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Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts (LUASA) uses a holistic approach to foster entrepreneurial thinking and behavior of students and employees. Students and participants of the program shall be motivated to start own ventures during the study program or later in the life.

An entrepreneurial eco-system shall be built and a close partnership with regional key actors established.

A combination of Design Thinking and Lean Start-up is used for the entrepreneurial education. Fostering experimentation, early customer feedback, and interdisciplinary teamwork is essential. An enhanced Lean Canvas version is used for having a guideline to work on the important questions and documenting the learnings in the iterative process.

The program “Smart-up” of LUASA is running since three years as a pilot in two departments and is now rolled out to the entire University. Since program start more than 120 start-ups have been founded.

In all study programs, an “entrepreneurial track” is defined and students can earn credits while working on their own projects. Two interdisciplinary modules are offered. The proposed Smart-up Lean Canvas has been proven to be a key tool to develop innovative ideas in start-ups and in existing companies.

The combination of Design Thinking and Lean Start-up in a holistic setup proved that students can learn the methods and tools and are able to use them now or later as entre- or intrapreneurs.

Students are motivated to start their own business, meet role models and participating at different (networking) events.

The combination of Design Thinking and Lean Start-up with analytical approaches like Systems Thinking and Data Analytics supports the problem understanding and solution (product/service and business) design.

Student entrepreneurs account for a considerable number of start-up ventures derived from university settings. Nevertheless, there is little research that demonstrates how university entrepreneurship education (EE) directly influences students’ start-up activities. The primary purpose of this study is to examine the effectiveness of various types of university entrepreneurship activities (incorporate entrepreneurial courses, extra-curricular initiatives, and start-up support) on student start-up behavior. This quantitative research utilized questionnaire data collected from university students (n = 1,820) in southeast China and was analyzed with hierarchical Poisson regression in STATA procedures. Research results indicate that engaging in any type of university entrepreneurship activities positively predicts students’ start-up activities, yet this positive effect is contingent on students’ prior start-up experience and the overall university entrepreneurial climate. These findings advance our understanding of crucial elements within university entrepreneurial ecosystems and how various entrepreneurship activities within these ecosystems potentially impact students’ venture creation.

Business plan writing seems the panacea to gain stakeholder legitimacy and financial backing. Our chapter explores the contributions and disconnections between business plan writing and the start-up process for incubated technology entrepreneurs. The study is set in the South East Enterprise Platform Programme (SEEPP), an incubator programme for technology graduate entrepreneurs in the South East of Ireland. Using a purposive sample of technology entrepreneurs in start-up mode, we took a qualitative approach consisting of content analysis of 40 business plans and in-depth interviews with 25 technology entrepreneurs. Our research found that writing a detailed business plan constrains the technology entrepreneur’s natural penchant for action, compelling them to focus on business plan writing rather than enactment. Technology entrepreneurs favour a market-led rather than funding-led operational level document to plan, and learn from, near-term activities using milestones.

We consider start-up companies that have been established for rapid growth and are active in the international market. In this study, we examine the conditions required for starting a start-up. We analyze how it is possible to add value to an idea that makes a business unique. First, we’ll show you when to talk about start-up. The starting point is that a start-up company is organized on a community basis. This much greater knowledge is coupled with high-level technological competences. In addition, there is a need for some “big idea,” innovation, which investors see as fantasy. A new niche market must be found where hundreds of thousands of customers worldwide can be served without any geographical constraints. The founder must have a high-risk appetite, and even naughtiness, because the novelty he invented will narrow the market of others and harm the interests of others. Here’s a look at the financing options for start-ups. At the end of this chapter you will find case studies on different start-ups.

Creative industries, such as the designer fashion industry (DFI), are among the toughest in which to establish sustainable business ventures. While studies have examined how networks and social capital contribute to independent DFI start-ups and why such businesses fail, these studies have been largely restricted to well-established entrepreneurial spaces like London, which differ in structure and size compared to emerging DFI entrepreneurial spaces in small economies like New Zealand. This chapter addresses this gap in the creative enterprise literature by presenting findings from an examination of 12 New Zealand fashion designers’ accounts of their responses to start-up challenges. The analysis, which paid particular attention to the relationship between social capital and reported strategic practice, revealed that the designers’ challenge profiles and strategic responses were linked to very ‘biographical’ personal networks and their personal enterprise orientations. While those designers with well-established networks started the most resilient businesses, the analysis revealed that even these designers were not necessarily particularly strategic when tapping into the social capital embedded in their networks. Overall, the findings provide further confirmation of the importance of social capital and network management during start-up. Most significantly, they demonstrate why designers need to be forward looking and employ a strategic approach to developing and accessing social capital and when making business decisions. Those who did so were more likely to have viable ventures than those who accessed social capital in order to react to unanticipated challenges.

