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This study aims to delve into the lived experiences, challenges and visions of women entrepreneurs in Jordan, placing a magnifying glass on those spearheading or co-pioneering start-ups. It aims to understand the myriad factors that influence their entrepreneurial journey, from motivation to the future of their niche.

Adopting a qualitative lens, this study is anchored in semi-structured interviews encompassing 20 Jordanian women entrepreneurs. Following this, thematic analysis was deployed to dissect and categorize the garnered insights into ten salient themes.

The study reveals that personal experiences and challenges are pivotal in directing these women towards niche markets, aligning with the theory of planned behaviour (TPB). Tools such as digital instruments, customer feedback and innovative strategies like storytelling and augmented reality are integral to their entrepreneurial success, resonating with the resource-based view (RBV). Additionally, challenges like cultural barriers and infrastructural limitations are navigated through adaptive strategies, reflecting the resilience inherent in these entrepreneurs. Networking, mentorship, embracing technological advancements and implementing sustainable practices are highlighted as crucial elements underpinned by the social identity theory (SIT).

Contrary to the extant body of research, this study provides new insights into the challenges faced by women entrepreneurs in Jordan, highlighting the practical relevance of theories like TPB, RBV and SIT for both policymakers and the start-up community in niche markets.

Entrepreneurial personalities have been widely recognised as important drivers for the development of entrepreneurial competencies, which are the skills, knowledge and abilities that enable entrepreneurs to start and grow successful businesses. Yet, there has been relatively little research focused specifically on entrepreneurial personalities that influence entrepreneurial competencies among people with physical disabilities. Therefore, this study aims to explore the entrepreneurial personalities among people with disabilities (PWDs) and explain how they influence several aspects of entrepreneurial capabilities.

A qualitative approach, namely, phenomenological approach, has been conducted; meanwhile, a total of 12 respondents were interviewed as the data has reached the saturation level.

The findings revealed that successful PWDs entrepreneurs possess a range of traits and characteristics that contribute to their success, which include need for achievement, internal drives, external factors, extraversion and openness. These factors drive the enhancement of the PWDs’ entrepreneurial capabilities.

Essentially, this study is one of the few studies that suggests that an integrative personality model influences PWDs’ entrepreneurial capabilities and their business development. This model takes into account the unique experiences and challenges faced by PWDs, which help to better understand the traits and characteristics that contribute to their success as entrepreneurs.

The extant literature emphasizes that the perspective of bricolage is significantly augmenting the core of entrepreneurship research, and, per se, it has made considerable contributions to understanding resource mobilization and organizational processes in entrepreneurial ventures. Entrepreneurial bricolage literature lacks a unified and holistic conceptual framework that could represent a coherence of diverse bricolage forms and their related capabilities in entrepreneurship. To address this issue, this study aims to develop a comprehensive typology framework of entrepreneurial bricolage based on the theoretical synthesis of the prior research.

By comparing and synthesizing the existing bricolage forms into a holistic and persistent typology, the authors present an integrated framework of 13 bricolage capabilities that contributes to resource acquisition and resource mobilization as well as facilitate the entrepreneurial processes of opportunity recognition and opportunity exploitation in firms.

The study synthesizes a wide array of research on entrepreneurial bricolage for shaping the resource acquisition and resource mobilization processes in entrepreneurial ventures and presents a typology-based framework for further discussion and research. By mapping the existing research and relevant dimensions into a typology-based entrepreneurial bricolage framework, the study extends and contributes to the current theorizing and conceptual building.

The study would help practitioners and researchers to recognize bricolage capabilities and the common ties among them, leading to further advances in entrepreneurship theory and practice.

As the body of knowledge regarding entrepreneurial bricolage has grown, so has the number of its different forms, concepts and constructs. The authors recognize that there is distinctiveness as well as overlaps among diverse forms, concepts and constructs of entrepreneurial bricolage. Further, the authors identify a new bricolage capability that has not until now been positioned in the extant frameworks.

The study examines how adopting e-paisa technology (a mobile payment system) enhances micro-entrepreneurs' perceived success and subjective well-being during the COVID-19 global pandemic. The study also theorizes the moderating effects of gender through a moderated-mediation model.

The data are collected from 282 micro-entrepreneurs in Pakistan using a two-week time-lagged approach to test the hypothesized framework. The analysis was conducted using the PROCESS macro moderated-mediation method.

