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The purpose of this paper is to investigate how access to financing for incremental as well as radical innovation activities is affected by firm-specific structural and behavioral characteristics.

Deploying a two-stage Heckman probit model on survey data spanning the period 2000–2013 and covering 1,169 firms, this paper analyzes the effect of a firm’s engagement in incremental and radical innovation on its likelihood to get constrained in their access to external finance, and how this effect is moderated by the firm’s age and size.

In line with earlier research, it is confirmed that the type of innovation matters for the access to external finance, but in a more nuanced way than generally portrayed. While incremental innovation activities have little negative effect on the access to external finance, radical innovation activities tend to be penalized by capital markets. This effect appears to be particularly strong for small firms.

This paper provides nuanced insights into the interplay between types of firm-level innovation activities, structural characteristic and access to external finance.

When we take the lens of race, ethnicity, gender, and class to the collected academic work on women business owners, what does it reveal? What do we really know? Are there differing definitions of success across segments of the women businessowner demographics? Do the challenges faced by African American women entrepreneurs differ from those confronting white female entrepreneurs? Do immigrant female women businessowners face more significant institutional barriers than their counterparts who have been U.S. citizens for at least two generations? Are there similar reasons for starting their businesses?

The purpose is to identify and explore barriers to overcome for developing collaborative innovation between a global service supplier and two of its industrial customers in Sweden.

The research had an action-based research approach in which the researchers were interacting and collaborating with the practitioners in the companies. The empirical part includes primary data from multiple interviews, and two workshops with dialogues with participants from the involved companies. The use of complementary data collection methods gave rich input to understanding the context for collaborative innovation, and to uncovering barriers, to develop solutions for collaborative innovation. The empirical barriers were analysed using theoretically derived barriers from a literature review. The analysis generated four broad themes of barriers which were discussed and led to conclusions and theoretical and practical implications on: the customer's safety culture, the business model, the parties' understanding of innovation and the management of collaborative innovation in supply chains.

The thematic analysis generated four broad themes: the customer's safety culture, the business model, the parties' understanding of innovation and the management of collaborative innovation. These themes where analysed using theoretically derived barriers from a literature review. The industrial context, the understanding of innovation and its management created barriers.

The unique access to the service supplier and its two independent industrial customers adds a rich contextual framing to the process of identifying and exploring the barriers to collaborative innovation. The conclusion emphasizes the importance of an industrial business context, the business logic in terms of business models and for the understanding and management of collaborative innovation.

The purpose of this paper is to identify key aspects of business model development for sustainable apparel consumption, as actors show an increasing interest in product‒service systems. This purpose should be seen from a retailers’ perspective so as to develop sustainable solutions for long-term survival in the apparel industry when meeting consumer preferences for fashion as well as an increasing interest in consuming less. Further, this is from a perspective in an economy where sharing and circularity are potential drivers for changing consumer patterns.

The study is based on the apparel retailer Houdini Sportswear and its business model development from a traditional model of selling sportswear to a more future-oriented model where sustainability is more salient. The data for analysis were collected through interviews with employees within the studied company. The interviews have been guided by overarching themes covering relevant areas of interest for this study.

Overall, the paper shows how sustainability can be included in strategic development, from product idea, product development, production and sales/rental to repair, reuse and finally recycling. The paper also highlights potential obstacles in a developed business model with increased sustainability, including technological platforms, distribution networks for collecting and returning products and consumer consumption preferences. There are a few intertwined factors to be considered on different societal levels to achieve long-term success.

This study contributes an increased understanding of how more sustainable solutions can be included when developing business models. While the manufacture, distribution and consumption of clothes have an impact on the environment, some retailers and producers want to reduce this environmental impact. One alternative is to change the way clothes are consumed, to include more sharing and circularity.

This study aims to analyze the challenges startups face in implementing business models for sustainability. In particular, the research question of this study is: How do the challenges faced by startups affect business models for sustainability in the context of an emerging country?

Startups are increasingly incorporating ways to thrive in a competitive environment with innovative sustainable business models, a key factor for competitive advantage and corporate sustainability. This paper analyses startups’ challenges in adopting business models for sustainability through a case study in two startups, using the sustainable value exchange matrix (SVEM) tool through workshops, to carry out the diagnosis of these challenges.

The barriers and challenges of business models for sustainability in startups were found in different categories, where the main barriers are linked to the institutional category, the organizational and the market and sales culture. Thus, the authors concluded that there is a need to reformulate public policies and to have greater participation of the actors involved.

The main limitation of the research is the number of case studies (only two), which makes it difficult to generalize the results.

The research presents two major contributions. First, through the case studies, it is possible to verify that the barriers and challenges in business models for sustainability have relevance for startups. The second contribution is the adaptation of SVEM in conducting the debate by incorporating the barriers and challenges in value creation and delivery system.

This study contributes to the business models for sustainability literature to better understand the challenges startups face in practice and can serve as insights to help overcome them. As this is an empirical study, the information gathered can help create metrics and public policies to achieve the United Nations sustainable development goals.

The present research has as originality the analysis of the challenges in startups in implementing business models for sustainability and their relationships with the value proposition, capture and creation, as well as and delivery (adapted to the challenges found in the literature) applying the SVEM tool proposed by Morioka et al. (2018).

