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Analyzing the association between the entrepreneur’s background and product innovation, this paper aims to propose that some entrepreneur’s features are associated with the product innovation in incubated companies.

The study involved 95 technology-based firms incubated in Brazil. Questionnaires were sent to 461 technology-based incubated firms of the state, of which 112 have responded; however, only 95 met the established criteria, which was analyzed by logistic regression.

It was found that companies whose entrepreneurs have technical academic education closer to the Exact Sciences promote more innovation in products, regardless the size of their companies. In addition, in smaller firms, besides the technical background closer to the Exact Sciences, the entrepreneur's experience in the company also showed positive association regarding the intensity with which such firms innovate in products.

Results indicate that entrepreneurs who were selected taking into account their technical background closer to the Exact Sciences are more likely to contribute to the product innovation in their companies. Therefore, investing in their businesses will also increase the likelihood of success in the efficient allocation of the incubator resources.

The originality of this paper is reflected by the presentation of relations between entrepreneur’s background and product innovation in technology-based incubated firms in an emerging economy, highlighting the value of some characteristics of entrepreneur’s background to promote product innovation.

Analisando a associação entre o background do empreendedor e a inovação em produtos, este artigo propõe que algumas características do empreendedor estão associadas com a inovação de produtos em empresas incubadas.

O estudo envolveu 95 empresas de base tecnológica no Brasil. Questionários foram enviados para 461 empresas incubadas de base tecnológica no estado de São Paulo, das quais 112 responderam. Contudo, apenas 95 satisfizeram os critérios estabelecidos na pesquisa, as quais foram analisadas por meio da regressão logística.

Foi identificado que empresas cujos empreendedores possuem formações acadêmicas mais próximas das ciências exatas promovem mais inovações em produtos, independentemente do tamanho da organização. Além disso, em empresas menores, além da formação acadêmica próxima das ciências exatas, a experiência do empreendedor na empresa também mostrou associação positiva com relação à intensidade com a qual tais empresas inovam em produtos.

Os resultados indicam que os empreendedores selecionados, com formação técnica mais próxima das ciências exatas, têm maior probabilidade de contribuir para a inovação de produtos em suas empresas. Portanto, investir nesses negócios aumentará a chance de sucesso na alocação eficiente dos recursos da incubadora.

A originalidade do artigo consiste na apresentação de relações entre o background do empreendedor e a inovação de produtos, em empresas de base tecnológica incubadas, em um país emergente. Isto realça o valor de algumas características do empreendedor para promover a inovação de produtos.

Analizando la asociación entre el fondo del emprendedor y la innovación en productos, este artículo propone que algunas características del emprendedor están asociadas con la innovación de productos en empresas incubadas.

El estudio involucró a 95 empresas de base tecnológica en Brasil. Los cuestionarios se enviaron a 461 empresas incubadas de base tecnológica en el estado de São Paulo, de las cuales 112 respondieron. Sin embargo, sólo 95 cumplieron los criterios establecidos en la investigación, que se analizaron a través de la regresión logística.

Se ha identificado que las empresas cuyos emprendedores poseen formaciones académicas más cercanas a las ciencias exactas promueven más innovaciones en productos, independientemente del tamaño de la organización. Además, en empresas menores, además de la formación académica cercana a las ciencias exactas, la experiencia del emprendedor en la empresa también mostró asociación positiva con relación a la intensidad con la que dichas empresas innovan en productos.

Los resultados indican que los emprendedores seleccionados, tomando en consideración su formación técnica más cercana a las ciencias exactas, son más probables de contribuir con la innovación de productos en sus empresas. Por lo tanto, invertir en estos negocios aumentará la probabilidad de éxito en la asignación eficiente de los recursos de la incubadora.

La originalidad del documento es reflejada por la presentación de relaciones entre el fondo del emprendedor y la innovación de productos en empresas incubadas de base tecnológica en una economía emergente, resaltando el valor de algunas características del fondo del emprendedor para promover la innovación de productos.

Micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) are a critical part of a country or region’s economy. They have contributed to more than half of Indonesia’s gross domestic product. However, MSMEs today are still getting problems and obstacles in the Indonesian industry. One of them is the lack of knowledge about entrepreneurship that hampers the development of a business and the emergence of innovation. This study aims to understand the innovation process and extend the knowledge regarding entrepreneurship in food and beverage MSMEs in Greater Jakarta Area.

This study is descriptive–associative research. It uses the online survey as a data collection method with a cross-sectional design. The sampling technique is purposive sampling with the criteria foodpreneurs from MSMEs in Greater Jakarta Area. The data are measured using Likert scale and analyzed using structural equation modeling-partial least squares.

The results suggest that centralized decision-making positively impacts collaboration, communication and contributes to innovation. Communication effects the entrepreneur's knowledge and collective entrepreneurship. In terms of collaboration, it affects entrepreneur's knowledge and collective entrepreneurship. Then, the entrepreneur's knowledge and collective entrepreneurship influence innovation.

This research is only conducted using MSMEs of food and beverages in Greater Jakarta Area as the samples. Hence the results cannot be generalized. Different sectors may have different results.

A centralized decision can be done but limited in certain situations only. Then, foodpreneurs should collaborate and communicate more intensely with their employees. It will impact the harmonious collaboration and collective problem-solving to achieve creative solutions.

There is limited research focusing on foodpreneurs and the innovation process. So, this research results can add to the existing literature review.

This study aims to examine how the interactions between the entrepreneur’s technical and market knowledge and the intra- and extra-industry ties affect resources acquisition.

The authors made a questionnaire from a sample of 300 high-technology companies located in the incubator in Xi’an, of which 165 were usable, and the final response rate was 55 per cent, the authors used optimal scaling regression analyses to analyze the data and test the hypotheses.

There is a positive relationship between the entrepreneurs’ knowledge and the resources acquisition. The effects of the technical knowledge and the market knowledge are contingent on the intra-industry ties and the extra-industry ties in different ways. In particular, an entrepreneur with technical knowledge has an easier access to required resources from the intra-industry ties than extra-industry ties. In contrast, an entrepreneur with market knowledge can obtain more easily the needed resources from the extra-industry ties than the intra-industry ties.

The paper conducted an empirical test of how the interactions between the entrepreneurs’ knowledge and industry ties affect the resources acquisition in the context of China’s emerging economy, which has not been studied in the current literature. This paper provides implications for entrepreneurs with technical and market knowledge in finding the right way to obtain needed resources through their industry ties.

The purpose of this research is to examine how entrepreneurs in new venture creations use social competence skills, such as proactive help‐seeking behaviours, to acquire knowledge.

An investigation is conducted into how entrepreneurs, in a new venture creation, acquire business and technical knowledge utilizing proactive help‐seeking behaviour. Social competence is operationalised as a construct dependent on a number of psychological and behavioural factors. As such, proactive help‐seeking behaviour suggests that individuals will recognise a deficiency in knowledge and actively search for possible solutions to solve the problem. However, there are social costs involved during the help‐seeking process. The level of social competence skill will impact the new venture because entrepreneurs do not want to appear incompetent, inferior, or dependent on another individual or organization in the environment.

It is theorised that entrepreneurs who proactively seek help will increase their acquisition of knowledge. However, individual autonomy, reputation of the help‐giver, and gender of the entrepreneur will moderate entrepreneurs to proactively seek help.

The value of the research is that it contributes to the body of literature that examines individual and firm level constructs to understand the question of why some entrepreneurs succeed while others fail. It specifically utilises the psychological construct, proactive help‐seeking behaviour, with the firm level construct, resource‐based view to understand firm formation and development.

The purpose of this paper is to argue that defining, measuring and developing skills are crucial to successful entrepreneurship and that being able to do so can help to build strong rural entrepreneurial ecosystems.