The results affirm that adopting e-paisa technology positively relates to perceived entrepreneurial success, ultimately increasing the entrepreneur's subjective well-being. Furthermore, in hypothesized moderated-mediation paths, the moderation effect of gender was stronger for women than men.

From the perspective of diversity, equality and inclusion, adopting a digital mobile payment system can be regarded as a catalyst for the inclusion of women entrepreneurs in marginalized communities, enabling them to continue their micro-businesses in times of global crises. Further, it is also suggested that public–private sector partnerships are essential for promoting a sustainable entrepreneurial ecosystem that subsequently leads to social and financial inclusion in marginalized communities.

The mediating role of perceived entrepreneurial success contributes to understanding the importance of psychological functioning among technology acceptance model (TAM) attributes and entrepreneurs' subjective well-being. In addition, theorizing gender differences in TAM and subjective well-being relationships revealed women's advantages, challenging the prevailing belief that women are less fortunate in entrepreneurial endeavors. This raises the need to reconsider and maybe change the perspective to consider women as a disadvantaged group in entrepreneurship.

Social entrepreneurship has been recently viewed as an emancipatory process that promotes freedom and autonomy for social entrepreneurs and those they serve. However, the mechanisms of how emancipation is enacted remain relatively underexplored. By using an integrative lens, this paper aims to explore the emancipation experiences of women social entrepreneurs and unpack the processes through which they extend their self-emancipation to facilitate the empowerment of others.

This study adopted a qualitative multiple-case study approach. Semistructured interviews were conducted with eight women social entrepreneurs from various industries in Hong Kong to understand and examine their experiences of “emancipation from” and “emancipation to” in social entrepreneurship.

This study identified a three-phase emancipatory journey of women social entrepreneurs. Specifically, the findings revealed that their emancipation experiences started with self-awareness of constraints in their surroundings, primarily due to stereotyped social norms and institutional barriers. This phase is followed by embracing social entrepreneurship as a coping strategy for navigating the perceived constraints and exploring new possibilities with increased agency. Ultimately, this transformation extends beyond their individual growth into broader social impacts as women social entrepreneurs use their newfound agency to effect meaningful social changes.

This study enriches the “entrepreneuring as emancipation” perspective by embracing an integrative lens that allows us to delve into the complex layers of emancipation experiences of women social entrepreneurs. Notably, this study differentiates various conceptions of emancipation, presenting a dual role of women social entrepreneurs as both the emancipated and the emancipator. By situating the study in Hong Kong, where women often face gendered expectations that shape their career choices and development, this study offers a nuanced and contextual understanding of the unique challenges and opportunities women social entrepreneurs encounter in their environment.

E-entrepreneurship is developed based on digital platforms, having specific technical opportunities, such as the interactive ecosystem, fast payment method and online store function, without strict requirements for online entrepreneurs. Considering China’s e-entrepreneurship environment and cultural background, this paper aims to analyse individuals’ e-entrepreneurship motivation based on the capability–opportunity–motivation–behaviour (COM-B) behaviour changing theory.

Through testing 602 samples based on the partial least squares path modelling and variance-based structural equation modelling, the factors from the opportunity and capability units positively affect individuals’ e-entrepreneurship motivation. Meanwhile, because of the economic and social environmental differences between China’s urban and rural regions, this study promotes the multi-group analysis based on individuals’ regional backgrounds.

First, as opportunity factors, technical and policy opportunities have significantly positive relationships with individuals’ e-entrepreneurship motivation. Second, entrepreneurial and cultural capabilities are essential for Chinese entrepreneurs while making an entrepreneurial decision. Third, because of the e-entrepreneurial environment difference and educational system gap, entrepreneurial capability exerts a greater influence on the e-entrepreneurship motivation for Chinese individuals from urban regions, and cultural capability exerts a higher impact on the e-entrepreneurship motivation for Chinese individuals from rural regions.

Whilst the phenomenon of e-entrepreneurship is emerging as a popular entrepreneurship area of study, little research has systematically explored individuals’ e-entrepreneurial motivation and analysed influencing factors from macro and minor aspects. According to the COM-B behaviour changing theory, this paper discovers influencing factors from environmental opportunity and personal capability units, and it is helpful to present individuals’ attitudes to the platform-based business model.

Using the social constructivist perspective of learning, this study aims to examine the patterns and the key areas of entrepreneurial learning based on a case study of 16 participants who were the incubatees of two technology-based business incubators in China. The key research question is: how do novice entrepreneurs, focusing on technology-based business incubators, learn from a social constructivist perspective?