The paper aims to explore the nature of initiatives and strategies of inter-organizational cooperation to cross the valley of death in the biopharma industry.

The authors conducted an exploratory case study analysis in the Biopharma Innovation Ecosystem in Greater Boston Area (USA), which is one of the oldest, and most successful IE in the US, specialized in the Biopharma domain, by conducting a round of expert interviews with key informants in the area, chosen as representatives of the different types of actors engaged in the drug development processes at different stages.

Main findings suggest that cooperation can contribute to surviving the valley of death by reducing the barriers within the drug development pipeline through the promotion of strategic relationships among actors of different nature, including the establishment of government-led thematic associations or consortia, agreements between university and business support structures, proximity to venture capitalist and the promotion of a general culture of academic entrepreneurship within universities.

The authors believe that this paper contributes to the literature by shedding light on the nature of the specific cooperative initiative the barriers in drug development and help to survive the valley of the death.

This paper aims to contribute to the explanatory debate of the entrepreneurial intention-action gap that results from the interposition of normative-regulatory, sociocultural and economic-financial barriers facing potential and intending entrepreneurs.

Grounded on post-positivist position, the authors propose a quantitative approach, surveying 569 potential and intending entrepreneurs from a longitudinal and stratified sample of 22 years.

The economic-financial barrier is the most important, followed by the sociocultural except in the period in which access to banking financial support is facilitated, where the order is reversed. The impact of the normative-regulatory barrier is statistically relevant, but irrelevant on the magnitude. The results also allow us to conclude that a lower development of the project accentuates the entrepreneurial intention-action gap and, finally, support the existence of a medium/long-term temporal relation between entrepreneurial intention and entrepreneurial action.

From an empirical standpoint, the sample was limited to potential and pretending entrepreneurs from one national institution and one country. This limits the scope of generalization. Further studies in multiple contexts should be undertaken.

The study points to contradictory results with the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor – Portuguese Reports, which, if confirmed, require the reformulation of Portuguese national policies in the promotion and development of entrepreneurial activities.

The study is novel by providing new insights about entrepreneurship and the entrepreneurial intention-action gap.

Pakistan has marvellous growth and development capacity, and entrepreneurial small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) play a key role in its development. As it is believed that entrepreneurial SMEs make an important contribution to the economy by providing employment and soaring production capacity, the purpose of this study is to investigate the hurdles that affect their performance.

A questionnaire-based survey was used to collect data from 225 entrepreneurial SMEs owners and managers in the southern region of Pakistan. Statistical analysis in SPSS was conducted to determine the barriers that limit the growth and development of SMEs.

The findings show that factors affecting entrepreneurial SMEs’ performance in Pakistan are lack of finance and infrastructure as well as economic barriers, corruption and management issues. These obstacles are positively and significantly associated with entrepreneurial SMEs’ failure.

This study’s significance lies in its identification of the barriers that affect the performance of entrepreneurial SMEs in Pakistan. The author also suggests how policymakers can devise better policies for SME growth.

The aim of this article is to identify the issues of short food supply chains (SFSCs) in three countries of Central and Eastern Europe, i.e. Lithuania, Latvia and Poland, to compare the barriers to shortening food supply chains and to indicate business models for short supply chains.

Within the AgroBRIDGES project, the authors organized local co-creation workshops from August to September 2021 in 12 European regions and countries, engaging 150+ agrifood stakeholders of the project’s local communities.

The development potential of SFSCs in Lithuania, Latvia and Poland is high and seems to be growing every year. Currently, the development potential of SFSCs in Lithuania, Latvia and Poland is stimulated more by social trends than by public support. Traditional business models based on the distribution of food products through local and regional markets have a definitely diminishing potential.

Although this article covers an existing gap in the literature, it also has several limitations that may serve as an inspiration for future research. First, the results draw on a sample of agrifood value chain stakeholders in Lithuania, Latvia and Poland; hence, the findings might be industry specific. Therefore, future studies should explore this topic on wider target groups or different industries. Moreover, the method is qualitative and could be supplemented with additional quantitative analysis of similar tools or the experience of other agrifood companies from European countries.

The article seeks to build bridges between consumers and producers by supporting SFSCs through a systemic, holistic and multi-actor approach.

The study elaborates on the under-researched topic of SFSCs in the context of barriers to shortening food supply chains and business models for short supply chains in Lithuania, Latvia and Poland.

The main purpose of this paper is to identify the reasons for the stagnant behaviour of seaports contributing towards Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Global seaport sustainability practices that correspond with SDGs were identified through an extensive literature review. In total, five focus interviews were carried out with port managers in Sri Lanka to identify the existing knowledge about seaport sustainability, and the reasons for disparities between the global standards and country-level port sustainability practices. Data collected from a questionnaire survey of 55 seaport terminal managers in Sri Lanka were analysed using exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and thematic analysis.

Deficient collaborative policies, structural and managerial constraints, market constraints and the absence of a well-established SDG-driven global port framework were identified as significant barriers for seaports to contribute towards SDGs.

Identifying barriers in implementing sustainable practices in ports help the responsible authorities tackle them. Hence, seaports in return and the wider society benefit from the spillover effects of port operations aligning to SDGs.

This paper provides port organizations insights on the barriers needing to be addressed in their operational and management systems to best incorporate practices aligning to SDGs in seaports.