The literature on entrepreneurship success and entrepreneurial skills is reviewed, and this knowledge is used to create and describe the Entrepreneurship Skill-building Framework (ESBF), which provides a scaffold for thinking about the identification, measurement and development of essential entrepreneurship skills. The same literature is used to develop a tool for effectuating the ESBF, called the Readiness Inventory for Successful Entrepreneurship (RISE), which assesses entrepreneurship skills using the communimetrics theory of measurement.

Both the ESBF and the RISE are detailed, and they are applied to the successful development and maintenance of rural entrepreneurial ecosystems, with an example from practice. Specific implications for rural entrepreneurship-focused economic development are also discussed.

The ESBF represents a new way of framing entrepreneurship skills and their development. The RISE is a skills assessment tool that is clinical, not predictive, utilizing an innovative theory of measurement. Together, they offer a fresh approach to thinking about the purpose and effective implementation of entrepreneurial ecosystems.

The purpose of this paper is to empirically test for fundamental attribution error (FAE) – the naturally occurring bias of humans to over-attribute business success to celebrity-entrepreneur disposition.

Employing a five-step process, this paper measures and tests for FAE bias in entrepreneurial situations. The methodology includes anecdotal historical evidence; developing a FAE survey instrument; having 101 respondents classify variables; statistically testing and validating the instrument; and then statistically identifying the importance of each factor with a sample 105.

Significant statistical evidence for an active FAE bias was found. People do tend to attribute business success to entrepreneurial dispositions, rather than team behavior and circumstantial outcome factors which can reduce the effectiveness of public policy.

There is minimal research on FAE in entrepreneurship effecting public policy, thus there is a need for research to better understand factors of business outcomes actually based on entrepreneurial dispositions vs team behavior and circumstantial-situational factors.

FAE bias may lead the general public, entrepreneurs, and public policy makers to overemphasize the impact of the entrepreneur’s behavior and especially the dispositional factors of the celebrity-based entrepreneur when assessing causation of firm performance. This would under-emphasize the value of other organizational factors. Misidentification of true cause-effect factors may lead to inappropriate managerial conclusions and introduction of error in public policy decisions.

Although FAE is primarily a psychological literature concept, this is the first study to contribute empirical evidence of the FAE of professionals employed in business as it applies to entrepreneurship and economic outcomes.

This paper aims to integrate research on KM with the effectuation approach. This paper will add to the understanding of effectuation as a KM tool in the context of social entrepreneurial networks. Although researchers agree that the lack of resources is a structural point for the context of social entrepreneurship and that knowledge is crucial in social entrepreneurship, only few studies deal with trying to understand how resources and knowledge are obtained, transformed and managed. An effectual approach seems to be particularly appropriate to work on this subject.

A literature review leads to a theoretical model that is tested in a single-case study of a French entrepreneurial project.

The empirical study not only shows the legitimacy of using an effectual approach but also puts forward three concepts that enable a better understanding of the access to resources and knowledge and their use in the context of social entrepreneurship. This study contributes to the knowledge management literature in identifying the process of gathering and sharing external resources and knowledge through an effectual process led by the entrepreneur and by the network.

The results complement the extant KM literature on the following points: identify the cumulative and absorptive process of knowledge from the network, contributing to the question of KM for growth and corporate entrepreneurship; answer to the claim from Durst and Runar Edvardsson (2012) to develop a greater understanding of knowledge identification, storage and utilization in small businesses; add to the topics of knowledge sharing, knowledge transfer and knowledge creation; and show that stages of creating, identifying, sharing and absorbing knowledge from/with the network are embedded in an effectual approach.

The lack of resources should not lead the entrepreneur to a dead end, but rather invite him/her to better raise following questions: Who can help me to get the missing resource? How could I develop the project without these resources and knowledge? The entrepreneur is invited to search more flexibility in the making of the project, and to seek more support from the network. A second important implication is a guideline that can be followed by business incubators to give better advice and guidance to social entrepreneurs.

