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Entrepreneurial activity is a phenomenon that increases the economic growth of countries and improves their social welfare. The economic development levels of countries have significant effects on these entrepreneurial activities. This research examines which institutional and macroeconomic variables explain early-stage entrepreneurship activities in developed and developing economies.

The authors conducted panel data analysis on the data from the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) and International Monetary Fund (IMF) surveys covering the years 2009–2018.

First, the authors' results reveal that cognitive, normative and regulatory institutions and macroeconomic factors affect early-stage entrepreneurial activity in developed and developing countries differently. Second, the authors' findings indicate that cognitive, normative and regulatory institutions affect early-stage entrepreneurship more positively in developed than developing countries. Finally, the authors' results report that macroeconomic factors are more effective in early-stage entrepreneurial activity in developing countries than in developed countries.

This study provides a better understanding of the components that help explain the differences in entrepreneurship between developed and developing countries regarding institutions and macroeconomic factors. In this way, it contributes to developing entrepreneurship literature with the theoretical achievements of combining institutional theory and macroeconomic indicators with entrepreneurship literature.

The lean startup approach (LSA) is extensively utilized by early-stage entrepreneurs, with “pivot” serving as a key pillar. However, there is a research gap concerning the boundary conditions impacting LSA and pivot decisions, especially when addressing societal challenges, as in the context of transformational entrepreneurship. In this regard, the healthcare sector, further compounded by a lack of research on startups and scale-ups, presents an embraced opportunity to provide multiple contributions for both theory and practice.

The present investigation employs a grounded approach to explore the experiences of the co-founders of a fast-growing Italian e-health startup. A narrative strategy was employed to organize conditions and evolving strategic action/interactions into three different pivoting phases of the startup – before the pivot, its enactment and aftermath – with primary and secondary data collected over a period of one year.

Pivoting in digital healthcare unfolded as a liminal experience marked by factors such as high regulation, multiple stakeholders, technological and symbolic ambivalence, resource-intensive demands and institutional actors acting as pathway pioneers, leading to an information overload and unforeseeable uncertainty to manage. These factors challenge entrepreneurs' ability to attain optimal distinctiveness, presenting the paradoxical need for vertical flexibility for scaling up.

By uniquely illuminating the sector’s constraints on entrepreneurial phenomena, this study provides a valuable guide for entrepreneurs and institutional actors in addressing societal challenges.

This study introduces a process model of transformational information crafting when pivoting, highlighting the role of entrepreneurs' transformational stance and platform-mediated solutions as engines behind strategies involving information breaking and transition, preceding knowledge-driven integration strategies.

Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) initial public offerings (IPOs) are an important source of early-stage capital and have also driven a substantial increase in main-board listed companies post-millennium. By contrast, Australian venture capital (VC) funding has remained largely dormant. The opposite has occurred in the US: IPOs have fallen by half, and VC funding has surged. The authors examine the reason for this divergence between ASX IPO and US VC systems that, with their supporting ecosystems, have many features in common and function similarly. The authors explore the potential factors that could explain the US VC surge vis-à-vis Australia's VC stagnation.

The authors’ analysis is predominantly qualitative. The authors describe the Australian listing process and its similar features and functions as for the prototypical VC. The authors also describe the developments in US VC driving its recent exceptional surge and highlight that such developments have not yet materialised on the Australian scene, where early-stage IPOs have served as a substitute.

The ASX's structure and ecosystem have been critical to its success in fostering early-stage main-board listings. While the US has succeeded in alternatively growing VC, there is an increasing concern that the latter has occurred partially because valuations are stretched, tax concessions for carried-interest capital gains are too high and corporate control benefits are becoming increasingly diluted. These developments could have important implications for Australia, where VC structures are currently being reviewed.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, no prior study has attempted to bridge the broad differences in IPO and VC funding trends for early-stage companies in Australia and the USA.

