Entrepreneurship: The Role of Clusters Theoretical Perspectives and Empirical Evidence from Germany

This paper is about the impact of clusters on entrepreneurship at the regional level. Defining entrepreneurship as the creation of new organisations and clusters as a geographically proximate group of interconnected firms and associated institutions in related industries, this paper aims to answer three research questions : first, do clusters matter to entrepreneurship at the regional level? Second, if clusters are associated with different levels of entrepreneurship, what explains those differences? Third, what do the answers to the previous questions imply for academics and policy makers? To answer these questions, this paper distinguishes between clusters and industrial agglomerations and advances a theoretical model and empirical research to explain the impact of clusters on entrepreneurship at the regional level. This paper uses the 97 German planning regions as units of analysis to test the hypotheses. Using hypotheses testing and OLS fixed-effects model, this paper finds that clusters do have an impact on entrepreneurship at the regional level, but industrial agglomerations do not. Implications for academics and policy makers and suggestions for future research are given in the concluding section.     

提升温州创新力的对策

区域创新能力主要是区域内的企业家的创新能力,区域政府需要培育一个良好的政策环境。让区域内的企业家的创新能力可以得到充分发挥。本文分析了温州区域创新力提升的优劣势,并提出了相应的政策建议。     

广州科技成果优势逐渐不如深圳的原因及其对策

比较穗深数据后发现,广州科技成果优势逐渐不如深圳,且差距还在拉大。据调查,其原因是广州创业环境远不如深圳,"创业文化"、"政府项目"、"金融支持"劣势最为明显,且覆盖面最广;创业环境满意度总体低于中值,且与深圳差距明显;科技投资的主要投入远少于深圳。广州要重拾优势就要发挥现有优势并不断完善科技管理政策,增加科技投入并不断优化投入结构,加强创业教育并重视培育创新文化,吸引更多创新人才并充分调动其积极性,引导企业加强创新管理并提高创新协作水平,加强公共营销工作并推行政策制定民主化。     

非对称合作网络中网络位置与创新绩效的关系——以吉利汽车为例的案例研究

利用扎根理论方法,以吉利汽车为例,对吉利汽车通过全球研发、跨国联盟、内部修炼等在创新合作网络发展的不同时期所占据的不同网络位置与创新绩效的关系进行了研究,并分析了企业家精神在两者间的中介作用。结果表明:占据网络中介和富含结构洞的网络位置能使企业获得更高的创新绩效;在两种不同的网络位置——中心位置和中介位置与创新绩效的关系中,企业家精神均起中介作用。     

大学生社会创业动机结构研究

随着全球性社会创业的蓬勃兴起和我国构建和谐社会理念与实践的深入发展,在大学生就业形势日益严峻的形势下,大学生开展社会创业,对于缓解就业压力、解决社会民生问题、构建和谐社会都具有重要的现实意义。文章基于全国466名大学生社会创业者调查数据,对大学生社会创业动机的结构进行了实证分析。探索性因子分析结果表明:大学生社会创业动机有利他动机和利己动机。利他动机包括公共利益承诺、公平正义、奉献精神三个维度,利己动机包括成就导向和控制导向两个维度。验证性因子分析结果表明:进一步证实了大学生社会创业动机五因素结构模型。研究结果可用于我国大学生社会创业动机的测量,并为今后大学生社会创业动机与各种前因后果变量的相关研究提供定量分析基础。     

基于时空纬度的国内农民工创业研究

文章基于中国知网2001-2014年对农民工创业相关文献的研究数据,采用知识图谱中时空维度这一分析工具,分别对我国农民工创业的研究成果,按照研究的时间、机构、作者、期刊分布进行归类,进而对我国农民工创业研究的热点和前沿问题进行梳理。文章经过分析发现,我国农民工创业研究的热点和前沿问题主要集中在农民工创业问题的基本探讨、农民工创业影响因素、农民工创业动机、农民工创业机理与模式、农民工创业绩效以及新生代农民工创业六个方面。但是由于农民工提法的时代性,文章通过进一步分析认为,未来对于农民工创业的研究可以从以下三方面推进。具体来说,在研究层次方面,要将研究期刊定位于CSSCI及以上级别;在研究路径方面,应结合各地区经济水平差异及地区的特色对农民工创业进行研究;在研究内容方面,要加强对农民工创业动机、创业模式、创业绩效等内容的研究。     

Practice makes perfect: Entrepreneurial-experience curves and venture performance

This study tackles the puzzle of why increasing entrepreneurial experience does not always lead to improved financial performance of new ventures. We propose an alternate framework demonstrating how experience translates into expertise by arguing that the positive experience–performance relationship only appears to expert entrepreneurs, while novice entrepreneurs may actually perform increasingly worse because of their inability to generalize their experiential knowledge accurately into new ventures. These negative performance implications can be alleviated if the level of contextual similarity between prior and current ventures is high. Using matched employee–employer data of an entire population of Swedish founder-managers between 1990 and 2007, we find a non-linear relationship between entrepreneurial experience and financial performance consistent with our framework. Moreover, the level of industry, geographic, and temporal similarities between prior and current ventures positively moderates this relationship. Our work provides both theoretical and practical implications for entrepreneurial experience—people can learn entrepreneurship and pursue it with greater success as long as they have multiple opportunities to gain experience, overcome barriers to learning, and build an entrepreneurial-experience curve.     

Analysis of franchisors' expansion strategies and competition

Franchising provides a channel for small businesses to grow successfully into nationwide or even worldwide chains. Franchising is considered to be common among chain stores, of which the convenience store is a typical example. This study aims to examine the expansion strategy of each individual convenience store franchisor and the competition to expand among the franchisors. Taiwan is considered to have the highest convenience store density in the world. This study performs empirical analyses of four major convenience store franchisors in Taiwan, namely, 7-Eleven, Family Mart, Hi-Life, and OK. The evidence shows that the franchisors tend to be slow to expand when facing a highly dense competitive environment. There exists a strong first-mover advantage in convenience store franchising. The first mover (7-Eleven) has played a dominating role throughout the years. As a result, the franchisors' outlet shares have remained relatively stable.     

Brand and performance signals in the choice of franchise opportunities

When choosing a franchise chain, potential franchisees must incorporate into their decision process the signals of franchise chain quality being sent to the market by the franchisor. Some of these signals along with potential franchisees' choices of franchise chain are analyzed. The results show that brand value and franchisee performance were the key signals used by Spanish franchisees during the period 2002 through 2008, when deciding to open a franchise outlet. The aim of this study was to contribute to strengthening the relationship between entrepreneurship and franchising in Spain from an empirical viewpoint.     

大学知识生产、创业活动与大学技术转移的关系——基于地区层面数据的实证分析

从创业活动角度对中国地区之间大学技术转移绩效不平衡现象进行解释。使用主成分分析法对中国各地区大学技术转移综合绩效进行测度,利用中国省级地区层面数据检验大学知识生产、创业活动以及大学技术转移之间的关系。研究发现：大学知识生产较多的地区大学技术转移综合绩效也较高,大学知识生产促进了大学所在地区的机会型创业包括大学科技园知识型创业和正规组织创业,但是不能促进必需型创业;机会型创业在大学知识生产和大学本地技术转移之间扮演部分中介作用。最后基于实证研究的结论提出相应政策建议。