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Microenterprises (MEs) are vital to the growth and prosperity of economies around the world. All levels of society, from universities to national governments, have collaborated to improve the chances of survival and future growth of these businesses. The threat to life is serious, and unless concerted action is taken, the situation will spiral out of control. Policymakers and business leaders must work together to address the sustainability crisis. The study, therefore, set out to determine how various entrepreneurial skills (such as creativity, collaboration, networking, and risk-taking) affect the long-term viability of MEs. The overall objective of the study was to determine the importance of innovative problem-solving, collaboration, networking, and willingness to take calculated risks of microentrepreneurs for the long-term success of their businesses. A total of 274 microentrepreneurs in rural areas of the Ancash region of Peru were surveyed in the grocery, hardware, clothing, and food service sectors. The survival of the MEs was tested on four dimensions: innovation, leadership, networking, and risk-taking. According to the results, MEs managers can increase their longevity by cultivating creative skills, strengthening leadership as a key to business sustainability and survival, maximizing the use of networks to gain a market advantage and expand their customer base, and employing calculated risk-taking.

The creation of small businesses in Mexico since 1990, largely the result of the diversification of activities in rural areas, is one of the most prominent strategies, both for the improvement of the quality of place and life and for value of localized resources. Although the rural context imposes barriers, social capital and networks constitute an advantage for rural entrepreneurship, since shared values and norms such as the local context allow the articulation of economic, productive, social, and cultural resources for production and sale of significant goods for the region. The cases analyzed show the value of the collective dimension for the start of productive projects, which have contributed to reconverting and sometimes reconfiguring old resources such as land, ecosystems, landscape, animals, and crafts, in assets to start a business.

Creativity and innovation have been buzzwords of managerial discourse over the last few decades as they contribute to the long-term survival and competitiveness of firms. Given the non-linear, causally ambiguous, and intangible nature of all innovation-related phenomena, management scholars have been trying to uncover factors that contribute to creativity and innovation from multiple lenses ranging from organizational behavior at the micro-level to strategic management at the macro-level. Along with important and insightful developments in these research streams that evolved independently from one another, human resource management (HRM) research – especially from a strategic perspective – has only recently started to contribute to a better understanding of both creativity and innovation. The goal of this chapter is to review the contributions of strategic HRM research to an improved understanding of creativity at the individual-level and innovation at the firm-level. In organizing this review, the authors rely on the open innovation funnel as a metaphor to review research on both HRM practices and HRM systems that contribute to creativity and innovation. In the last section, the authors focus on more recent developments in HRM research that focus on ambidexterity – as a way for HRM to simultaneously facilitate exploration and exploitation. This chapter concludes with a discussion of future research directions.

As the deployment of ICT and the Internet especially increases all around the world, the urgency of providing access to the “have-nots” appears at least diminished, with new issues and urgencies at the forefront. However, studies show that even when the best conditions for access are established, not everyone uses their digital devices for the same purposes, even when sharing the same goals, or when participating in the same experiences.

To explore potential explanations of these phenomena, this study examines survey data from students from a private university in Peru regarding their backgrounds and expertise with ICT. We use the twin concepts of social and cultural capital to establish a connection between their larger lifeworld experiences and their use of digital media. For this purpose, we analyze the data using polychoric correlations to explore patterns resulting from self-perception of access and skills, as well as processes related to social capital such as differentiated media use.

Findings indicate that there are differentiated processes of capital accrual using ICTs, but, at the same time, the productive and leisure dimensions of ICT use must be considered.

Influencer marketing in the traditional sense is changing and taking on a new and creative form. Previously, classic influencers were real, human people, now there is a rise in fake, artificial influencers who are opening up innovative means for brand–influencer collaborations over a variety of platforms. Computer-generated imagery influencers (CGIIs) are blurring the lines between the concept of real and fake people and with that numerous brands have begun creatively integrating them into both their marketing strategies and campaigns. This chapter contributes to the largely unexplored phenomena of CGIIs with a focus on the social media platform Instagram. Following a qualitative approach, the research provides a first detailed classification of CGIIs according to the categories demographics, positioning, behaviour and brand collaborations, and followers. As a frame of analysis, the current top 20 CGIIs (those with the most followers on Instagram) were investigated according to the top rankings outlined by HypeAuditor in 2019. The research resulted in the findings that CGIIs from their profile tend to be mostly female, of Asian origin, aged between 18 and 25 years old, and their content is most predominantly related to lifestyle and fashion. Also discussed in this chapter are six case studies evaluating creative brand collaborations with CGIIs in order to gain insights, as well as a first guideline to best practices. These collaborations can be seen across a spectrum of multiple different industries, such as luxury, home and interior, service, people, technology, and fashion.

From the perspective of business history, this chapter presents an overview of the development of the tourism sector in South America, placing special emphasis on the Peruvian case. The chapter explores various topics related to the tourism chain, such as hotel networks, the role of the state, tour operators, micro- and small enterprises, linkages between tourism and sustainability, the formation of clusters in the sector, and interactions between different entrepreneurs in the chain. Special emphasis is placed on the Peruvian case, especially when it comes to discussing the role of micro- and small enterprises in the sector.

The proceedings of the 17 editions of the conference of the Spanish Association of Scientific Experts in Tourism constitute a valuable archival resource within the research on Spanish tourism. But so far their contents have not been analyzed. The aim of this chapter is to examine the research that has been presented at its conference by means of a bibliometric analysis of the proceedings of 17 editions. The study focuses on the origin of the research (countries, regions, institutions, and authors), as well as its characteristics in terms of themes dealt with, geographical areas researched, methodologies, disciplinary areas, and attitudes toward tourism. Implications for the evolution of the research are discussed in terms of knowledge contributions and the shaping of major tourism research traditions.

Pressing sustainability issues face the 21st century, as identified by the Millennium Development Goals and its post initiatives, and ethical principles related to fairness, equity, and justice are increasingly important to address climate change and resource scarcities. Yet, such ethical dimensions remain surprisingly little addressed in the tourism literature. Ecofeminist critique offers insights into this gap, identifying historical antecedents in patriarchal, Enlightenment-driven discourses of science where positivistic approaches facilitate the control and use of nature and women. This chapter draws from this critique to propose a preliminary, justice-oriented framework to resituate sustainable tourism within an embodied paradigm that covers intangibles such as emotions, feelings, and an ethic of care.