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Purpose: Preserving a country’s culture is crucial for its sustainability. Handicraft is a key draw for tourism destinations; it protects any civilisation’s indigenous knowledge and culture by managing the historical, economic, and ecological ecosystems and perfectly aligns with sustainable development. It has a significant role in creating employment, especially in rural regions and is an essential contributor to the export economy, mainly in developing nations. The study focuses on the skills required and existing gaps in the handicraft industry, its development and prospects by considering women and their role in preserving and embodying the traditional art of making handicrafts.

Approach: A framework has been developed for mapping and analysing the skills required in the handicraft sector using econometric modelling; an enormous number of skills have been crowdsourced from the respondents, and machine learning techniques have been used.

Findings: The findings of the study revealed that employment in this area is dependent not only on general or specialised skills but also on complex matrix skills ranging from punctuality to working in unclean and unsafe environments, along with a set of personal qualities, such as taking initiatives and specific skills, for example polishing and colour coding.

Implications: The skills mapping technique utilised in this study is applicable globally, particularly for women indulged in casual work in developing nations’ handicrafts industry. The sustainable development goals, tourism, and handicrafts are all interconnected. The research includes understanding skills mapping, which provides insights into efficient job matching by incorporating preferences and studying the demand side of casual working by women in the handicraft sector from a skills perspective.

Purpose: This chapter investigates the current skill gap in small-scale industries, the need for skill development and digital training in micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSME), and reviews policies for skill development and solutions.

Need for the Study: While the legislature and organisations have initiated various considerations for the successful implementation of the Skill Development System in the country’s MSMEs, there are significant challenges that must be addressed quickly to fill the skill gap in workers in this digital era.

Research Methodology: Secondary data has been used for the chapter review. Analysis has been done based on review data from women handloom and handicraft workers in the micro or craft industry who received a Star rating from the National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC) partners in Lucknow. For data collection, a questionnaire based on random sampling was used. The data were analysed using a rudimentary weighted average and a percentage technique.

Findings: The studies provide answers to some fundamental problems: are small industry employees indeed mobilised to be skilled outside the official schooling system? Is the training delivery mechanism adequate to prepare pupils for employment? Would industries be willing to reduce minimum qualification criteria to foster skill development?

Practical Implication: Non-technical aptitudes digital and soft skills for workers in this sector should be emphasised in MSMEs, and significant reforms in MSME sectors and capacity-building education and training programmes should be implemented in the Indian industry to generate small and medium enterprises production and employment.

Portuguese handicrafts are distinctive artisan products that have been shaped by cultural and historical conditions. The aim of this chapter is to focus on understanding the inherent innovativeness embedded within different handicraft that is made in Portugal. This involves taking a country perspective to handicraft production and the reason why it has continued or revived over time. This involves focusing on the role of entrepreneurs in the handicraft industry and how artisan entrepreneurship can be utilized. Specific examples of Portuguese handicrafts are stated in this chapter that showcase the cultural connections individuals feel. Theoretical and managerial implications are stated that highlight the importance of handicrafts to cultural preservation. Future research suggestions are also stated that stress the need to continue research into Portuguese handicrafts and artisan entrepreneurship.

This research aimed to determine how COVID-19 affected Micro small and medium enterprises’ (MSMEs) participation in sustainable development goals (SDGs) and their adoption of Fin-tech developing nations like India. Involving women in the workforce through microenterprises is crucial to accomplishing the SDGs, and its subsection is focused on decent work and small industries. Data related to knowledge of digital finance was collected using a convenience sample method. Nonetheless, descriptive research was conducted, and although interesting, no definitive findings could be determined. Women entrepreneurs aged between 25 and 35 years provided input into creating this link based on the United Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) concept. Using SMART-PLS, we found a significant relationship between the UTAUT model of sustainable development and the level of Fin-tech literacy among women in low-income households in developing countries like India. However, we also know that MSMEs’ adoption of Fin-tech and SDG is less tightly linked to the UTUAT model. The trend towards online transactions or digital payments and the widespread adoption of digital technology applications are changing the face of the global economy. The COVID-19 period saw the rise of contactless transactions as the primary payment method. Because of this shift in public opinion, small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) have begun implementing Fin-tech for long-term growth. People worldwide use it for transactions and other economic functions. However, there is a scarcity of research incorporating this kind of data from India and the rest of the developing world.

The current chapter is one of the first studies to specifically address the role of civil society organisations (CSOs) for entrepreneurship development in the disadvantaged context of Sierra Leone. It highlights the important role of CSOs in the petty trading (disadvantaged) entrepreneurial ecosystem. Based on qualitative analysis of interviewers undertaken with two CSOs and three entrepreneurial firms from disadvantaged backgrounds, our findings offer interesting insights into this phenomenon. The authors find that in the context of disadvantaged entrepreneurship development, CSOs are seen as more trustworthy by the general population than the government (public bodies). The government, through the national youth commission, also tried to collaborate with CSOs regarding entrepreneurial skills development in disadvantaged entrepreneurs. The findings further reveal that despite the appreciation of the role of CSOs for disadvantaged entrepreneurship development by public authorities in recent years, they still face many bureaucratic hurdles and delays in operations. Finally, our chapter reveals several dynamics associated with skills and competencies development in disadvantaged entrepreneurship in the Sierra Leone-specific context, where skills such as basic business planning, livestock handling, and financial management emerge as being highly useful.

The main objective of this chapter is to explore how the adoption of corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices is associated with firm innovativeness, utilising a rich data survey of 3,500 Greek SMEs. Furthermore, by classifying SMEs into two groups, the high-performing and low-performing in terms of CSR, we explore whether and in which way the application of CSR moderates the relationship between innovation inputs (such as R&D expenditure and R&D collaboration) and innovation output. The findings obtained from the first stage of our analysis suggest that CSR practices drive the innovation process as well as the innovation output of SMEs, supporting thus SDG9. The empirical results obtained from the second stage of analysis indicate that the wide adoption of CSR practices may stand as an alternative way to established and more expensive drivers of innovation output in adverse times when firms lack financial resources especially in crisis-hit economies such as the case of Greece.

This chapter examines the bamboo-based livelihoods of the tribal artisans of Tripura and studies entrepreneurship, through the perspective of innovative small and medium enterprises, as a way to achieve sustainable development. Under a cluster-based approach of the Tripura Bamboo Mission, this chapter intends to understand how tribal entrepreneur’s belief in sustainability motivates them to develop and enhance livelihood opportunities. It is in addressing this basic question of an entrepreneur’s ‘drive’ in achieving sustainable livelihood that the development goals are met.

This chapter addresses the impact of gendered social capital in developing countries to understand the barriers and opportunities to women's entrepreneurship with social capital development and also to examine factors influencing the development of social capital for women and how the identified factors benefit the creation of their entrepreneurial activities. This study follows a systemic literature review to achieve the purpose of the research by examining the selected articles in both English and Turkish, followed by factor comparison between developing, developed countries, and world datasets obtained from Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) database. The finding shows that social capital strongly impacts the entrepreneurial activities among women entrepreneurs in developing countries, especially in Turkey. Although the academic and practical studies on this field were started about two decades ago in Turkey, it has faced a radical increase in last 5 years and many practitioners and scholars working on these concepts. The clusters in English and Turkish resources are almost the same; however, the density and number of key terms are much lower in Turkish literature which shows a gap for Turkish researchers to publish more in this field to examine variables for better view about women entrepreneurship and social capital related to it.