This paper examines the governance function that incubators perform for entrepreneurial firms. The authors demonstrate that this governance function has both a consultative and a control dimension and illustrate how these are enacted in the interactions between incubators and entrepreneurs. The authors also show how these interactions come into being and how entrepreneurs assess the value of the governance role played by incubators.

The paper is based on a cross-sectional interview study with entrepreneurs of 21 start-ups that were hosted by three different incubators. The start-ups are all early-stage technology firms. The analysis in the paper follows an inductive approach.

The authors find that the governance role of incubators is about both consultation and control. Consultative forms of governance include providing input and advice as well as questioning ideas and assumptions. Controlling forms of governance comprise setting targets and tracking progress as well as enforcing structures and documentation. The authors furthermore show that governance episodes are triggered either by the entrepreneurs themselves or by the incubator. In the former case, such episodes are mainly about consultation, while in the latter one, they often have a pronounced control element, which materializes particularly through regularly enforced meetings. Most entrepreneurs seem to appreciate this control element, acknowledging that, in its absence, they would lack the self-discipline of doing some things that need to be done.

This study’s findings extend prior research on inter-organizational relationships and the types of governance mechanisms observed therein. The authors show that a strict separation between actors who offer consultation and those who exercise control is too simplistic. Incubators influence entrepreneurial firms both through consultative and controlling forms of governance. In terms of limitations, this study’s analysis focuses on the perspectives of entrepreneurs, and the authors did not include the perspectives of incubators nor did the authors directly observe meetings between these two parties.

This paper provides examples for how entrepreneurial firms can benefit from being part of an incubator.

This study contributes to the discussion of the governance of inter-organizational relationships by focusing on incubators. In so doing, the authors also complement extant literature on management control in entrepreneurial settings by showing how the incubator fulfills a control function for entrepreneurs before these implement control mechanisms themselves.

This paper aims at measuring the factors affecting early-stage entrepreneurial activity by opportunity vs necessity motives in India using theory of planned behaviour.

The study is based on the Adult Population Survey (APS) of Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM), covering 4,165 respondents in 2018. The data has been analysed using descriptive statistics, chi-square test, analysis of variance and logistics regression. The theory of planned behaviour has been used to identify the determinants of early-stage entrepreneurial activity by opportunity vs necessity motives.

About 13.1% of the respondents reported early-stage entrepreneurial activity, of which opportunity motives were reported by 6.5% respondents, necessity motives by 5.4% respondents and the remaining 1.2% respondents reported other motives. Further, the mean difference in early-stage entrepreneurial activities by motives shows the domination of opportunity-driven entrepreneurial activities. Finally, marginal effects of all determining variables and three components of the theory of planned behaviour, i.e. attitude towards entrepreneurship (ATE), perceived subjective norm (PSN) and perceived behavioural control (PBC), have been estimated on opportunity vs necessity motives of early-stage entrepreneurial activities.

This paper contributes theoretically and practically to the existing body of knowledge by predicting the factors affecting opportunity vs necessity motives of early-stage entrepreneurial activities by applying the theory of planned behaviour. Considering the current focus of the government on promoting entrepreneurship, this piece of research can be valuable in adopting a motive-based approach in implementing entrepreneurial initiatives.

This paper provides unique insights into developing a policy framework for promoting new ventures based on the perceived motives of the entrepreneurs.

The authors seek to advance the understanding of small- and medium-sized enterprise (SME) internationalization at the regional level and examine the role of home market institutions in this process.

The authors analyze hypotheses with data from SMEs in five country markets and from the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor. A cluster analysis establishes the regional diversification patterns (based on regional diversification scope, speed and rhythm) and a multinomial regression tests the effect of home market institutions on their adoption.

The results offer a refined picture of SME regional diversification by revealing three patterns: intra-regionally focused firms, late inter-region diversifiers and early inter-region diversifiers. They also suggest that the adoption of these patterns is determined by SMEs' home market institutions.

