So,you want to be an entrepreneur? Lessons from the Entrepreneurship Bootcamp for Veterans with Disabilities

Based on helping dozens of military veterans refine their ideas for starting a business, we identify and discuss a series of potential pitfalls that aspiring entrepreneurs—veterans and civilians alike—must avoid in order to be successful. Potential entrepreneurs must not confuse the pursuit of hobbies and self-employment with the act of creating a business. People who wish to build a business around public speaking or consulting need to firmly establish why customers should be willing to pay for their advice. Individuals that seek to develop a new non-profit organization must have a viable value proposition even though they are not pursing a profit motive. Overall, the entrepreneurial ventures that are most likely to succeed are those that (1) are based on a sustainable business model, (2) leverage the entrepreneur's unique experiences and attributes, and (3) are built around a process or system that enables the venture to prosper even if the entrepreneur leaves the venture.     

On the design of international environmental agreements for identical and heterogeneous developing countries

I analyze the problem faced by an imperfectly informed supra-nationalgovernmental authority (SNGA) that wishes to design an InternationalEnvironmental Agreement (IEA). The SNGA cannot contract directlywith polluting firms in the developing countries (DCs), andit must deal with such firms through their governments. I findthat the transfers necessary to induce optimal behavior by governmentsand firms are sensitive to the timing of the underlying gameand to the existence of collusion. This analysis suggests thatIEAs are not doomed due to a monitoring and enforcement problemarising from national sovereignty. However, the success of IEAsis contingent on the funds available for environmental protection.     

Financing R&D in mature companies: An empirical analysis

We study financing patterns of publicly traded R&D-intensive manufacturing firms in Israel. We further characterize R&D-intensive firms by size, physical capital intensity, and whether they issued stocks in the United States, asking whether these features are associated with particular financing patterns. To address these issues, we present, for the first time, adjusted flow of funds charts that treat R&D expenses as a capital outlay (rather than an operating cost that reduces profits, as standard accounting principles prescribe). We also address the question of how R&D inputs should be measured - using R&D expenses or R&D personnel. We construct both expenditure- and personnel-based R&D measures for each firm in our sample, and investigate to what extent these measures are mutually consistent.     

The future workplace: Views from the floor

Speculation on the future of work and the nature of the future workplace has come to dominate much academic discourse in recent years. Rarely however has the voice of what might be termed the average skilled employee been heard; those who are still shaping a career and may be most at the mercy of whatever changes occur. This study seeks to fill this gap. Stemming from a 1-year research project at Cranfield School of Management, this paper focuses on data collected from a survey exploring the understanding of current and future organisations, and the nature of current and future leadership. The survey was carried out in 2003 and sampled 469 MBA graduates and a further 340 respondents to a web-based questionnaire. The paper provides an overview of the academic discourse on the future workplace, explores the perceptions and expectations of the sample and draws conclusions regarding significant anticipated trends for the future workplace as seen by those on the shop floor. These centre around increased flexibility and autonomy, but with limited awareness of the nature of leadership skills required to lead such a workforce.     

ASSESSING DAMAGES: THE 1983 ISRAELI BANK SHARES CRISIS

In 1983, Israeli bank shares collapsed following several years during which the banks had actively intervened to promote share prices and thereby contributed to a 300% rise in real terms. During the crisis the government assumed control of the banks, which they did not begin to sell back to the public until 1993. We compare 1993 bank share prices after the banks were partially relisted on the Stock Exchange with 1983 precrisis values. The 1993 time-adjusted market values were $10 billion lower than in 1983, a decline borne by precrisis shareholders ($4 billion) and by taxpayers ($6 billion). Of this latter amount, two-thirds represents a transfer from the government to shareholders, while approximately one-third represents an efficiency loss - and hence a direct cost - resulting from government ownership of the banks for 10 years following the crisis. The results highlight the risk inherent in a banking system that is both concentrated and universal and illustrates the costs associated with sustained government ownership.     

Researching the future: method or madness?

This paper examines the methodological issues behind futures studies, questioning whether it is possible to claim a futures study as methodologically ‘sound’, and critiquing how futures methodology fits within the methodological paradigms currently recognised in the research field. The extent to which futures methodology can be considered a paradigm in its own right is also examined as are the assumptive foundations of futures studies. While all the evidence raises many questions as to the form of futures methodology, the lack of clarity does not make a futures study invalid or unreliable, and hence sensemaking from the chaos of futures ‘data’ does ensure that futures studies can be based on method rather than madness.

How does one research the future? The very notion of researching the future is a paradox. The word research lies within the time boundaries of the past and the present so to research the future appears a logical impossibility. Attempts to ground the methodology in any single paradigm or set of constructs proves a fruitless task. Indeed, it becomes apparent that when undertaking research into an area that is something new, in the future, which could constitute a new field of research, fundamentally a new methodology needs to be created. This paper discusses how the development of a futures methodology is an on-going process which cannot be bounded by the limitations of strict rigour, but is nevertheless a rigorously sound approach to carrying out research.

When researching the future, no one method is appropriate in isolation. While quantitative methods such as forecasting, extrapolation and time series may prove useful if there is raw numerical data to work with, a hypothesis cannot be tested and proven as is the case in many quantitative studies. Given the nature of ‘the future’ itself, raw quantitative analysis needs contextualising and interpreting in light of the assumptive future constructs, and the assumptions themselves need examining for ‘assumption drag’ so that underlying trends and wave patterns are accounted for [1].     

Future skills and current realities: How the psychological (Jungian) type of European business leaders relates to the needs of the future

How ready for the future are our business leaders? This paper addresses this question by drawing on two pieces of research. An international skills audit was carried out to ascertain if the skills needed by future business leaders would be different from the skills needed today; the results from 340 respondents are presented. These are compared with data on the Jungian type of over 8000 senior managers and executives taken from nine different European countries. Type was measured by the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator^® (MBTI^®) instrument. The findings are used to identify challenges for the future. For example, although the audit suggested that skills such as the ability to empower others are likely to become increasingly important, people with the most common type preference amongst European senior managers (ESTJ) may, especially when under stress, have a particular tendency to want to make all the decisions themselves, without any input from others. The ways in which organisational psychologists and HR practitioners can employ psychological type to help leaders meet these challenges are briefly discussed.     

CORPORATE GOVERNANCE IN AN EMERGING MARKET: THE CASE OF ISRAEL

Despite significant capital-market reforms in the mid-1980s, the Israeli government and banks continue to play an unusually dominant role in Israeli financial markets. Israeli banks operate as merchant banks and, through pyramid structures of ownership, control large segments of manufacturing, construction, insurance, and services. In addition, the banks dominate all facets of the capital market, including underwriting, brokerage, investment advice, and the management of mutual and provident funds.
Because of this dominance by the banks, several important mechanisms of corporate governance are missing. There is no effective market for corporate control; institutional investors have little incentive to monitor corporate managers; and those managers in turn have little incentive to improve firm performance and increase shareholder value.
To be sure, there has been an impressive wave of IPOs on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange (TASE) in the 1990s. But those firms' stocks have substantially underperformed the market since going public, and many "higher-quality" Israeli firms have chosen in recent years to list their securities on the NASDAQ and not at home. The main reason the most promising Israeli firms go public in the U.S. is because that is where U.S. and other foreign investors want to buy them; such investors want the assurances that come with the U.S. corporate governance system.