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This paper aims to examine employee-driven innovation (EDI) intertwined with learning, creating a new description combining these two concepts: employee-driven learning and innovation (EDLI). This paper provides insights into the nature of EDLI based on the existing theories and perspectives. It seeks to elaborate EDLI as an ongoing process in and through work.

The paper draws on Jaakkola’s (2020) guidance for structuring a conceptual article. The authors first describe the theoretical starting points related to EDI and then elaborate its relationship with learning at work, with the aim of structuring the key elements involved, drawing on and interpreting existing theory and knowledge.

In summary, advanced here are five premises for describing EDLI at work: (1) EDI and workplace learning are strongly intertwined phenomena, (2) learning in the EDI process occurs simultaneously at the intra-personal and inter-personal levels as a reciprocal process of adaptive and innovative learning, (3) innovations are only manifested in and are relevant to the specific cultural-historical and social context of particular enterprises, (4) the continuity of innovations and learning processes is enabled by participation and (5) triggers from outside the workplace, behind the innovation and the specific consequences (that transcend workplace boundaries) of the innovation anchor aspects of the process outside the workplace or work practice.

The paper advances a description and justification of EDLI. As such, it extends, connects and updates previously established theoretical models and explanations of this about EDIs. Based on the premises advanced here, the theoretical and practical contributions are discussed and the research gaps and needs for further research identified.

Sustainable business model innovation (SBMI) is a change in the way a firm operates in order to create positive impacts or to reduce negative consequences for the environment and the society. The aim of this paper is to explain what pathways a firm can take when it implements a sustainable business innovation process in line with Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

The article starts with the analysis of the existing literature about BMI and SBMI in order to extrapolate the main elements of these topics.

Thanks to the combined information from academic and nonacademic sources, the study proposes a new framework. It is divided into three sectors: value proposition, value capture delivery and value capture according to the main studies about the business model.

Regarding theoretical implications, this study contributes to developing a theory of both BMI and sustainable innovation. Indeed it helps in the understanding of the dynamic vision about how the business model changes in order to incorporate triple sustainability.

From a practical view, the paper can serve as a guideline for corporate reorganization.

The new framework differs from some recent academic efforts first of all for its theoretical characteristics: BMI construct and not business model concept is the core of the framework. The business model represents the subject of innovation, not its vehicle. Another unique aspect that can be derived from the approach adopted is that it links theoretical with practical sources.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between an individual's social capital context and entrepreneurship using a multi-level modelling framework.

This paper uses data from 87,007 individual level observations across 428 regions in 37 countries. The data comes from the 2010 and 2016 Life in Transition Surveys. The paper uses a principal component analysis to identify the different dimensions of an individual's social capital context. Subsequently, a multi-level model is employed examining the relationship between the components of an individual's social capital context and entrepreneurship (which is proxied by an individual's attempt to set up a business), whilst controlling for both country and regional effects.

Greater levels of networking, informal connections and tolerance of others have a significant positive relationship with entrepreneurial activity. Trust of institutions and others have a negative relationship with entrepreneurial activity. Regional and country differences are also important for entrepreneurship, demonstrating the importance of the multi-level and social contextual environment for business development.

Firstly, the authors present a broad, but comprehensive social contextual framework incorporating many measures of social capital when examining the importance of social capital for business development. Secondly, the work provides interesting results on the “bright and dark sides of trust” for entrepreneurship, answering calls for improved understandings on the positive and negative relationships between social capital and entrepreneurial activity. Thirdly, the paper extends the burgeoning but limited number of studies that examine the multi-level contextual environment of entrepreneurial activities.

This study aims at exploring how small and medium enterprises (SMEs) can implement a more open and co-creational business model by actively collaborating with startups.

Because of the novelty of the SME–startup collaboration phenomenon and to the depth of the investigation required to grasp the mechanisms and logic of an open and co-creational business model, a single-case study has been performed related to investigating a collaboration between an SME and a startup.

