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Recognizing novel entrepreneurial opportunities arising from a crisis is of paramount importance for firms. Hence, understanding the pivotal factors that facilitate firms in this endeavor holds significant value. This study delves into such factors within a representative empirical context impacted by a crisis, drawing insights from existing literature on opportunity recognition during such tumultuous periods.

The authors conducted a qualitative inspection of 14 Italian firms during the COVID-19 pandemic crisis. The authors collected a rich body of multi-source qualitative data, including 34 interviews (with senior managers and entrepreneurs) and secondary data (press releases, videos, web interviews, newspapers, reports and academic articles) in two phases (March–August 2020 and September–December 2020).

The results suggest the existence of a process model of opportunity recognition during crises based on five entrepreneurial influencing factors (entrepreneurial knowledge, entrepreneurial alertness, entrepreneurial proclivity, entrepreneurial personality and entrepreneurial purpose).

Various scholars have highlighted that, in times of crises, it is not easy and indeed very challenging for entrepreneurs to identify novel entrepreneurial opportunities. However, recent research has shown that crises can also positively impact entrepreneurs and their capacity to identify new entrepreneurial opportunities. Given these findings, not much research has analyzed the process by which entrepreneurs identify novel entrepreneurial opportunities during crises. This study shows that some entrepreneurial influencing factors are very important to identify new entrepreneurial opportunities during crises.

This paper aims to elucidate the relationship between entrepreneurial orientation, reverse innovation and international performance of emerging economy multinational enterprises (EMNEs).

The authors analyze archival data of Chinese limited companies between 2010 and 2016, including 11,230 firm-year observations about 1708 firms. In order to test the study’s mediation hypotheses, the authors apply an ordinary least square (OLS) regression.

The authors find evidence that the entrepreneurial orientation of EMNEs has a positive effect on reverse innovations. Furthermore, the authors find positive effects of reverse innovation on the international performance of EMNEs. This pattern of results suggests that the relationship between entrepreneurial orientation and international performance is partially mediated by reverse innovation.

The study’s findings help managers in EMNEs to promote reverse innovation by building and using their entrepreneurial orientation. It also helps them to set out and gauge the chances of success of their internationalization strategies. The findings also hold relevance for firms in developed economies as well, as they may understand which emerging economy competitors stand to threaten their positions.

The strategic role of reverse innovations – i.e. clean slate, super value and technologically advanced products originating from emerging markets – has generated considerable research attention. It is clear that reverse innovations impact the international performance of EMNEs. Yet how entrepreneurial orientation influences international performance is still underexplored. Thus, the current study clarifies the mechanism by examining and testing the mediating role of reverse innovation among the entrepreneurial orientation–international performance link.

This study presents and validates a theoretical model linking individual characteristics of the founding or lead innovative entrepreneur of a start-up venture – the entrepreneur's values, entrepreneurial attitudes and entrepreneurial self-efficacy – to the firm's entrepreneurial orientation (EO) and market orientation (MO) and, ultimately, to firm performance.

We conducted a survey on a stratified random sample of founders of early-stage South Australian micro- and small enterprises with a response rate of 24% (N = 204). Structural equation modelling was used to evaluate the model.

The study found that there is a significant relationship between the individual lead entrepreneur and firm strategies developed in early-stage firms in explaining firm performance. It also found that internal values are positively related to entrepreneurial attitude. Entrepreneurial attitude is positively related to entrepreneurial self-efficacy and EO innovativeness. In turn, entrepreneurial self-efficacy is related to innovativeness, proactiveness and risk-taking. The proactiveness dimension of EO and entrepreneurial attitude is related to MO. Entrepreneurial self-efficacy, innovativeness and MO are related to firm performance.

This research was limited to entrepreneurial ventures in South Australia and may lack generalisability in other states and countries.

The research contributes to the understanding of the heterogeneity within self-employed individuals, in particular among innovative entrepreneurs, by expanding insights regarding antecedents and consequences of the entrepreneurial process. It develops insights into the links of individual-level constructs with firm-level constructs to develop a more meaningful understanding of new venture creation and performance. It enhances our knowledge of the heterogeneity within the group of self-employed by exploring the individual entrepreneurial antecedents of performance in early-stage firms.

The purpose of this study was to explore the relationship between entrepreneurial passion for founding firms (EPFF) and persistence in venture start-ups and to examine the mediating role of searching and scanning alertness, association and connection alertness and evaluation and judgment alertness (i.e. entrepreneurial alertness).

Using a three-way parallel mediation involving searching and scanning alertness, association and connection alertness and evaluation and judgment alertness, on data from 342 serial entrepreneurs from Nigeria, the authors examined the influence of EPFF on persistence in venture start-ups, through a parallel mediation involving searching and scanning alertness, association and connection alertness and evaluation and judgment alertness.

The authors find that EPFF was not significantly related (positive) to persistence in venture start-ups, but that searching and scanning alertness, association and connection alertness and evaluation and judgment alertness mediated the path through which EPFF impacts persistence in venture start-ups. Thus, entrepreneurial alertness is relevant in explaining the relationship between EPFF and persistence in venture start-ups in Nigeria.

The findings of this study highlight the relevance of EPFF and alertness in explaining persistence in venture start-ups in Nigeria.

This paper extends entrepreneurial ecosystems theory by testing how aspects of the local business environment affect individual entrepreneurs' ability to translate their personal resources into firm performance.

Data were collected from 223 business owners across Australia. Moderation hypotheses were tested using multiple hierarchical regression and confirmed with the Preacher and Hayes (2004) bootstrapping method.

The results show that business owners' psychological capital, social capital and entrepreneurial education directly affect their individual firm performance. These positive relations are moderated by specific aspects of the business environment, such that they are stronger when the environment is more favorable.

This study puts individual business owners back into entrepreneurial ecosystems theory and explains how they can make the most of their personal resources, suggesting a complex interplay where one size does not fit all. Far-reaching practical implications for policymakers are discussed.

This conceptual, multi-voiced paper aims to collectively explore and theorize family entrepreneuring, which is a research stream dedicated to investigating the emergence and becoming of entrepreneurial phenomena in business families and family firms.

Because of the novelty of this research stream, the authors asked 20 scholars in entrepreneurship and family business to reflect on topics, methods and issues that should be addressed to move this field forward.

Authors highlight key challenges and point to new research directions for understanding family entrepreneuring in relation to issues such as agency, processualism and context.

This study offers a compilation of multiple perspectives and leverage recent developments in the fields of entrepreneurship and family business to advance research on family entrepreneuring.

Entrepreneurial ecosystems provide the context for start-ups to access resources. The authors investigate the reliance of start-ups on their entrepreneurial ecosystem and the driving factors behind the proportion of local actors (belonging to their entrepreneurial ecosystem) within their overall set of relationships (their business ecosystem). Recognizing the limited relational capacity of firms, the authors focus on three differentiating firm characteristics: size, age and innovation of firms.

The authors developed a sample of 163 start-ups located in the entrepreneurial ecosystem of Toulouse, France. The authors investigated the characteristics of their relationship sets using regression analysis.

The results confirm that age is inversely related to the proportion of a start-up's relationships located in its entrepreneurial ecosystem. More surprisingly, for older start-ups, the authors also highlight the presence of a moderating effect of the start-up's size on the relationship between its degree of innovation and the proportion of its relationships in its entrepreneurial ecosystem: Larger and more innovative start-ups appear to rely more on their local entrepreneurial ecosystem.

This research increases the understanding of the characteristics driving the interactions of start-ups with their entrepreneurial ecosystems by adopting a relational capacity approach. The authors introduce digital methods as an innovative approach for uncovering firms' ecosystems. Finally, from a practical point of view, the research should provide public authorities seeking to promote the link between local resources and the development of innovative start-ups in their regions with interesting insights.

This paper examines the governance function that incubators perform for entrepreneurial firms. The authors demonstrate that this governance function has both a consultative and a control dimension and illustrate how these are enacted in the interactions between incubators and entrepreneurs. The authors also show how these interactions come into being and how entrepreneurs assess the value of the governance role played by incubators.

The paper is based on a cross-sectional interview study with entrepreneurs of 21 start-ups that were hosted by three different incubators. The start-ups are all early-stage technology firms. The analysis in the paper follows an inductive approach.

The authors find that the governance role of incubators is about both consultation and control. Consultative forms of governance include providing input and advice as well as questioning ideas and assumptions. Controlling forms of governance comprise setting targets and tracking progress as well as enforcing structures and documentation. The authors furthermore show that governance episodes are triggered either by the entrepreneurs themselves or by the incubator. In the former case, such episodes are mainly about consultation, while in the latter one, they often have a pronounced control element, which materializes particularly through regularly enforced meetings. Most entrepreneurs seem to appreciate this control element, acknowledging that, in its absence, they would lack the self-discipline of doing some things that need to be done.

This study’s findings extend prior research on inter-organizational relationships and the types of governance mechanisms observed therein. The authors show that a strict separation between actors who offer consultation and those who exercise control is too simplistic. Incubators influence entrepreneurial firms both through consultative and controlling forms of governance. In terms of limitations, this study’s analysis focuses on the perspectives of entrepreneurs, and the authors did not include the perspectives of incubators nor did the authors directly observe meetings between these two parties.

This paper provides examples for how entrepreneurial firms can benefit from being part of an incubator.

