Search results

The purpose of this paper is to critically examine the role of public policy in the formation of entrepreneurial ecosystems in Poland.

The paper assumes a qualitative approach to researching and analysing how public policy enables and constrains the formation of entrepreneurial ecosystems. The authors conducted a series of focus groups with regional and national policy makers, enterprises and intermediaries in three Polish voivodeships (regions) – Malopolska, Mazowieckie and Pomorskie.

The paper finds that applying the entrepreneurial ecosystems approach is a challenging prospect for public policy characterised by a theory-practice gap. Despite the attraction of entrepreneurial ecosystems as a heuristic to foster entrepreneurial activity, the cases highlight the complexity of implementing the framework conditions in practice. As the Polish case demonstrates, there are aspects of entrepreneurial ecosystems that are beyond the immediate scope of public policy.

The results challenge the view that the entrepreneurial ecosystems framework represents a readily implementable public policy solution to stimulate entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial growth. Insights are drawn from three regions, although by their nature these are predominantly city centric, highlighting the bounded geography of entrepreneurial ecosystems.

This paper poses new questions regarding the capacity of public policy to establish and extend entrepreneurial ecosystems. While public policy can shape the framework and system conditions, the paper argues that these interventions are often based on superficial or incomplete interpretations of the entrepreneurial ecosystems literature and tend to ignore or underestimate informal institutions that can undermine these efforts. As such, by viewing the ecosystems approach as a panacea for growth policy makers risk opening Pandora’s box.

The purpose of this paper is to explain how context shapes what becomes entrepreneurial.

The paper is part of a longitudinal study over ten years, an ethnographic work including interviews, participating in meetings and shadowing. Texts and voices boiled down to transcripts and notes were sorted in NVivo. The empirical material was presented as a simple, short story, with the aim to question established assumptions and relations. The paper propose context as the unit for analysis, instead of entrepreneurs and outcomes. This opened up the scale from a narrow individualism to a much broader appreciation of the entrepreneurship as shaped by social factors.

The paper provides insights about how context determines entrepreneurship. It is not simply the context in itself, but the things that are going on in the context. What entrepreneurship does is to connect and thus create a raft of changes. The paper suggests that to depart from context as the unit of analysis will avoid the objectification of entrepreneurship and open up for discussing the becoming of entrepreneurship. The case illustrates how entrepreneurship is an event in a flow of changing circumstances. Entrepreneurship is formed from the context itself, rather than being individual or social; entrepreneurship appears simultaneously to be both. Entrepreneurship can and does exist in multiple states regardless of the observer and the observation.

This paper fulfils an identified need to learn more about how entrepreneurship and context interact. It illustrates how context is more engaged in the entrepreneurial process than entrepreneurship theory acknowledges.

The purpose of this paper is answer the research question to what extent Ethiopian universities can be considered to be entrepreneurial and explains possible differences among these universities.

The paper is inspired by a mixed methods study at nine universities in Ethiopia applying the entrepreneurial university framework of the European Commission/OECD: a content analysis of university policy and educational documents, a structured survey with 203 respondents, in particular staff and students, and in-depth interviews and focus group discussions with 223 people comprising university top-management, faculty, students and external stakeholders.

Findings indicate that entrepreneurial activities in Ethiopian universities are at their infant stage with limited differences among the universities. The universities are operating in a top-down, central governmental-led development that is not enabling entrepreneurial behaviour at the level of the individual institutions. The paper argues that within this context, leadership is the lever for an entrepreneurial turn at the universities.

Entrepreneurship development is a priority in many African countries as an instrument for employability of the predominant young populations towards which universities are expected to contribute considerably. The study highlights the tension between a strong say of the government in university operations and creating an autonomous, integrated entrepreneurial culture.

The results of this study have relevance for the higher education community in terms of understanding the complexity of transforming institutions into more entrepreneurial organisations in Africa. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, there is no previous study that examines entrepreneurial characteristics of several universities in Ethiopia.

This paper aims to explore the learning styles of nascent entrepreneurs in developing their entrepreneurial marketing (EM) skills in teams while studying for the entrepreneurial business degree in one UK University. It advances the interlink between EM and entrepreneurial learning (EL) theories and demonstrates how working in teams assists in developing EM skills through EL in the educational context.

This qualitative case study adopts a thematic approach to analysing 9 audio-recorded workshops of 13 entrepreneurial students who work in teams to develop entrepreneurial ventures. Audio-recorded sessions were used to monitor the entrepreneurial and marketing behaviour of the young entrepreneurs and reveal the context and skills used in their learning process.

The findings show that the observed undergraduate entrepreneurial students develop their EM competence through collective, exploratory and exploitative, as well as supportive and individual learning. These learning styles intersect and prove to be effective in mastering both marketing and venture development skills in teampreneurial educational setting.

This case study demonstrates how the concepts of EM and EL are linked in both theory and practice. It makes suggestions on how entrepreneurial courses at the university could be further developed to assist the young entrepreneurs in effectively acquiring business knowledge and skills. This knowledge can also be implemented by small and large organisations to foster a co-creative collective learning environment leading to more innovations, experimentations and creative thinking.

This paper aims to report the findings of a large‐scale multinational study of students in a marketing organization that investigates the need to expand entrepreneurship education in the marketing curriculum. Key questions include what is the entrepreneurial mindset of students interested in marketing, what do they think they need to know, should they some day decide to pursue entrepreneurial opportunities, and how satisfied are they with their current exposure to entrepreneurial marketing experiences?

Via e‐mail, a major international collegiate marketing association headquartered in the USA sent the online questionnaire to a random sample of 4,300 students. Content areas included entrepreneurial mindset, desired entrepreneurial marketing learning and experiential activities, and demographics. A total of 605 students participated in the study.