The researchers applied a qualitative methodology in this study as they wanted to understand better the complexity of the learning process that is hard to achieve quantitatively. The qualitative data was collected through in-depth interviews with the incubatees, who were the managers and owners of their businesses. The interviews with the entrepreneurs were mainly focused on the learning patterns and the factors influencing learning through the use of the critical incident technique.

This will allow incubator managers to better evaluate the extent of effective entrepreneurial learning within the incubator's eco-system. The results show that the participants learn through socially constructivist systems that are structured around the support provided by the incubators. Learning in this context takes place in an extended spectrum, and participants are more interested in learning from networking with experienced entrepreneurs rather than from other incubatees or formal courses. Findings of this study help incubator managers and novice entrepreneurs to better shape learning and teamwork in an effort to improve the learning process. Policy makers should consider introducing schemes that encourage novice entrepreneurs to exhibit the creativity and innovation behaviour reported by experienced entrepreneurs.

The focus of this study is primarily on incubators as the context of learning, whereas the macro-environmental factors, such as the socio-cultural and regulatory environments in China, were considered as playing a subtle role and would affect the incubatees' learning indirectly. The paper is based on a relatively small sample size and is geographically located in Ningbo, China. As such, the authors call for further research for comparative studies with a larger sample size so that a possible theory of entrepreneurial learning in the context of incubators might emerge in the future.

This study investigates how enhancing slum dwellers' capabilities influences their entrepreneurship development and contributes to urban poverty reduction, providing insights for social policy design.

A quantitative research design is adopted applying structural equation modeling to survey data from 585 beneficiaries of social welfare schemes across Indian slums.

Educational, economic and sociocultural capabilities positively impact quantitative and qualitative dimensions of slum entrepreneurship development, which reduces urban poverty, supporting the hypothesized relationships grounded in the Capability Approach.

The cross-sectional data limits causal inference. Wider sampling can improve generalizability. Capability antecedents of entrepreneurship merit further investigation across contexts.

Integrated policy initiatives focused on education, skill building, access to finance and markets can leverage entrepreneurship for sustainable urban poverty alleviation.

Enhancing slum dweller capabilities fosters entrepreneurship and empowerment, enabling people to shape their own destinies and reduce deprivations.

The research provides timely empirical validation of the Capability Approach and evidence-based insights to inform social policy aiming to alleviate urban poverty via entrepreneurship in developing countries.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/IJSE-07-2023-0514.

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.

While extant research has increasingly examined minority entrepreneurs, less attention has been paid to Eastern European immigrant entrepreneurs and the role that marketing agility and risk propensity play in their resilience and survival in Nordic countries. This paper aims to highlight the importance of these factors for Eastern European immigrant entrepreneurs in the developed Nordic economy of Denmark.

This paper adopts the dynamic capabilities view as a theoretical framework and uses a qualitative research approach with interviews as the main data collection method. The empirical sample comprises 12 entrepreneurs originating from Hungary, Slovakia, Latvia, Lithuania and Romania, who operate in Denmark.

The findings show that contrary to prior studies that have highlighted a reliance among the migrant entrepreneurial community on ethnic networks as their dominant target market, Eastern European immigrant entrepreneurs located in Denmark, in contrast, focused on attracting Danish consumers as their target market audience. Leveraging multiple networks was therefore found to be critical to the survival of these immigrant ventures. Additionally, the entrepreneurs' marketing agility, underpinned by their optimistic approach, growth ambitions and passion for entrepreneurship, was found to play a pivotal role in their survival. Finally, despite the stable institutional environment in Denmark and the ease of doing business (both of which are influential factors in shaping the risk propensity and risk perception of entrepreneurs), the authors found immigrant entrepreneurs' risk propensity to be rather low, which was contrary to the expectations.

The current paper is one of the first studies that explicitly analyzes the roles of marketing agility and risk propensity in the resilience and survival of the ventures of relatively skilled immigrant entrepreneurs from Eastern Europe in a developed Nordic economy (Denmark). The paper's findings also challenge the notion associated with immigrant entrepreneurial ventures being primarily focused on ethnic customers or enclaves. The paper also specifies the peculiarities of marketing agility in immigrant entrepreneurial contexts and solidifies the importance of diverse networks in immigrant business survival and development.