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Digital entrepreneurship is the key to economic survival and the lantern of jobs in developing countries. The debate about the challenges facing early digital entrepreneurs (DEs) in developing countries is still ambiguous. This study attempts to fulfill the gap with an in-depth examination of Jordan.

Referring to a digital start-up database hosted by the Ministry of Digital Economy and Entrepreneurship in Jordan, the study interviews a random sample of (n = 45) early (less than one-year seniority) DEs. Thematic analysis is carried out facilitated by NVivo 20 software. E-Commerce, agriculture technology, data and artificial intelligence and entertainment were at the top of the interviewed start-ups.

Nine challenges were observed, critically analyzed and discussed. The challenges are (1) the lack of realistic funding in terms and guarantees; (2) the negligence of guidance and advisory of incubators and entrepreneurship centres; (3) the emergence of unexpected risks; (4) the stringent economic situation; (5) competition; (6) legal and legislative obstacles; (7) obstacles to accessing markets; (8) team management and finally (9) disorganization in the entrepreneurial environment. The study sets recommendations to support early DEs in their journey.

This study highlights the significant implications for aspiring DEs by focusing on some challenges that might face their start-ups such as institutional, technology and local dimensions of context and measures to develop the entrepreneurial and digital competencies. This includes sustainable funding, poor direct guidance and advisory, unexpected failures/risks, and economic obstacles. This study might be considered a road map for the decision-makers to build their strategies for eliminating the main barriers for early DEs and start-ups.

Although recent literature discussed the challenges of entrepreneurs in Jordan, this is the first that identifies early DEs’ challenges and uses 45% samples of the community.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the social entrepreneurship focussed organizations in the context of challenges faced and strategic actions adopted by them during the different stages of self-sustainable business model design and implementation.

The empirical context involves the use of qualitative multi-case-based research methodology for data collection and analysis. The sampling involves undertaking the field study of social entrepreneurship oriented organizations, which have made the perceptible socio-economic difference in the lives of the rural and semi-urban population lying at the base of the pyramid (BoP) in India.

The findings of this study are presented in two complementary stages. The first stage involves presenting the narrative incorporating the emergent themes and key characteristics of the social entrepreneurship focussed organizations based on the field-research based data collection and analysis. The second stage involves mapping the challenges with the strategic actions thereby formulating a challenge-action framework.

The paper strengthens the belief in social entrepreneurship as a viable alternative for creating a market-based ecosystem at the BoP. This paper highlights the conception of social entrepreneurship in terms of challenges and corresponding strategic actions.

The derived challenge-action framework will enable the social entrepreneurs to learn, understand, design and implement a better informed and transparent market-based business models at the BoP resulting in reduced market risks and uncertainty.

The government needs to recognize the social entrepreneurs as partners having a separate legal entity as well as consider their inputs and on-field experiences while framing the policies in favor of the BoP. In addition, the government needs to facilitate the social entrepreneurs in leveraging the government network and institutions for reaching the BoP segment.

This study is an original contribution to the field of social entrepreneurship in number of ways. The first contribution lies in reviewing the research literature from the definition perspective. The second contribution lies in reviewing the research literature to determine the key challenges faced by the social entrepreneurs at the BoP. The third contribution lies in identifying the propositions and conceptualizing the challenge-action framework depicting the challenges faced and strategic actions required by the social entrepreneurs for successful and sustainable social intervention at the BoP.

India has acquired global leadership in renewable energy (RE) deployment because of its commitment to achieve 175 GW of installed capacity by 2022. Entrepreneurship driven by innovation and policy push is essential for energy sector transition. Despite policy focus on the diffusion of RE technology, there are several challenges that plague innovation and RE entrepreneurship development in Gujarat, India. Hence, the purpose of this study is to apply an empirical approach to identify major challenges faced by RE entrepreneurs operating in Gujarat.

An empirical correlational analysis has been taken up to explore individual- and firm-level characteristics of 54 RE entrepreneurs in Gujarat across six districts. Moreover, challenges faced by them related to policy and market have been investigated. Gujarat has been selected as the study area, as it has an installed capacity of 11,000 MW and houses around 11% of the total RE potential of the country.

Major challenges faced by RE entrepreneurs in Gujarat comprise of financial risks, market incumbency, low profitability, uncertainty of demand and lack of skilled labour.

This study offers an empirical grounding to policymakers for fostering an ecosystem of entrepreneurship and innovation specific to RE sector in India and other developing nations.

This study is unique, as previous studies on sustainability-driven entrepreneurship are majorly theoretical and lack empirical foundations. Moreover, there are even lesser quantitative studies exploring challenges to RE entrepreneurship specific to India.