The authors provide detailed empirical evidence on how SMEs may structure a “systematic” approach to design and execute an open business model enabled by startup collaboration. Moreover, this study suggests that the business model innovation process represents a necessary forerunner of an open business model. Finally, the authors contend that research on open business models should entail a broader perspective beyond the innovation process, to include business model validation through testing approaches like the lean startup.

This study takes as the locus of investigation the original perspective of the external partner of a focal firm willing to innovate. This study offers a unique contribution because, to date, few studies adopted such view within a relevant and under-remarked empirical setting linking SMEs and innovative startups.

Business models are increasingly recognized as a concept to support innovation in organizations. The implementation and operation of a new or altered business model involves the (re-)design of an organization's business processes and their successful execution. This study reviews and synthesizes the existing body of literature to guide organizations in systematically moving from a business model design to the implementation and operation of the business model through their underlying business processes.

A systematic literature review of the methods that bridge business models and business processes is performed. The selected 34 studies are classified according to the method's characteristics and the support in the design, implementation and operation of business models.

The results of the systematic review provide an overview of existing methods that organizations can adopt when moving from business model design into the implementation and operation of their business model using processes.

This work provides a comprehensive overview and detailed insight into the existing methods that align business models and business processes. It increases the understanding on how these two concepts can be synthesized to support more effective digital innovation in organizations. Based on the review results, knowledge gaps are identified and an agenda for future research bridging the fields of business models and business processes is proposed.

The form and content of relationship value dominates the literature. This paper contributes by studying companies’ actions based on their value perceptions, a field which has attracted less attention. Scholars advocate more studies on how companies’ value perceptions shape actions in relationships and how this leads to outcomes.

A longitudinal critical case study of a customer/supplier relationship constitutes the empirical basis of the paper. Interviews and observation studies were conducted over a period of three years, giving access to special insight into the actors’ value perceptions and related actions.

Value perceptions shape actions performed individually, jointly or in the wider network. Moreover, misperceptions of the counterparty’s value perceptions may result in a maelstrom of interactions with no specific value outcome. Acting based on value perceptions is a complex matter due to its evolving nature, which leads to development becoming a value driver.

The interdependencies between different value perceptions and their relational value drivers have special effects on actions and outcomes, also, value in actions needs to be studied.

Management needs to explore value from different perspectives to understand the counterparty’s value perceptions and communicate own perceptions. It is not sufficient to create value based on one value driver. Instead, it is vital to be able to connect value drivers to balance and prioritise relevant actions.

This paper stands out as one of the first contributions to relationship value literature that addresses and analyses value from both a customer perspective and a supplier perspective in a dyadic business relationship.

The food industry is a well-established and complex industry. New entrants attempting to penetrate it via the commercialization of a new technological innovation could face high uncertainty and constraints. The capability to innovate through collaboration and to identify suitable strategies and innovative business models (BMs) can be particularly important for bringing a technological innovation to this market. However, although the potential for these capabilities has been advocated, we still lack a complete understanding of how new ventures could support the technology commercialization process via the development of BMs. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

To address this gap, this paper builds a conceptual framework that knits together the different bodies of extant literature (i.e. entrepreneurship, strategy and innovation) to analyze the BM innovation processes associated with the exploitation of emerging technologies; determines the suitability of the framework using data from the exploratory case study of IT IS 3D – a firm which has started to exploit 3D printing in the food industry; and improves the initial conceptual framework with the findings that emerged in the case study.

From this analysis it emerged that: companies could use more than one BM at a time; hence, BM innovation processes could co-exist and be run in parallel; the facing of high uncertainty might lead firms to choose a closed and/or a familiar BM, while explorative strategies could be pursued with open BMs; significant changes in strategies during the technology commercialization process are not necessarily reflected in a radical change in the BM; and firms could deliberately adopt interim strategies and BMs as means to identify the more suitable ones to reach the market.

This case study illustrates how firms could innovate the processes of their BM development to face the uncertainties linked with the entry into a mature and highly conservative industry (food).