This study contributes to the discussion of the governance of inter-organizational relationships by focusing on incubators. In so doing, the authors also complement extant literature on management control in entrepreneurial settings by showing how the incubator fulfills a control function for entrepreneurs before these implement control mechanisms themselves.

This study aims to find evidence of a possible relationship between three constructs that are generally investigated separately: entrepreneurial orientation, understood as entrepreneurship on the organizational level; marketing capability, seen as a highly competitive factor for the organization; and business performance, highlighted as a focus of the entire organization.

A survey-based quantitative approach was adopted with a cross-sectional temporal perspective. To arrive at results that can be compared, the study uses factor analysis and structural equations modeling techniques, with estimations of maximum likelihood for testing the quality of fit of the measures to the structural models, using SPSS 21 and AMOS 16 software. Data were collected at the 27th EXPOSUPER, which is a trade fair at which 35,000 visitors were present. The data collection instrument used is a questionnaire previously validated by Reis Neto et al. (2013a). The first section covers control variables chosen to profile the firms, the second contains entrepreneurial orientation variables, the third comprises marketing capability variables and the fourth section contains business performance variables, all using seven-point Likert response scales.

Tests of the entrepreneurial orientation measurement scale produced interesting results in this application within the retail supermarket industry. The results of exploratory factor analysis indicated that a scale with three dimensions was significant. The relationship between entrepreneurial orientation and marketing capability (H1) is positive, through the intermediate dimensions of innovation, proactiveness and risk-taking, used by firms’ management, contributing to their efforts to research and manage the market, to develop products and services and to offer better prices. Exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis showed that four of the scale’s dimensions of the marketing capability were significant: market research, market management, new product development and pricing. Comparison of these results with those of Reis Neto et al. (2013a) reveals a difference, as although their result, achieved using structural equations modeling, also had four factors; the promotion dimension was the most significant and absorbed the other variables. Despite these differences, confirmatory factor analysis and structural equations modeling demonstrated that this construct met the minimum conditions for adequacy, where (H2), formulated to test the relationship between the marketing capability construct, was confirmed. The final construct analyzed in this study was business performance, initially suggested by González-Benito et al. (2009), and also used by Reis Neto et al. (2013a). They used the dimensions profitability, market value and market response, and in the present study, after exploratory factor analysis, confirmatory factor analysis and structural equations modeling, the results were identical to those authors results, in that (H3), formulated with the objective of testing the relationship between the entrepreneurial orientation construct and business performance, was confirmed, and although this was not the most robust of the relationships postulated in the three hypotheses, but was of lower significance.

Although this study has achieved its objective, one of the study’s limitations relates to the data collection instrument, which was subject to failures in terms of the number of variables to be analyzed in each dimension. This led to elimination of certain dimensions during the analyses. Another limitation is related to the method used in the study. When questionnaires are used as data collection instruments, respondents often may not understand the true meaning of questions, which could lead them to choose any option, thereby stripping the results of credibility. In view of this limitation, it is suggested that future researchers conduct qualitative studies, using the case study method, which could offer greater clarity and increase understanding of the results related to these subjects. Even considering that this study has certain limitations and restrictions affecting generalization, it is hoped that it raises new questions, interests and inspirations, improving and complementing understanding of this strong social and economic sector.

It is identify the relationship between entrepreneurial orientation and marketing capability, since to date there is no evidence from studies confirming the existence of such a relationship. This statement was based on the results of a bibliographic survey conducted using the ProKnow-C, knowledge development process-constructivist methodology, in which, this originality was positive and significant, offering new studies from this point of view.

The aim of the study is to examine the effects of opportunity creation and discovery on the performance of family firms. Specifically, from the tenets of dynamic capabilities and organizational contingency perspectives, this study proposes and tests a framework of how family firms' creation and discovery behavior impact venture growth and the conditions under which such impact can vary.

The study uses moderated-hierarchical regression to analyze survey data from 156 family-owned small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) operating within a sub-Saharan African economy.

The findings indicate that creation behavior has a curvilinear U-shaped relationship with venture growth, while discovery behavior has a direct positive relationship with venture growth. Further analysis reveals that the curvilinearity of the U-shaped relationship between creation and venture growth will be stronger for older family firms than for younger ones.

The study findings may be limited by the cross-sectional nature of the data and the specific focus on family firms only.

The results highlight the significance of pursuing both opportunities among family firms. In fact, both creation and discovery opportunities are significant drivers of family firm growth, albeit in different capacities. Relatedly, managers of older family firms (compared to younger firms) can invest more in exploiting creative opportunities.

From these findings, governments and other stakeholders should create enabling environment and institutional frameworks conducive to exploiting opportunities by entrepreneurial firms.

The study is novel – as it provides unique findings on the performance implications of creation and discovery behavior of entrepreneurial family firms within developing economies.