The paper links effectuation, KM and social entrepreneurship literatures. The identification of the role of the network in knowledge creation, identification and sharing is valuable for both researchers and practitioners.

In order to answer why and how some individuals identify opportunities, the purpose of this paper is to offer a comprehensive framework of key effective factors that investigates the role of prior knowledge and cognitive characteristics of entrepreneurial alertness and learning in the entrepreneurial opportunities recognition process.

First, the authors identified key effective factors and developed research hypotheses and conceptual model. Second, the authors considered research methodology including sampling and data collection, measurement model. The third section presents a report of the results from the analysis of the structural model and the hypotheses tests.

The findings show that all the three factors had positive impact on opportunity recognition. It is also confirmed that prior knowledge has significant impact on entrepreneurial alertness and learning. Finally, the results demonstrate that both entrepreneurial alertness and learning partially mediated the relationship between prior knowledge and opportunity recognition.

Possible effects of other cognitive characteristics such as creativity and innovation can be considered in the model to increase accuracy of the findings. Also, comparative studies with the proposed framework in different industrial domains can be conducted in order to compare the possible differences concerning the role of the factors in opportunity recognition.

By using this model, entrepreneurs will be able to identify and enhance the factors that influence opportunity recognition, thus honing this entrepreneurial ability. Also, this framework can be employed in the field of education to identify opportunity recognition problems in individuals and to foster entrepreneurs.

This paper presents a new integrated model that would examine the impact of key effective factors of entrepreneurial opportunity recognition simultaneously while taking into account the interactions among them.

Intangible capital (IC) is an important factor for economic growth and firm performance. The role IC has played has become even more crucial in recent decades, possibly influencing debt capacity and default risk assessment. This paper studies how entrepreneurial and employee-based IC affects financial leverage.

Employer–employee unbalanced panel data provided by Statistics Finland that refer to Finnish small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are used. Intangibles are measured with an expenditure-based method. Employee-based IC and entrepreneurial knowledge are used to explain debt financing in SMEs.

The findings imply that IC-intensive firms have less debt capacity due to weak pledgeability and asymmetric information between borrower and lender. Entrepreneurs with managerial or financial knowledge increase the firm's debt capacity compared to other entrepreneurs, especially in knowledge-intensive services (KIS). One explanation is that the entrepreneurs are more competent in negotiating with lenders as the entrepreneurs possess better financial skills. Entrepreneurs with technical knowledge decrease the firm's debt capacity in all industries.

While some earlier research focused on the IC–financial leverage relationship, hardly any study has looked at entrepreneurial IC. This paper provides new insights by including entrepreneurial IC alongside employee-based IC.

This study aims to delineate opportunity recognition as a competency from opportunity recognition as an outcome in the form of ideas and opportunities. In addition, a model was developed to examine the antecedents that lead to opportunity recognition competency, the intention to be an entrepreneur and finally, the actual number of ideas and opportunities discovered.

This study adopted cross-sectional design and collected quantitative data from a total of 247 randomly selected final year students from two private universities in Malaysia. Partial least squares structural equation modelling was applied to test the associations.

Study revealed that opportunity recognition competency and ability to develop ideas or exploitable opportunities are distinct constructs. Students with high competency in recognising opportunities are interested to be an entrepreneur but are not necessarily prepared with tangible ideas or exploitable opportunities. Absorptive capacity, entrepreneurial alertness and entrepreneurial knowledge were found to be significant predictors of opportunity recognition competency.

Firstly, in managing outputs of entrepreneurship education and trainings, opportunity recognition competency and number of ideas and opportunities should be separately and explicitly measured. Secondly, entrepreneurial alertness and entrepreneurial knowledge must be emphasised in entrepreneurial education or training on guiding students to be alert to information and honing their opportunity recognition competency skills through active search techniques.

This study is one of the few studies that clarify and empirically distinguish the concept of opportunity recognition as competency from opportunity recognition as an outcome in the forms of ideas and exploitable opportunities.