This study aims to delve into the lived experiences, challenges and visions of women entrepreneurs in Jordan, placing a magnifying glass on those spearheading or co-pioneering start-ups. It aims to understand the myriad factors that influence their entrepreneurial journey, from motivation to the future of their niche.

Adopting a qualitative lens, this study is anchored in semi-structured interviews encompassing 20 Jordanian women entrepreneurs. Following this, thematic analysis was deployed to dissect and categorize the garnered insights into ten salient themes.

The study reveals that personal experiences and challenges are pivotal in directing these women towards niche markets, aligning with the theory of planned behaviour (TPB). Tools such as digital instruments, customer feedback and innovative strategies like storytelling and augmented reality are integral to their entrepreneurial success, resonating with the resource-based view (RBV). Additionally, challenges like cultural barriers and infrastructural limitations are navigated through adaptive strategies, reflecting the resilience inherent in these entrepreneurs. Networking, mentorship, embracing technological advancements and implementing sustainable practices are highlighted as crucial elements underpinned by the social identity theory (SIT).

Contrary to the extant body of research, this study provides new insights into the challenges faced by women entrepreneurs in Jordan, highlighting the practical relevance of theories like TPB, RBV and SIT for both policymakers and the start-up community in niche markets.

Exploring the links between resilience, sustainability and entrepreneurship from an indigenous perspective means exploring the historic and socio-cultural context out of which a community originates. From this perspective, informed insight into a community’s ability to adapt and to transform without major structural collapse when confronted with exogenous challenges or crises can be gained. This paper explores the interplay between resilience and entrepreneurship in a New Zealand indigenous setting.

The authors provide a theoretical and case study approach, exploring four intersecting leadership roles, their guiding value system and application at a micro kin family level through a tourism venture and at a macro kin tribal level through an urban land development venture.

The findings demonstrate the importance of historical precedent and socio-cultural values in shaping the leadership matrix that addresses exogenous challenges and crises in an entrepreneurship context.

The research is limited to New Zealand, but the findings have synergies with other indigenous entrepreneurship elsewhere. Further cross-cultural research in this field includes examining the interplay between rights and duties within indigenous communities as contributing facets to indigenous resilience and entrepreneurship.

This research is a contribution to theory and to indigenous community entrepreneurship in demonstrating what values and behaviours are assistive in confronting shocks, crises and challenges. Its originality is in the multi-disciplinary approach, combining economic and social anthropological, indigenous and non-indigenous perspectives. The originality of this paper also includes an analysis of contexts that appear to fall outside contemporary entrepreneurship, but are in fact directly linked.

This chapter explores how challenges potentially encourage refugees to engage in entrepreneurial activities and which adaptive mechanisms they employ in order to overcome the challenges. Semi-structured interviews with 12 refugee entrepreneurs were conducted in order to understand the underlying processes of the dynamics of challenges and adaptive mechanism within which the entrepreneurial outcomes emerged. The empirical findings of the study are evaluated in line with the parameters of the challenge-based model of entrepreneurship. A more nuanced picture of underdog entrepreneurs emerges along with a deeper understanding of the entrepreneurial activities of refugees.

This chapter theoretically examined coronavirus (COVID-19) and entrepreneurship in Africa. Also, the challenges and opportunities of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) innovation were assessed. The researchers adopted a qualitative method to review secondary data, information from previous kinds of literature including pertinent internet sources and working papers. Similarly, the chapter considered an innovative-based perspective of entrepreneurship and explicates the emerging opportunities created by COVID-19. The chapter also analyzed the COVID-19 and its effect on entrepreneurship in Africa by identifying and discussing existing challenges caused by the pandemic. Furthermore, some information about the nature of COVID-19 and its effects in Africa were adequately evaluated. Gleaned evidence from literature revealed that there is a possibility that the unpremeditated damage to entrepreneurship in Africa as caused by the COVID-19 could be persistent. The chapter also showed that the emergence of the COVID-19 has threatened the survival of businesses especially SMEs, thereby increasing the level of unemployment across the African continent and has generated critical challenges for entrepreneurship development. Finally, the chapter will add to the evolving challenges and opportunities of entrepreneurship in Africa. However, entrepreneurs can build on the strengths of innovative activities to develop a survival mindset, develop financial resilience and adjust business archetypes to the realities of COVID-19 and post-COVID-19 era which in the short and long term can accentuate entrepreneurship development within African continent.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate challenges faced by and opportunities open to women entrepreneurs in Botswana and how entrepreneurship education can boost their knowledge and skills of doing business profitably and contribute to women empowerment.

In total, 400 women entrepreneurs of different ages, educational levels and from trades and different geographical locations were selected using a stratified random sampling procedure to participate in the study from ten towns and cities in the country. A structured questionnaire that used a five-point Likert scale was used for data collection. One-way ANOVA, regression analysis and descriptive statistics were used as tools for data analysis.

