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Family farms are seen as a powerful force for rural development, and they are gaining more and more research attention. This study aims to explore the relationship between the social networks of family farms and the dual innovation of the family farm business model from the perspective of entrepreneurial orientation.

Using a questionnaire survey of 169 family farms in Qingdao, China, descriptive and inferential statistics were used to analyze the data collected. The study hypothesis was tested using inferential tests (regression analysis).

The study results show that innovative, efficiency- and novelty-based business models facilitated by social networks have a favorable and significant impact on the performance of family farms. Furthermore, the relationship between social networks and new business model creation is positively influenced by an entrepreneurial orientation.

This study is distinctive in that it examines the mechanisms underlying family farm growth from an entrepreneurial standpoint, classifying family farm social networks for the first time into social, market and governmental categories and looking at their impact on the creation of new business models. In addition, it looks into the relationship between the innovation and social network aspect of the family farm business model from an entrepreneurial perspective, offering fresh insight into this connection. It also examines the family farm business model’s connection to innovation and social networks from an entrepreneurial standpoint, providing new insight into this relationship.

The purpose of the paper is to examine the role of trust and distrust in social networks within the entrepreneurial ecosystem and to develop a conceptual scheme of the impact of trust and distrust on productive and unproductive entrepreneurship.

This study develops a conceptual scheme, founded on the social capital and resource-based view of a firm, by exploring the impact of trust and distrust on entrepreneurial behavior in a social network.

As the paper indicates, trust within an entrepreneurial ecosystem has a positive impact on productive entrepreneurship, while distrust within the ecosystem is expected to be unproductive and destructive (or potentially illegal) to an economy.

The research implication of this paper is that it connects levels of trust and distrust within the ecosystem to the type of the behavior exhibited by entrepreneurs leading either to productive or unproductive entrepreneurial endeavors. As this study is based on the theoretical review resulting in a conceptual scheme, it requires further investigation of proposed interactions.

This paper offers strategic alternatives for entrepreneurs seeking to enhance future endeavors by strengthening trust within social networks for the mutual benefits of the ecosystem and businesses within it.

This study highlights the importance of two social constructs of trust and distrust in maintaining existing and developing future ecosystems. It also reviews potential outcomes of entrepreneurial behavior and their impact on economies.

This research examines both trust and distrust (two separate social constructs) as significant predictors of future outcomes in the entrepreneurial ecosystem that go beyond productive entrepreneurship.

The purpose of the paper is to provide insight into how students navigate entrepreneurial ecosystems and make use of social networks as they create their own ventures. Such ecosystems for students are an understudied phenomenon and there is a need for more profound insights into the issue in order to build better support systems for student entrepreneurs. The study aims to increase understanding on the elements that are important in students' entrepreneurial ecosystems and how these impact on students' venture creation processes, with emphasize on the role social networks play. Student entrepreneurs account for a substantial number of the startups that come into being at universities. Understanding more about how the surroundings affects this process is important for facilitating student entrepreneurship in higher education.

The study is qualitative and makes use of in-depth interviews with student entrepreneurs, educators and support actors in the ecosystems. Multiple actors were interviewed in order to capture different perspectives on the matter, with a total of 15 interviews conducted.

Two main findings arose from the study. First, it provides insight into elements that are perceived as important for student venture creation by the student entrepreneurs themselves, by educators and by support actors in the ecosystems. Second, it describes how the elements make up the entrepreneurial ecosystems surrounding the students, which serve as platforms from which students can develop their social networks. Therefore, the study highlights how such ecosystems can serve as sources from which students can gain access to ideas, resources and identity processes.

A limitation of the study is that the interviews took place in one country. Consequently, further investigation is necessary to establish whether the findings are valid in other contexts. The research has implications for higher educational institutions, policymakers and researchers concerned with student entrepreneurship and student venture creation.

The study contributes empirical findings on a topic that is currently not well understood and on which there are few empirical studies. While student ventures represent a substantial proportion of university spin-offs, the topic has received little attention compared to research on academic entrepreneurship. The study represents a step towards enhancing understanding of students' entrepreneurial ecosystems and how students gain access to resources through social network ties within these systems.

