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Sociological studies of entrepreneurship focus on social and technical innovations in business. Using an illustration from molecular plant biology and the historical evolution of the term “entrepreneur,” I make a case for the theoretical and methodological importance of studying entrepreneurs and their ventures outside the scope of traditional business. Then, considering the scientific lab as a self-consciously entrepreneurial venture, I use the population of molecular biology labs studying the plant Arabidopsis thaliana to demonstrate a relationship less directly measurable among start-ups in business: diverse sources of funding accompany original activities and ideas within a venture. This is not, however, what predicts lab success. Lab size drives success, but hinders originality. Moreover, I show that established institutions in science are usually the ones that become innovations in business.

University rankings and metrics have become an increasingly prominent basis of student decisions, generalized university reputation, and the resources university’s attract. We review the history of metrics in higher education and scholarship about the influence of ranking on the position and strategic behavior of universities and students. Most quantitative analyses on this topic estimate the influence of change in university rank on performance. These studies consistently identify a small, short-lived influence of rank shift on selectivity (e.g., one rank position corresponds to ≤1% more student applicants), comparable to ranking effects documented in other domains. This understates the larger system-level impact of metrification on universities, students, and the professions that surround them. We explore one system-level transformation likely influenced by the rise of rankings. Recent years have witnessed the rise of enrollment management and independent educational consultation. We illustrate a plausible pathway from ranking to this transformation: In an effort to improve rankings, universities solicit more applications from students to reduce their acceptance rate. Lower acceptance rates lead to more uncertainty for students about acceptance, leading them to apply to more schools, which decreases the probability that accepted students will attend. This leads to greater uncertainty about enrollment for students and universities and generates demand for new services to manage it. Because these and other system-level transformations are not as cleanly measured as rank position and performance, they have not received the same treatment or modeling attention in higher education scholarship, despite their importance for understanding and influencing education policy.

In recent decades, it has become clear that the major economic, political, and social problems in the world require contemporary development research to examine intersections of race and class in the global economy. Theorists in the Black Radical Tradition (BRT) were the first to develop and advance a powerful research agenda that integrated race–class analyses of capitalist development. However, over time, progressive waves of research streams in development studies have successively stripped these concepts from their analyses. Post-1950s, class analyses of development overlapped with some important features of the BRT, but removed race. Post-1990s, ethnicity-based analyses of development excised both race and class. In this chapter, I discuss what we learn about capitalist development using the integrated race–class analyses of the BRT, and how jettisoning these concepts weakens our understanding of the political economy of development. To remedy our current knowledge gaps, I call for applying insights of the BRT to our analyses of the development trajectories of nations.

This chapter examines relationships between gender equity and environmental concerns as expressed through two different views of ecofeminism, those of a natural scientist and a social scientist. Personal experiences are recorded and analyzed to show similarities and differences in life and career trajectories, in part influenced by ecofeminist thought. In tracing this impact, we observed that much of the current philosophical and social science framework is less applicable to a natural science perspective. Natural systems repeat and nest at varieties of scales; thus the connectivity within any system parallels, reflects, mirrors the connectivity of other systems. These parallel systems can be nested in fractal-like natural worlds, where connections within are reflected between, and the patterns of the system are replicated in each. Thus, when we look across the range of interconnected systems, the axes are not intersecting at all, but simply reflective parallels. Such may be the case with the axes of oppression emphasized by many ecofeminists. We thus propose an extension to ecofeminist thinking – the notion of system reflectivity that encompasses, but is broader than, the idea of simultaneously operating axes of oppression.

Business plan writing seems the panacea to gain stakeholder legitimacy and financial backing. Our chapter explores the contributions and disconnections between business plan writing and the start-up process for incubated technology entrepreneurs. The study is set in the South East Enterprise Platform Programme (SEEPP), an incubator programme for technology graduate entrepreneurs in the South East of Ireland. Using a purposive sample of technology entrepreneurs in start-up mode, we took a qualitative approach consisting of content analysis of 40 business plans and in-depth interviews with 25 technology entrepreneurs. Our research found that writing a detailed business plan constrains the technology entrepreneur’s natural penchant for action, compelling them to focus on business plan writing rather than enactment. Technology entrepreneurs favour a market-led rather than funding-led operational level document to plan, and learn from, near-term activities using milestones.