This paper aims at proposing knowledge translation as an element of business model design that can support entrepreneurs in achieving alignment and collaboration between entrepreneurial teams and external stakeholders.

The conceptual model presented in the paper is developed from the literature review and draws mainly on two streams of work as follows: first, the contributions related to the lean start-up methodology initially developed by Blank and Ries and second, the work of Osterwalder and Pigneur on business models and its subsequent developments. In addition, we draw on key insights from the entrepreneurship and organizational learning literature, such as discovery-driven planning and disciplined entrepreneurship.

The continuous validation framework (CVF) is introduced, posing the attention on underlining knowledge-translation mechanisms to decode complex concepts related to new venture creation.

The authors propose a new framework (the CVF) as an effective translational tool because it is a visual diagram that allows entrepreneurs to translate complex and technical ideas into a format that is more understandable for external audiences. Additionally, for each step of the CVF, specific translational mechanisms are defined and discussed, as each stage of the CVF presents specific translational challenges that result in outcomes that differ from stage to stage.

This article aims to explore the potential of feminist phenomenology as a conceptual framework for advancing women’s entrepreneurship research and the suitability of interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) to the proposed framework.

The article critically examines the current state of women’s entrepreneurship research regarding the institutional context and highlights the benefits of a shift towards feminist phenomenology.

The prevailing disembodied and gender-neutral portrayal of entrepreneurship has resulted in an equivocal understanding of women’s entrepreneurship and perpetuated a male-biased discourse within research and practice. By adopting a feminist phenomenological approach, this article argues for the importance of considering the ontological dimensions of lived experiences of situatedness, intersubjectivity, intentionality and temporality in analysing women entrepreneurs’ agency within gendered institutional contexts. It also demonstrates that feminist phenomenology could broaden the current scope of IPA regarding the embodied dimension of language.

The adoption of feminist phenomenology and IPA presents new avenues for research that go beyond the traditional cognitive approach in entrepreneurship, contributing to theory and practice. The proposed conceptual framework also has some limitations that provide opportunities for future research, such as a phenomenological intersectional approach and arts-based methods.

The article contributes to a new research agenda in women’s entrepreneurship research by offering a feminist phenomenological framework that focuses on the embodied dimension of entrepreneurship through the integration of IPA and conceptual metaphor theory (CMT).

Studies of entrepreneurial intentions (EIs) have become increasingly common, informed usually by Ajzen’s (1991) theory of planned behaviour (TPB). Although the TPB postulates that beliefs determine EIs, the contents of the beliefs have not been properly studied, leaving EIs’ cognitive underpinnings and cognitive approaches to influencing EIs unclear. To clarify the TPB/EI-belief nexus, the study examines the conceptual background of entrepreneurial cognitions and elicits the beliefs of a group of nascent micro entrepreneurs (NMEs) to compare them with their TPB attitudes and EIs, facilitating assessing their mutual consistency as implied by the TBP.

The respondents are entrepreneurial novice clients of a micro business advisory organisation. Their TPB attitudes and EIs were measured using standard TPB/EI methods. Comparative causal mapping (CCM) combined with semi-structured interviewing was used to reveal the NMEs’ typical belief systems, presented as aggregated cause maps.

The NMEs have uniform, relatively detailed belief systems about entrepreneurship and micro business. The belief systems are consistent with theory- and context-based expectations and logically aligned with the NMEs’ expressed TPB attitudes and EIs. CCM provides an accessible method for studying contents of entrepreneurial cognitions.

It was not possible to study “entrepreneurship-negative” respondents or the intensity or origins of some specific beliefs.

Diagnosing and better understanding beliefs can benefit entrepreneurship education and development, in general or connected with TPB/EI studies.

The study reveals entrepreneurial belief systems systematically, evidently not done before generally or in terms of “everyday” micro entrepreneurship or TPB. It clarifies and supports the TPB notion that beliefs underpin actors’ attitudes and intentions.