Start-ups are a new form of business venture that has quickly revolutionized the sport industry due to their ability to quickly develop ideas into commercial entities. Generally, most discussion about start-ups tends to take a collective view without considering the industry context. In this chapter, the author discuss how the sport industry is a unique form of start-up that is quickly gaining traction in the global sport industry. The reasons and advantages of sport start-ups are examined in terms of the existing literature and practice around nascent ventures. The crucial need for social capital and networks in developing sport start-ups is stated, which highlights the importance of analyzing start-ups from a sport industry perspective. In addition, the role of strategy and innovation in pursuing a start-ups mentality is progressed. This helps to provide an overview about the current practice of sport start-ups and to predict future developments.

Igbo communities in diaspora are arguably some of the most innovative communities, in terms of business start-ups and engagements in entrepreneurial activities. Despite the lack of material resources, individuals within these communities have often started and engaged in new businesses, in environments considered extremely difficult. This chapter interrogates the sociocultural conditions behind such Igbo entrepreneurial incubation. Drawing largely on the experiences of selected Igbo individuals in a diasporan community (South Africa), it investigates how such Igbo business individuals’ start-up their businesses. A qualitative research method which allowed in-depth semi-structured interviews to collect data from the respondents was adopted. A simple thematic analysis was used to analyse the data. The result showed pressure to succeed and pre-existing repertoire of business knowledge and skill-set as some of the conditions that stimulate entrepreneurial activities of the Igbo business individuals in diaspora. It also showed other conditions such as the untapped business-friendly South African market and the association with the Igbo business networks as important conditions responsible for creating the opportunities upon which such business start-ups and entrepreneurial activities thrive. Based on these findings, the study encourages economic policy makers in South Africa and other African countries to develop similar national business models, that draws from the indigenous practices within the ITBS model.

Start-up owners have emerged in recent years as thought leaders in a variety of encouraging ways throughout the business world, changing the game that organisations function worldwide in fascinating ways. They have transformed office culture by embracing flex-time, innovative work spaces, informal networks and work structures among many things. Building a great organisational culture at the early stages of forming a business as in a start-up is about creating an identity. The World Economic Forum community observes that start-ups are social systems which are very attractive for their enhancing of personal creativity and social inclusion. Thus, members of creative start-ups seem to exhibit strong group affiliation and passion for their profession. Based on the assumptions above, the study of start-up workplaces as unique social systems with distinct characteristics is proposed. Drawing on social identity theory as a collective construct was derived by Henri Tajfel and John Turner (Tajfel, 1972; Tajfel & Turner, 1979; Turner, 1982).

This chapter aims to investigate the idiosyncratic bundle of resources, capabilities and personal attributes resulting from the system interactions in the unique organisational context of start-ups (Habbershon, Williams, & McMillan, 2003, p. 452). This chapter considers the need for nurturing of start-up business owners/managers’ entrepreneurial learning capabilities, and highlights the fact that entrepreneurial learning and behaviour is different from other forms of learning and behaving.

Although multiple factors influence how people work, social identity theory could possible serve as a unifying theory of organisational behaviour elements, because it views the organisation as a social system where individual behaviours and attitudes are to a large degree influenced by psychological, behavioural, economic and sociological processes of group formation and membership. Social identity perspectives can shed light on

what and how people think in the early, but very critical stages of organisation formation.

Research in entrepreneurship points out that a heightened sense of self-realisation in individual starting/participating in new ventures is a strong motivator (Triandis, 1989). Engaged and inspired employees perceive their entrepreneurial identity to be central to their self-concept and experience greater levels of passion at their work (Murnieks, Mosakowski, & Cardon, 2014). The result is that the staff is committed to their organisation’s goals and values, motivated to contribute to organisational success, with an enhanced sense of their own well-being. For start-up culture is the reflection of everyone’s actions and values in the office – the interactions of everyone in the start-up with suppliers, customers and other stakeholders set the tone for the company’s relations with its external environment and its culture.

Developing a business with like-minded individuals to advance a collective business vision is at the heart of entrepreneurial activity of small and emerging enterprises. Small but highly flexible work groups provide a united voice and a common sense of purpose for individual members (Alpkan & All, 2007). They have the ability to take action to reconfigure or move entrepreneurial resources and activities in company routines quickly and effectively. This is particularly important in times of high uncertainty and volatility as the one we are currently going through in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic.