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The research aims to explore the relationships between the digital capabilities of micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs), their participation in global value chains and their adoption of innovative business models. Additionally, the study investigates how the prior experiences of entrepreneurial failure may influence or moderate these relationships.

To address these research objectives, the study draws upon data obtained from the Flash Eurobarometer 486 survey, a comprehensive dataset that explores the challenges faced by 13,197 European MSMEs as they navigate the complexities of growth, the integration of sustainable business models and the incorporation of digital technologies. To test the proposed hypotheses, the research employs multivariate logistic regression analysis.

Digital capabilities are found to be positively associated with business model innovation, while integration into global value chains is linked to a higher likelihood of implementing new business models. Interestingly, entrepreneurial failure did not significantly influence the relationship between digital capabilities and the adoption of new business models. In contrast, entrepreneurial failure significantly moderated the impact of global value chain inclusion on business model innovation, particularly in MSMEs with a history of failure.

This article provides practical guidance to entrepreneurs and companies interested in enhancing their digital strategies and engagement in global value chains, considering the entrepreneurs' business histories.

Based on action regulation theory (ART), this study aims to test the impact of individual entrepreneurial orientation (IEO) training on small business owner career success (financial attainment, satisfaction and achievement). Moreover, this relationship was unpacked through a dual mediation model of IEO behaviour and career resilience.

A four-wave, longitudinal randomized controlled field experiment was conducted in which 527 small business owners participated from Lahore, Pakistan (training group = 256, control group = 271). The data analysis was done via ANCOVAs (group comparison) and PROCESS Model 6 (for serial mediation).

The results demonstrated that after getting IEO training, the small business owners had increased IEO behaviour, career resilience and career success as compared to their counterparts in the control group. In addition, the effect of IEO training on career success was attributed to the underlying role of IEO behaviour and career resilience development.

This is one of the few studies that have demonstrated the impact of IEO training on the career-related outcomes based on the action regulation perspective.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the significance and impact of strategic knowledge management (SKM) practices and organisational change capacity (OCC) in improving strategic thinking and strategic orientation in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and their contribution in overall improvement of entrepreneurial performance.

Quantitative research methodology using partial least square structural equation modelling with data of 296 sample from the target group as managers and owners from various SMEs in the UK has been used in the study.

The findings suggest that SMEs that invest in SKM and OCC are more proficient at adjusting to fluctuations in the business landscape and develop effective strategies that lead to improved entrepreneurial performance. The study provides evidence that SKM encompasses more than just the acquisition and use of information. It also involves the establishment of a learning and innovation culture that facilitates strategic thinking and direction. Similarly, OCC is not just about implementing change but also about developing the agility and flexibility to adapt to market changes, consumer demands and technology.

According to the research, SMEs may boost their entrepreneurial performance and keep a competitive advantage in the modern, dynamic business environment by investing in SKM and OCC. The capacity of SMEs to implement SKM and organisational change should be encouraged and supported by policymakers and practitioners, who should also offer the necessary tools and assistance to do so.

This study offers a valuable addition to the previously published works on SKM and OCC within SMEs. It offers empirical data that highlights the significance of SKM and OCC in fostering strategic thinking, strategic orientation and ultimately, boosting entrepreneurial performance. The study also highlights the challenges faced by SMEs in implementing SKM and OCC and provides recommendations for overcoming these challenges.

Consumer product firms renowned for marketing appear to be complementing brand creation, extension and acquisition with minority equity investments in entrepreneurial brand ventures (EBVs) for strategic purposes. Similarly, EBVs are looking for growth and resources that can be accessed via inter-organizational partnerships. This flourishing industry practice and the paucity of empirical research indicates the potential for new studies. The research objective was to examine why and how large incumbents were implementing strategic brand venturing (SBV), and with this understanding to develop a framework useful for descriptive and normative purposes.

This qualitative research study comprised in-depth interviews and multiple data sources across seven case studies drawn from US subsidiaries of global firms within the consumer products industry. Grounded in resource theory, the dimensions of strategic brand equity investments are abductively derived.

The findings delineate 16 process capabilities within four aggregate clusters entailing, the designing of the SBV program, opportunity identification, brand entrepreneur partnerships and venture portfolio management. Prefaced by endogenous and exogenous antecedents, these process capabilities help to contribute strategic and financial value when implemented.

This qualitative research study yielded analytical rather than statistical generalizations. A range of market and economic factors exist in the United States contributing towards a favorable entrepreneurial and brand incubation climate. This may render the SBV concept as contingent and contextual. Furthermore, the view of brand entrepreneurs' regarding the design of the process model were not explicitly sought but inferred from the discourses of the venturing units interviewed.

The article outlines several important implementation imperatives for corporations endeavoring to competitively advantage their brand portfolios via adoption of a minority equity investing strategy in EBVs. Practitioners are cautioned against myopically adopting this process alone as a success heuristic given other factors may impact success such as changes in corporate strategy or upper echelon sponsorship.

Mission preservation for social brand ventures being tethered to a large incumbent may need to be taken into account prior to and during SBV relationships.

The research contributes to the call for greater insights into the investment processes used in venturing relationships as well as coverage of new industry sectors beyond technology industries that often characterize corporate venture capital studies. Several novel findings emerged related to the importance of—the industry ecosystem; symbiosis between the founding brand entrepreneur and brand culture; synchronization of investment strategies with an emerging brand life-cycle model and serendipitous corporate entrepreneurial opportunities.

This study aimed to examine the relationship between spiritual capital and small business innovation in a developing market economy and the highly religious society of Minangkabau.

A quantitative method was used by analyzing the data with partial least squares (PLS), comprising 278 entrepreneurial and high-growth aspiration small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) owners in a developing economy such as Indonesia.

The results showed that spiritual capital was a source of acquiring knowledge from innovation failure situations, serving as a catalyst for the occurrence of novelty and differentiation-related innovation.

The perspective of spiritual capital was provided within a religious community, showing that future reports should produce comparative analyses from varying contexts. Since understanding entrepreneurs' perspectives and spiritual capital situation remained ambiguous, the performance of qualitative analysis was crucial.

Entrepreneurs were expected to obtain considerable benefits from spiritual capital as a source of inspiration for differentiation and higher levels of novelty-related innovation. Similarly, policymakers should implement the capital and learn from failure to evaluate entrepreneurial SMEs concerning their capabilities.

Previous studies were unable to acknowledge an alternative source of innovation in a specific context, such as entrepreneurial SMEs with high-growth aspirations and spiritual capital. This is because capital contributes to innovation, helps in the assimilation of innovative knowledge and causes novelty-related innovation.

Knowledge sharing enables a firm’s absorptive capacity to reconfigure its dynamic capabilities to sense, track and recognise embryonic business opportunities. Entrepreneurial opportunity recognition triggers entrepreneurs to invest in and upgrade their knowledge practices to improve entrepreneurial performance. This study aims to examine the relationship between knowledge sharing and absorptive capacity on entrepreneurial orientation as well as the moderating effect of opportunity recognition and the mediating effect of absorptive capacity.

A quantitative cross-sectional research design was applied to data from Algerian small and medium-sized enterprise managers in middle- to top-management positions. The final analysis using smart PLS included 246 respondents.

Knowledge sharing positively influenced entrepreneurial orientation and absorptive capacity. In addition, the findings reveal that entrepreneurial orientation positively influences entrepreneurial performance, and opportunity recognition strengthens the relationship between entrepreneurial orientation and entrepreneurial performance. Entrepreneurial orientation and absorptive capacity have partial mediating effects.

This study focuses on how firms create and share developed knowledge to enable absorptive capacity to fit a level of entrepreneurial orientation. This study validates the vital impact of opportunity recognition as a leading motivation for entrepreneurial orientation. The results highlight an important area of research and suggest that firms should focus on knowledge sharing to boost entrepreneurial outcomes.

The notions of entrepreneurship, absorptive capacity and knowledge sharing are extended by building on dynamic capability theory. Knowledge sharing increases absorptive capacity, which drives superior entrepreneurial orientation outcomes.

According to the literature, general personality traits are less strongly related to the creation of new ventures than specific/proximal personality traits. Therefore, this study aims to understand the different proximal personalities that influence the entrepreneurial intention to start a new venture and the relationship between them.

Data were gathered through a self-administered questionnaire filled in by students of entrepreneurship or related courses at the end of the second semester (2019/2020 academic year), and the research option is based on covariance-based structural equation modelling.

The results of this study show that entrepreneurial intentions can be predicted by specific individual traits, namely, risk-taking, entrepreneurial alertness, creativity, proactivity and self-efficacy. Moreover, it was found that risk-taking mediates the relationship between entrepreneurial alertness and proactivity. On the other hand, students’ creativity mediates the relationship between risk-taking and proactivity. Finally, students’ self-efficacy mediates the relationship between proactiveness and entrepreneurial intention.

The results have implications for entrepreneurship education given that a better understanding of the personality traits that influence entrepreneurial intentions can lead to the development of new approaches and pedagogical tools.

This model can be used as a diagnostic tool for designing an effective and efficient entrepreneurship curriculum and pedagogy, acting as an (ongoing) audit of students’ entrepreneurial intentions to get a scientific basis in case of further course/module adjustments.

The purpose of this study is to test the effect of entrepreneurship education programs (EEPs) on the individual entrepreneurial orientation (IEO) by considering the innovativeness, proactiveness and risk-taking dimensions of undergraduate students and the role of these dimensions on the relationship between program inspiration (PI) and entrepreneurial intention (EI).

This study uses a pre- and post-test analysis with data from 1,423 undergraduate students from two emerging countries in Latin America: Colombia and Ecuador. To verify the effect of the EEP on innovativeness, proactiveness and risk-taking at two-time points, the analysis of median for the difference of two paired populations (Sign Test and the Wilcoxon signed-rank test) was used. In addition, structural equation modeling analysis under the covariance and multigroup approach was applied to test the relationship between PI, IEO and EI.

The results of this study show that the EEP enhances innovativeness, proactiveness and risk-taking whose effects are more prominent in Ecuadorian students. Equally importantly, the EEP benefits represented in PI translate into higher EI through the mediating effect of the IEO dimensions for both the Colombian and Ecuadorian contexts, where the findings suggest no significant differences between two groups.

The findings of this study contribute to a better understanding of entrepreneurship education's role in entrepreneurial competence's development and intention by revealing the role of IEO dimensions. This study is one of the first studies that applies the IEO to contribute to the literature on the relationship between entrepreneurship education and intention from an emotional entrepreneurial perspective.

Strategic flexibility (SF) has become increasingly important for firms because of the fast changes in the external environment. In line with the practical importance of SF, an emerging research field has developed around it that has attempted to understand the nature of SF and the key relationships. The aim of this study is to unveil the semantic structure of the recent literature on SF and to suggest new promising areas for future research.

The authors conduct a systematic literature review with a bibliographic analysis technique, which allows authors to identify the main recent streams in the literature, as well as offer reflections and suggestions for future research.

The authors uncover three main emerging areas in the research on SF, namely SF as a dynamic capability, the role of knowledge management for SF and the relationship between a firm SF and the external environment. The authors put forward three avenues for future research on SF: Avenue 1. SF, business model innovation (BMI) and other dynamic capabilities (DC), Avenue 2. Digital technologies and SF/organizational agility and Avenue 3. SF and sustainability. Articles included in the special issue entitled “A strategic perspective on flexibility, agility and adaptability in the digital era” contribute to Avenue 2, thus paving the way for filling some of the identified gaps regarding the relationship between SF and digitalization.

To the best of authors’ knowledge, this is the first literature review on SF that uses a bibliometric approach to draw conclusions on the findings in the literature. The review contributes to the theoretical understanding of SF by illustrating and explicating core topics that have persisted over time, as well as by presenting three main avenues for further developing authors’ knowledge around SF.

Entrepreneurship is one of the significant drivers of economic growth, development and job generation in several countries worldwide. Realizing its significant contribution to the nation’s development, policymakers and educators have also drawn attention to fostering entrepreneurship among the youth. Researchers attempted to comprehend the dynamics and investigate the factors influencing entrepreneurial intention (EI). As is true for other abilities and response tendencies, individual differences exist for EI also. This study aims to explore the relationship of emotional intelligence (EIn) and cognitive flexibility (CF) with EI and mediating effect of entrepreneurial self-efficacy (ESE) in the relationship between CF, EIn and EI.

The cross-sectional survey was conducted to gather responses from 635 individuals aged 17–26 years (M = 19.2, SD = 1.49). The hypotheses were tested using correlation, regression and mediation analysis.

The findings indicated that EIn and CF were significantly and positively related to EI. Furthermore, ESE was found to be a partial mediator between EIn and EI and a full mediator between CF and EI.

Results reflected the critical significance of ESE and implied that EI might be strengthened by intervening in ESE through various sources.

This study adds to the existing literature by incorporating less studied individual factors (EIn and CF) to better understand EI by explaining the mediation mechanism through ESE.