The authors develop a nuanced understanding of SME internationalization by building upon and expanding the regionalization rationale in the internationalization patterns literature. Additionally, the authors address the acknowledged, yet rarely investigated, country-level determinants of internationalization patterns.

This paper aims to assess whether incubation affects the technical efficiency of innovative firms after entering the market. The study of efficiency allows firms to understand how well resources have been used in production processes. The research intends to contribute to the literature on the performance of incubated firms.

This study estimates the relative efficiency of innovative firms adopting a DEA-based two-stage semi-parametric method. Incubation, firm age and initial capital are used for explaining the relative performance of previously incubated firms compared to non-incubated ones over a six-year period of activity. This research focuses on Italian innovative firms using a large sample of companies.

Results show that incubators have a positive and significant effect on efficiency for firms that have been in the market for more than two years. Efficiency also improves with age and with the level of initial capital of the firm.

This analysis is limited to the quantitative dimension of inputs as reported in the balance sheets, without qualitative considerations.

Findings enhance firms' understanding of the role of incubators as neutral places to develop a business culture of efficiency. From an empirical standpoint, this study provides useful insights to start-uppers who intend to attend incubation programs. Overall, incubators matter to the extent that they enable new firms, net of those that fail to survive in the first two years of activity, to improve their efficiency in the use of inputs. This research also suggests incubators consider the start-ups’ potential of being efficient.

Findings provide tips to policymakers when they are called upon to propose funding programs to support prominent firms entering the business scalability.

This study contributes to the literature on the relative performance of post-incubated firms, highlighting the efficiency frontier analysis. This methodological approach is relatively new in this field. It allows researchers to study the innovative firms' performance in relative terms, that is with respect to the input level. It integrates the performance-based with efficiency frontier analysis. Also, this study reinforces the idea that incubators prepare start-ups to develop capacities and managerial skills, which will be useful in post-incubation life to improve their cost competitiveness.

This chapter describes practical lessons for leading transformational innovation in industrial firms. These lessons result from theory-building empirical research based on published studies and the authors’ personal observations. These latter are the results of interviews with over 100 senior managers. The research also discriminates between the capabilities for leading core, adjacent and transformational innovations. In practice, each form requires different leadership and skills to ensure success. In the past, firms that use this approach have been described as ambidextrous. However, this oversimplifies the situation rather than considering the continuum of innovation approaches within a firm necessary to ensure long-term sustainability. This is because firms must innovate long-term, deliver ongoing core innovation in their existing portfolio, and evolve their value propositions and business models through adjacent innovation.

The purpose of this study is to investigate whether and how inter-firm cooperation and firm age moderate the relationship between family ownership and productivity.

We first estimate the total factor productivity (TFP) of a large sample of Italian firms observed over the period 2010–2018 and then apply a Poisson random effects model.

TFP is, on average, higher for non-family firms (non-FFs) than for FF. Furthermore, inter-organizational cooperation and firm age mitigate the negative effect of family ownership. In detail, it is found that belonging to a network acts as a moderator in different ways according to firm age. Indeed, young FFs underperform non-FF peers, although the TFP gap decreases with age. In contrast, the benefits of a formal network are high for older FFs, suggesting that an age-related learning process is at work.

The study provides evidence that FFs can outperform non-FFs when they move away from Socio-Emotional Wealth-centered reference points and exploit knowledge flows arising from high levels of social capital. In the case of mature FFs, networking is a driver of TFP, allowing them to acquire external resources. Since FFs often do not have sufficient in-house knowledge and resources, they must be aware of the value of business cooperation. While preserving the familiar identity of small companies, networks grant FFs the competitive and scale advantages of being large.

Despite the wide but ambiguous body of research on the performance gap between FFs and non-FFs, little is known about the role of FFs’ heterogeneity. This study has proven successful in detecting age as a factor in heterogeneity, specifically to explain the network effect on the link between ownership and TFP. Based on a representative sample, the study provides a solid framework for FFs, policymakers and academic research on family-owned companies.