面实施以培养学生的创新精神和实践能力为重点的素质教育已经成为教育界的共识。未来教育所需要的老师既要尊重学生的主体地位,也要当好学生学习的帮助者和指导者。要实现物理教学和创新教育的结合,教师首先要强化创新意识,从根本上更新教育观念。     

Measuring entrepreneurship at the country level: A review and research agenda

The measurement of entrepreneurial activity across national contexts is a relatively recent and under-represented area of study. There was very little research carried out for comparable indicators of entrepreneurship until the end of the 1990s, when the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor Consortium launched its annual surveys. In the last decade, other indexes and databases have been created, such as the EIM COMPENDIA database and the World Bank Group Entrepreneurship Survey dataset. The first objective of this paper is to review and analyse the existing entrepreneurship indexes with respect to their conceptual and methodological dimensions. This review shows that the conceptual foundations of most of the indexes are insufficiently developed. The second objective is to integrate and compare the indexes on 21 Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development countries for which complete data is available. Strong convergence was found between the indicators of venture creation, business ownership and growth, while noticeable divergences were observed between these indicators and those concerning innovation. This was further explored through cluster analysis, which indicated that the 21 sampled countries could be classified into three distinct entrepreneurial profiles. The paper concludes by offering research directions and debating the use of unitary or composite measures of entrepreneurship in comparison to the analysis of multiple dimensions as exemplified in this paper.     

Building Innovation Excellence of World Class: The Cluster as an Instrument of Spatial Governance in the European Union

European spatial governance is becoming an intriguing mix of ideas from the economic, political and cultural spheres. This article asserts that, in the EU's spatial planning, the cluster is increasingly part of a hybrid spatial politics, here named the ‘cluster gaze’, based on the interplay of innovation‐oriented political rationality and spatial governance. To study this process, the article provides an empirical investigation into selected EU documentation. The investigation is based on two perspectives. First, the cluster is analysed as a mediating instrument to stimulate and rescale transnational market developments in the EU. Second, the cluster is studied as an instrument of spatial management — one that builds on a business managerial ethos and endorses a specific hierarchical spatial imaginary and a cluster evidence base to assess the productivity and efficiency of European clusters. Both of these perspectives pave the way for a European ‘politics of cluster excellence’ that is about the constant sharpening of cluster practices, continuous evaluation and ranking, and the enhancement of cluster performance to rise from the ‘European league’ towards the ‘world class’.     

Networking and culture in entrepreneurship

Case studies on three diverse cultural groups are used to investigate how culture norms and practices moderate the way entrepreneurs utilize social networking. Moving away from a universalist mono-dimensional position, prior research calls for studies on how culture moderates entrepreneurial networking. Understandably, the concept of a national culture inevitably refers to the mainstream culture which fails to address the sub-culture and minority culture. This paper explores entrepreneurial networking across three cultures (one mainstream culture and two minority) allowing the researcher an insight into how culture moderates entrepreneurial networking. The empirical results reveal variform universality of entrepreneurial networking in two ways: (1) seven drivers moderate how entrepreneurial networking is practiced across cultures, and (2) being embedded in a mainstream culture rather than a minority culture moderates how entrepreneurial networking is practiced.     

The geography of talent: entrepreneurship and local economic development in Oxfordshire

This paper considers the interaction of stocks of talent, entrepreneurship, processes of institutionalization and networking in local development. The main theme is that although innovation necessarily involves social networks and collective action, it should not be overlooked that the quality of those networks is dependent on the quality or talent of individuals who have initiated particular developments. The paper argues that the literature on local and regional development tends to overlook the agency of individuals and that to do so ignores processes that lead to the distinctive characteristics of localities. Using Oxfordshire as a case study, it demonstrates how the expertise of talented individuals has been translated in the fastest growing high-tech economy in the UK. This has brought visibility to the county's techno-economic and institutional achievements feeding into high-level professional and political policy agendas.     

The institutional approach to entrepreneurship research. Introduction

The main argument of the presentation of this special issue is that entrepreneurship research based on institutional theory is a promising field of research. After a brief explanation of the nature, scope and philosophical foundation of institutional theory and the distinction between old and new institutionalism, an attempt is made to justify why entrepreneurship research using the institutional approach is promising. A reference to some previous research in this field illustrates not only its potential but also the long tradition in institutional economics. A brief reference to the content of each of the articles included in this special issue closes this presentation.     

Evaluating the quality of scientific research papers in entrepreneurship

Quality & Quantity - The study aims to find the quality of research papers published in the domain of entrepreneurship in India. This study covers 100 research papers. A standardized...     

Innovation-driven entrepreneurship in developing economies

The knowledge spillover theory of entrepreneurship (KSTE) has recently emerged as an influential research stream that examines the origin, development and economic impact of innovation-driven entrepreneurship. While empirical evidence has shown that the main premise of the KSTE generally holds in most advanced economies, the purpose of the present study is to investigate the extent to which the ideas advocated by the KSTE are generalizable to different contexts in developing countries. On applying a logistic multilevel analysis to a sample of almost 250,000 individuals across 45 developing countries, the results show that the different context found in developing economies produces a limited connection between knowledge spillovers, innovation and entrepreneurship in comparison with the conventional linkage studied in the KSTE literature.     

Sustainable entrepreneurship,innovation, and business models: Integrative framework and propositions for future research

This article introduces the business models for sustainability innovation (BMfSI) framework to study how business models mediate between sustainability innovations and business cases for sustainability. The BMfSI framework integrates two major perspectives (implicitly) found in the sustainable business model literature. The first is the agency perspective. It takes into consideration that some form of agency is needed, that is, “someone” who takes decisions and acts. Sustainable entrepreneurs are discussed as those agents who align their new or existing business models with sustainability innovations in order to be successful in business and to create value with and for stakeholders. The second perspective is the systems perspective, which acknowledges that business models are always embedded within sociotechnical contexts through which, for example, public policies, private financing, or stakeholder interests influence whether and how business models can be developed. The agency and systems perspectives are integrated in the so‐called business model mediation space. This theoretical notion embraces the decisions and activities pursued by sustainable entrepreneurs as they align their business models with sustainability innovations on the one hand and the influence of environmental contingencies, barriers, and stakeholders from the sociotechnical context on the other hand. The paper concludes with propositions for future research derived from the BMfSI framework.     

民族传统艺术旅游品牌构建研究

民族传统艺术是一项重要的旅游资源,对旅游业的发展具有深远意义,为旅游提供支持,成为旅游发展的动力和引导。文章从民族传统艺术保护与旅游品牌的互动发展出发,充分利用民族传统艺术旅游资源的优势并以此开展旅游活动,开发出特色旅游产品,从而形成自己的旅游品牌并发挥其品牌效应,变资源优势为产业优势,对推动民族地区旅游产业的发展具有重要的现实意义。     

The art of crafting a systematic literature review in entrepreneurship research

Systematic literature reviews are an increasingly used review methodology to synthesize the existing body of literature in a field. However, editors complain about a high number of desk rejections because of a lack in quality. Poorly developed review articles are not published because of a perceived lack of contribution to the field. Our article supports authors of standalone papers and graduate students in the Entrepreneurship domain to write contribution-focused systematic reviews e.g. by providing a concrete guideline. Our article analyzes the strengths and weaknesses of a systematic literature review and how they can be overcome. Furthermore, we provide a combined list of highly ranked journals in the Entrepreneurship domain as a basis for quality appraisal. Finally, this article builds a scenario for the future of the systematic literature review methodology and shows how technological improvements have changed this methodology and what can be achieved in the future.

     

The conceptual contribution of education to research on entrepreneurship education

By building a bridge between the conceptual discussion of education science and entrepreneurship, this article demarcates the role of entrepreneurship education as a form of pedagogy and its connection to a progressive movement. As a form of pedagogy, entrepreneurship education changes the idea of the human being, brings action-orientation, autonomy and interplay between risk and responsibility to the centre of the learning process and challenges the previous ontological, epistemological and to some respect axiological bases of earlier learning paradigms and also presents new ideas for pedagogy and didactics. Thus, seen from an educational perspective, entrepreneurship can now be perceived as a form of pedagogy that renews the previous learning paradigms and furthers educational institutional practices.     

The Warwick way: A case study of entrepreneurship within a university context

The University of Warwick perceives itself as an innovative and entrepreneririal organization, and has a reputation as such amongst institutions of higher education within the UK. The Conservative Government of Mrs. Thatcher has since 1979 applied steadily increasing pressure on the British system of higher education for it to be more flexible, responsive and business-minded, with less dependency on public funding. The result has been a turbulent and challenging environment for the quasi-public sector universities, with a premium being placed on their ability to manage change. At the time ofwriting, Warwick appears to have operated successfully within this new climate, both to its benefit and to that of its local industrial district. The airticle examines the factors which facilitate and stimulate innovative and entrepreneurial activity amongst the Warwick academic community - factors which will become increasingly important if the university world .is to adapt with flexibility, responsiveness and imagination to the changing and increasingly demanding economic and governmental climate now prevailing not only in the USA and the UK, but also in Australia, Canada, New Zealand and Nigeria.     

Fostering entrepreneurship in distressed urban neighbourhoods

During the last decade entrepreneurship research has focused increasingly on spatial aspects of entrepreneurship. Many systematic studies have been conducted on the national or regional scale, although other geographical scales—cities and their single districts and neighbourhoods—have drawn less attention. In this context, the paper aims, firstly, at identifying spatial success factors of entrepreneurial activities and their promotion at the local scale. Secondly, the paper aims at contributing to the development of a conceptual frame at the interface of entrepreneurship research, urban and economic geography, and regional economics. Empirically, the paper draws on results from explorative case studies in two distressed urban areas.     

企业家精神的三大要素：创新、机会识别和冒险——来自企业家排行榜的证据

企业家精神包括三大要素：创新、机会识别和冒险。利用美国《商业周刊》公布的“30位史上最伟大企业家”数据，通过对入选企业家的入选理由分析，证实了研究的观点。另外，在分析中发现了另外两个企业家精神元素：远见卓识和慈善。此研究为企业家精神研究者把握一般企业家与优秀企业家精神的本质差异提供了参考，也廓清了现实中对企业家精神的误解。     

通过产业集群推动企业技术创新

产业集群研究的一个主要命题是集群与创新的关系,其核心是产业集群和技术创新的互动关系。文章在对产业集群和企业技术创新论述的基础上,重点分析了产业集群和企业技术创新之间的相互关系,并在此基础上,阐述了产业集群对企业技术创新的作用机制。     

The Surprising Duality of Jugaad: Low Firm Growth and High Inclusive Growth

Western theories on creativity emphasize the importance of access to resources and the generation of innovations as a source of sustainable competitive advantage for firms. However, perhaps the emphasis on slack resources and the firm as the level of analysis may be less appropriate for understanding the benefits of individual creative problem solving in resource-poor environments of the east; focusing solely on the firm is not sufficiently inclusive and may underestimate the benefits of creative problem solving under resource scarcity. Through an inductive interpretive case study of 12 problem solvers in the highly resource-poor environment of rural India, we identified the antecedents, dimensions and duality of outcomes for an Indian cultural source of creative problem solving called jugaad. Jugaad relies on assertive defiance, trial-and-error experiential learning and the recombination of available resources to improvise a frugal quick-fix solution. Our inductive framework provides new insights into the dual outcomes of creative problem solving from an eastern perspective; jugaad is unlikely to be a source of competitive advantage for firm growth but represents a source of enhanced wellbeing for inclusive growth.     

如何在素描教学中提高学生的创新能力

创新是一个国家发展的不竭动力,随着国家对于民族创新能力发展的重视,如何在高等教育教学中提高学生的创新能力成为高等教育需要思考的问题,文章从高等教育的基础素描教学中如何从不同的教学体系的多样性,形式创新,以及工具和手法的创新来引导和提升学生的创造性。