This study analyses the role of social networks and their effects on academics' entrepreneurial intentions (AEI), from an academic cognitive perspective. Specifically, the paper investigates how business (distinguishing between industrial and financial links) and personal social networks, through opportunity-relevant information and support, could influence academics' intentions to start a business venture on the basis of their research knowledge. The paper examines the mediator roles of entrepreneurial attitudes (EA) and self-efficacy on opportunity recognition (SOR) as important psychological variables for academics. In the same context, the paper examines the mediator role of gender.

The hypotheses were tested using structural equation modelling analysis, on a sample population of 500 Spanish academics engaged in commercially oriented fields of research.

The results obtained highlight the positive roles played by business (industrial and financial) networks, both directly in promoting AEI, and indirectly via EA and SOR. The paper finds that male and female academics differ in their perceptions of support from business and financial networks and in their use of these resources in business start-up.

An understanding of these issues offers opportunities to shape government interventions to assist academic entrepreneurs embarking on a business venture, or those already active in this respect, increasing their effectiveness in building, utilizing and enhancing the quality of networking activities.

The paper explores business networking for academics as a factor promoting entrepreneurship. Furthermore, the paper considers an under-researched area that of female entrepreneurship in what is traditionally considered a male-dominated activity.

This paper aims to explore the contextual role of social-cultural capital in youth entrepreneurship between Malaysia and Lao PDR/Laos, comparing two different entrepreneurial ecosystems designed to identify emergent factors that stimulate and/or stifle the genesis of youth entrepreneurship while identifying similar and divergent entrepreneurial identities and traits among young people from these two sovereign contexts.

Utilizing qualitative-based case study design approach, data collections were garnered from 30 informants through in-depth personal interviews, focus group studies coupled with personal observation conducted via purposive cum snowball sampling.

Thematic analysis reveals a pattern-based outcome that discloses a variety of inter-related factors within the social network ecosystem that stimulate and sometimes stifle youth entrepreneurship, primarily through the active agency of social-cultural capital.

Entrepreneurial ecosystem contextual differences between Malaysia and Laos demonstrate the unifying factor of social-cultural capital through social network in stimulating youth entrepreneurship and unveiling practical similarities and differences that can be used to promote youth entrepreneurial endeavors among varying sovereign socio-economic contexts in ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Countries).

This study specifically focuses on the unambiguous contextual differences of two sovereign entrepreneurship ecosystems. Contextual differences may not necessarily demarcate further the gulf of differences within and between two sovereign entrepreneurship ecosystems but, on the contrary, may close the gap through the dynamic role of social-cultural capital via social network ties in youth entrepreneurship.

This paper examines mechanisms through which social capital strengthens microfinance impact on fostering female entrepreneurial success. Specifically, the study focuses on how, and to what extent, resources embedded in social networks determine MF impact on entrepreneurial success.

Survey data were collected from 276 female micro-institutions entrepreneurs using multi-stage stratified random sampling across 80 MF institutions in three South-Western Nigerian states. Hypotheses were tested using ordinal regression analysis.

The study found that relational and network social capital had a positive and significant influence on female entrepreneurial success. Specifically, intra-group trust and productive network ties amongst female entrepreneurs in poor communities predicated the positive impact of MF on entrepreneurial success. Also, resources embedded in networks are more positively correlated to education level and marital status. Furthermore, MF could have more positive impact for borrowers with sustainable relationships with loan officers who organise MF provisions and understand the entrepreneurs’ context.

The research provides empirical evidence for the relationship dynamics between female entrepreneurs and MF institutions, by emphasising the importance of deploying different forms of social capital in sustaining MF impact on female entrepreneurial success.

This paper considers the relevance which networks have for research at the Marketing/Entrepreneurship Interface. The paper argues that while there is some evidence to suggest that networks are an important tool for entrepreneurial firms, there is a need to more clearly explain what is meant by the terms “network” and “networking”. It is proposed that by using a definition of networks borrowed from the field of social anthropology, current understanding of the marketing benefits that can accrue to firms which make entrepreneurial use of networks can be advanced. Drawing upon the findings of research which employed such a definition, the paper concludes that networks and the activity of networking are indeed important entrepreneurial marketing tools and that further research attention to these is required to acquire a comprehensive understanding of these.