Findings showed that women entrepreneurs faced a complex web of challenges among which were access to finance, lack of training leading to lack of technical skills, lack of knowledge of sources of financing and technical support, high competition in the market, marginalisation of women and lack of knowledge of marketing strategies. The key findings were that while women entrepreneurs faced a number of challenges, the legal and regulatory environment in Botswana was highly conducive and supportive of women entrepreneurship and also that customised entrepreneurship education and training offered opportunities for women entrepreneurs to enhance their knowledge and technical skills.

The study only used a quantitative approach to collect data. It could have perhaps been more enriching if a mixed-methods approach were used to help probe the participants more. The study also only used women entrepreneurs in cities and towns. Perhaps, it could have also got some women entrepreneurs from rural areas to hear what they say. These limitations will be addressed in future studies.

Practical implications of the study are that women entrepreneurs need more training in business entrepreneurship for them to gain more knowledge and skills; finance houses become more accommodating to women entrepreneurship they could help in the empowerment of these people as they show potential in their businesses; and if more pro-women entrepreneurship policies are developed, they could enhance the activities of women entrepreneurs.

Women can perform as much as men in business if given the necessary support.

This study contributes to the body of knowledge on women entrepreneurship as it helped expose challenges women entrepreneurs face as well as opportunities for them to take advantage of and improve their business operations.

Even though sustainable entrepreneurship has increasingly received researchers’ attention in recent years, the topic remains rather under-researched in natural resources’ rich Gulf countries such as Oman. Hence, this paper aims to fill this gap in the literature and, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, is one of the first attempts to assess the state of sustainable entrepreneurship development in Oman from a multi-stakeholder perspective.

This paper uses a qualitative research approach where in-depth semi-structured interviews were undertaken with 12 respondents representing relevant stakeholders of sustainable entrepreneurship development in Oman. The interviewees included four sustainable entrepreneurs, four policymakers and four educationists representing entrepreneurial skills development institutes in Oman.

This papers’ findings highlight that despite some positive improvements, several critical challenges remain, which hinder sustainable entrepreneurship development. The authors further found the role of FinTech to be critical in this concern by all stakeholders, though its usage and acceptance remain low. Also, the costs associated with the post-carbon (sustainable) economy and different profitability evolution have resulted in a slow change in the policy development in this concern. From an educational (skills development) perspective, a lack of context-specific training programmes and culture-based hesitations appeared to be hindering achieving sustainable entrepreneurship possibilities in Oman. The nascent entrepreneurial ecosystem, bureaucracy and lack of human capital (attraction as well as retention) appeared to be significant challenges for entrepreneurs. Finally, the findings highlighted the need for cross-sector collaboration with clear benchmarks for effective policy development concerning sustainable entrepreneurship in Oman.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper is the first academic study explicitly highlighting the state of sustainable entrepreneurship in Oman by incorporating the development initiatives as well as the major challenges in the analysis. Secondly, this study is also a pioneering work specifying the interlinkage between financing (FinTech), policy initiatives and skills development and the development of a sustainable entrepreneurship ecosystem in an under-researched context of Oman. Finally, the transition to a sustainable economy is challenging in natural resources’ dependent economies like Oman, as it needs to be supported by the mindset change in the larger society (legitimacy). In this concern, this paper, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, is one of the first academic endeavours to also specify the role of legitimacy from the perspective of different stakeholders (and larger society) for sustainable entrepreneurship development in such contexts.

This study aims and tries to identify and examine the effect of the entrepreneurs' challenges factors (i.e. financial, governmental, personal, educational social and cultural, infrastructural, operational, ethical, and Covid-19) on entrepreneurs' business performance in Jordan country as an emerging economy. Further, try to clarify and identify the main critical factors that affect an entrepreneur's business performance.

A quantitative methodology was used by conducting web-based survey questionnaires with 178 useful responses out of 443 entrepreneurs listed in the Chamber of the industry of Jordan, representing a 40.2% response rate. Data were analyzed by using Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) Sofware.

The results of this study confirmed the existence of an inverse relationship between entrepreneurs' challenges and entrepreneurs' business performance. The Covid-19 challenges and governmental challenges were found to be the most affecting on entrepreneurs' business performance, whereby the personal challenges had no impact on entrepreneurs' business performance.

The study provides a clear classification of entrepreneurs' challenges, which can be useful for both researchers and entrepreneurs.

This study developed some recommendations that emphasized the government's role in promoting entrepreneurship and supporting entrepreneurs.

This study attempts to define and clarify the impact of entrepreneurs' challenges on their business performance. In addition, this study can be used to promote entrepreneurship and an innovation-stimulating environment through decision-makers.