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In contrast to the predictions from the family business and the small- and medium-sized enterprise internationalization literatures, Hidden Champions are world-market leaders exhibiting a high share of exports. The purpose of this study is to analyze their strategy of internationalization of Hidden Champions in Germany and find that the international success and strong, sustained performance emanates from their product type, enabling to successfully pursue a niche strategy for differentiated premium products.

The authors first conceptually explore how Hidden Champions pursue strategic internationalization, and then analyze a sample of N = 2,690 Hidden Champions to examine why Germany has been able to generate the highest per capita share of Hidden Champions in the world.

The study finds that on both a micro and macro level, the strong and sustained performance of Hidden Champions is driven by product type and quality strategies. Niche strategies for a knowledge-intensive, technological product enable the firm to lock-in customers. However, to safeguard the internalization of highly specific quasi-rents, Hidden Champions enter foreign markets through fully owned subsidiaries, retaining control and residual property rights. The second finding of this paper is that Germany has succeeded in deploying its high level of human capital into the Mittelstand through highly skilled workers.

Unfortunately, no micro-level panel data are available. Still macro-level data beginning in the nineteenth century provide strong empirical support for the hypothesized causality.

This is the first paper to link the strong and sustained export performance of Germany to the Hidden Champions by examining the origins of the German Mittelstand model, dating back to the social, political and economic developments of nineteenth century.

We study the implications of ownership and its induced incentives on firm survival on the stock market for young and high‐tech firms. Using a unique data set of all 341 firms listed on the Neuer Markt, the German equivalent of the NASDAQ, our results differ from studies on more traditional firms. Ownership by CEOs has no influence on firm survival when introducing measurements of human capital and intellectual property rights. This confirms assumptions that firms in the knowledge based industries differ in their governance structure from traditional firms.

The purpose of this paper is to improve understanding of how different aspects of the national institutional environment may influence the extent of innovative entrepreneurial activities across countries. Several institutional and conductive factors affecting a country’s capacity to support innovative entrepreneurship are explored.

Institutional theory is used to examine the national regulatory, normative, cognitive and conducive aspects that measure a country’s ability to support innovative entrepreneurship. A cross-national institutional profile is constructed to validate an entrepreneurial innovation model. The impacts of country-level national institutions on innovative entrepreneurial activity as measured by Global Entrepreneurship Monitor data are assessed through structural equation modeling.

Knowledge about the influence of specific institutional aspects on innovative entrepreneurship, and hence of institutional structures within and across countries, is enhanced. For new innovative enterprises, conductive and regulatory aspects seem to matter most. All conductive factors have a significant and positive impact on entrepreneurial activity rates.

Results could support policy makers and practitioners in evaluating government policies’ effects on innovative entrepreneurship. Interventions should target both individual attributes and context. Future research could include longitudinal designs to measure the direction of causality.

Aspects such as regulatory institutions, and conductive factors such as information communication technology use and technology adoption, are important for innovation entrepreneurship development.

The literature on institutional theory and innovative entrepreneurship is highly limited. This study complements growing interest in empirical analysis of the effects of national institutions on innovative entrepreneurial activities and substantiates previous empirical work.

The following bibliography focuses mainly on programs which can run on IBM microcomputers and compatibles under the operating system PC DOS/MS DOS, and which can be used in online information and documentation work. They fall into the following categories:

City branding has gained popularity as governance strategy. However, the academic underpinning is still poor, and city branding needs a more critical conceptualization, as well as more complex management systems. This paper challenges the use of a “one size fits all” city brand, which is still common practice in many places. The paper proposes that city branding involves much more complexity than is commonly thought and outlines a strategy that enables urban policy-makers, marketing researchers and (place) marketers alike to better deal with city branding.

The authors integrate insights from literature on place branding, brand architecture and customer-focused marketing.

The article argues that place brands (in general and communicated place brands in particular) are by definition very complex, due to their different target groups, diverse place offerings and various associations place customers could have. Thus, an advanced brand management including target group-specific sub-brands is needed.

The model will be helpful for place brand managers dealing with a diverse target audience, and is likely to improve the target group-specific communication.

The paper provides an insight into the complexity of city brands and acknowledges that the perception of city brands can differ considerably among different target groups. Additionally, it offers a more comprehensive definition of place brands. This will be helpful for city brand managers and researchers alike in dealing with city brand complexity.

While Gutenberg's invention is likely to endure for some time, it is indisputable that the prominence of print is diminishing. The recently published Mellon report University Libraries and Scholarly Communication highlights the symbiosis between the humanities and the print medium. It maintains that electronic media will ultimately change the nature of the humanities and spawn a new kind of discourse with fundamentally different features. The report asserts that the shift from print to electronic media, which began in the late twentieth century, will have widespread consequences on the intellectual experience of modern society, reaching beyond print and libraries.

This paper deals with the importance of residents within place branding. The aim of this paper is to examine the different roles that residents play in the formation and communication of place brands and explores the implications for place brand management.

The paper is based on theoretical insights drawn from the combination of the distinct literatures on place branding, general marketing, tourism, human geography, and collaborative governance. To support its arguments, the paper discusses the participation of citizens in governance processes as highlighted in the urban governance literature as well as the debate among marketing scholars over participatory marketing and branding.

The paper arrive at three different roles played by the residents: as an integral part of the place brand through their characteristics and behavior; as ambassadors for their place brand who grant credibility to any communicated message; and as citizens and voters who are vital for the political legitimization of place branding. These three roles make the residents a very significant target group of place branding.

Residents are largely neglected by place branding practice and their priorities are often misunderstood, even though they are not passive beneficiaries but are active partners and co‐producers of public goods, services and policies. This paper highlights that only meaningful participation and consultation can produce a more effective and sustainable place branding strengthening the brand communication and avoiding the pitfall of developing “artificial” place brands.

This paper seeks to use branding literature to understand the rise and fall of GM's brands.

The approach takes the form of presenting a case analysis using secondary sources covering GM's brands and products, managerial leadership, and market and financial performance throughout its 100‐year history.

During much of its first 50 years, GM was led by engineers who pioneered professional brand management, and through intelligent allocation of resources created one of the world's strongest portfolio of brands. Government anti‐trust hearings shifted GM to a cost‐cutting orientation during its second 50 years that had a negative impact on the GM brands and brought the current financial problems.

This is a case study of only one firm, but parallels are drawn with other firms that have had similar brand issues.

Firms with multiple brands need top management leadership to ensure that each brand has a unique mission with minimal overlap and adequate resources for product development, innovation, and communications to achieve its mission. If the mission or resources disappear, non‐core brands need to be terminated. Governments that wish to support well managed firms with strong brands need to be careful in using anti‐trust actions, and should not force firms to make products that are not desired by customers.

The paper takes a novel approach to evaluating the current state of General Motors by examining the factors that led to chronic mismanagement of its brands, which in turn has reduced brand equity, market share, and profits, and that have magnified GM's problems with labor and legacy costs, productivity, and product mix.