Concerning that limited explanation exists examining the function of corporate governance in trust processing within entrepreneurial network development, the purpose of this paper is to explore trust evolution and the role of corporate governance in an entrepreneurial network.

This paper makes an innovative exploration based on the case study of NVC Lighting Holding Limited.

It proposes that in the initial period of network relationship which is based on entrepreneur’s individual social network and embodies sole social network embeddness, entrepreneurial network relies more on affective trust than contractual trust. When stepping into extending period of network relationship which reflects separate embeddedness of social and market network, however, entrepreneurial network has an equal reliance on both affective trust and contractual trust. With further development, when ushering in the phase of maturity which undergoes superimposing embeddedness of both social and market network, entrepreneur network inclines to rely more heavily on affective trust than contractual trust. During the whole process, it can be found that the reliance of entrepreneurial network on trust has the tendency to transfer from affective trust to contractual trust. Furthermore, decreasing of equity ratio of founders and strengthening of controlling right heterogeneity in the corporate governance have facilitated the transfer process and the entrepreneurs’ authority has restraining effect on the evolution of the process.

Through case study, this paper presents the trust evolution process in different stages of entrepreneurial network. Another important theoretic contribution of this paper is that it reveals the function of corporate governance in trust processing within entrepreneurial network development.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between an individual's personal acquaintance with an entrepreneur and his/her participation in entrepreneurial activity at three distinct new venture stages: discovery (intending to start a business), start‐up (actively in the process of starting a business), and young (running a business for less than three months).

Using Global Entrepreneurship Monitor data from 35 countries (n=311,720) pooled across three years (2002‐2004) and multinomial logistic regression, the paper examines the relationship between entrepreneurial networking and entrepreneurial participation across gender. Gender differences in entrepreneurial networking are also examined.

The findings indicate that individuals who personally know an entrepreneur are more likely to participate in entrepreneurial activity at any venture stage but that female entrepreneurs, compared with their male counterparts, are less likely to be acquainted with an entrepreneur. Taken together, these findings suggest that one of the reasons why women are less likely to become entrepreneurs is that they lack entrepreneurial resource providers or role models in their social networks.

The paper is subject to two limitations. First, the paper includes a single item measure of social network composition. Second, although the paper includes data from 2000 to 2004, the dataset is cross‐sectional and is thus based on different cohorts of participants. The paper offers a number of implications for theory, practice, and future research. One of the most important implications is that female entrepreneurship participation could be enhanced by policy directed at promoting female entrepreneur role models and connecting women with entrepreneurs.

The paper utilizes a representative sample of 311,720 individuals in 35 countries. Entrepreneurs are classified as operating at three distinct phases of the entrepreneurial process: discovery, start‐up, and young and the relationship between entrepreneurial networking and entrepreneurship participation is examined within each of these phases.

One key determinant of entrepreneurial success is entrepreneurial self-efficacy (ESE), defined as an individual’s confidence in his or her ability to perform entrepreneurial tasks. Whereas previous research has examined how individual and business factors influence ESE, the purpose of this paper is to analyze the influence of entrepreneurs’ social networks upon ESE. The paper examines such relationships for black and white entrepreneurs.

In total, 110 black and white entrepreneurs responded to a survey measuring ESE and critical constructs representing elements of the quality of entrepreneurs’ networks: emotional carrying capacity (ECC) and network ethnic diversity.

The authors found significant, positive relationships between both ECC and network ethnic diversity on ESE for white entrepreneurs but only found a significant positive relationship between ECC and ESE for black entrepreneurs.

While research is clear about the role that ESE plays in entrepreneurial activities, few studies have focused on the factors that improve ESE. In the present work, the authors study the role of context by examining how entrepreneurs’ social networks influence ESE. The authors examine such influences for both white and black entrepreneurs to better understand the implications of ethnicity.