The findings show that there is a large segment of marketing students who desire to be an entrepreneur and feel strongly about entrepreneurial education. Exposure to entrepreneurial marketing tools, experiential learning activities, and networking opportunities were deemed to be especially important.

The study focused on students in marketing organizations. Additional research is needed at the course level.

The findings suggest that entrepreneurial marketing education is needed in the business curriculum. Training in entrepreneurial marketing will better prepare students interested in being an entrepreneur or small business owner.

Entrepreneurial marketing has received little attention in the business education literature. The study is the first of its kind to study entrepreneurial marketing curriculum needs from the perspective of students in a nearly 11,000 strong international marketing organization.

This paper aims to introduce the concept of Entrepreneurial Collective Intelligence (ECI) as a means of understanding how communities of entrepreneurial actors learn to act both collectively and knowingly. It explores how connections between processes of CI, agency and action can explain and enable the development entrepreneurial community organisations.

There is a selective literature review of prior works on the related fields of community and collective entrepreneurship; collectives and intelligence; agency and action. The review is used to propose a framework of collective entrepreneurial intelligence, agency and action. An interpretive approach is used to research four case studies of community organisations which use CI to generate entrepreneurial outcomes.

The cases are compared with themes from prior literature to develop a conceptual model of four ECI processes which enable intelligence, agency and action: collaborative processes; distributed working; intelligence representations and organisation of infrastructures. These are theorised to discuss ideas, challenges, methods and questions to enhance entrepreneurial actions, based on sharing knowledge and learning, in the context of collective agency, action and intelligence.

The four processes, both together and separately, represent a coherent framework useful for further studies on the role of collectives in enterprising communities.

The four processes each represent a central area of attention, not only for development, learning, decision-making and leadership within enterprising communities but also for entrepreneurship education in terms of alternative didactics, pedagogies and learning forms.

The improved knowledge on the role of collective agency and CI within entrepreneurial processes is useful for strengthening civil activism and other fruitful forms of entrepreneurial collective processes. This may help solve complicated societal problems where traditional conceptions of entrepreneurship fail.

The conceptual contribution is to explain the dynamic relationships between ECI and action, mediated by collective agency. The role of CI in informing entrepreneurial communities is explored and four enabling processes are proposed. This coherent framework is useful for further studies on the role of collectives in enterprising communities, whilst informing their learning, decision-making and leadership.

Of all industries, agri-food has one of the largest environmental impacts. Reducing the production and consumption of meat, dairy and seafood, and moving to predominantly plant-based diets, is key to lowering our environmental footprint. Veg-friendly restaurants play a key role in this transition as they have the capacity to build a greener dining scene (e.g. positively change consumer opinions towards vegan food). Hence, the purpose of this paper is to understand the entrepreneurial journey of veg-friendly restaurateurs.

The authors employed an inductive-qualitative approach to analyse 12 veg-friendly restaurants in three countries (Spain, Australia and Colombia). In addition to inspecting available data on the restaurants and their menus, semi-structured interviews were conducted with the restaurateurs to uncover (1) the impact of their venture for customers and society, (2) the drivers to establishing their businesses and (3) the challenges faced and strategies used in the management of veg-friendly restaurants.

This work recognises veg-friendly restaurateurs as key actors in building a sustainable future through a greener dining scene. The authors uncover the main drivers of the entrepreneurial journey and propose a multi-dimensional approach to identity and passion as key antecedents of entrepreneurial intention. The authors also discuss how social and sustainable entrepreneurship may be the expression of an activist behaviour. Finally, challenges and strategies to manage veg-friendly restaurants are discussed with directions that contribute to both theory and practice.

A switch towards vegan and vegetarian diets has important implications for ecology, society and the economy. While most research has focused on the consumer side, this paper is unique in understanding how veg-friendly restaurants emerge. This is quite distinctive in the literature regarding sustainable restaurants, which until now, has focused on the managers' adoption of sustainable practices rather than the restaurateurs' entrepreneurial journey. This work additionally builds new insights in the entrepreneurship literature, through uncovering the motivations, experiences and challenges of entrepreneurs that, in most cases, show activist attributes.

Entrepreneurship education thrives on the pillars of experiential education. Using the case of the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology in Ghana, the purpose of this paper is to examine the entrepreneurship clinic (EC) as a viable pedagogy for the promotion of experiential education in entrepreneurship.

The paper relies on insider action research to analyse, within Joplin’s five-step model, the case of the EC at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), Ghana.

The analysis showed that the KNUST clinic comprises five main activities including preparation, orientation, selection and matching, coaching and monitoring and evaluation. In relation to Joplin’s five-step model, the first three stages of the clinic provide focus for the clinic while the remaining two stages – coaching and monitoring and evaluation – entail activities that are geared towards action, support, feedback and debrief. Through the clinic, thousands of tertiary students have been trained in entrepreneurship and new venture creation; some selected participants have been coached while others have had the opportunity to qualify for business incubation.

Although the paper discusses some achievements of the clinic in relation to enrolment and fundraising, it does not assess the impact of the clinic on the entrepreneurial competencies, intentions and initiatives of participants, hence, these issues are recommended for future research.

The paper demonstrates that it is feasible to implement the EC methodology, irrespective of the cost and time implications that are often associated with experiential educational methodologies. However, support from university management, funding raising from internal and external sources and technical support from industry and government agencies are key to the sustainability of clinics.

The paper adds novelty to the entrepreneurship education literature by bringing to the fore how a university in an emerging African economy is implementing and managing the EC pedagogy.