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The purpose of this research was to investigate using the seminal writings of Schumpeter and Kirzner as a guide – individuals who are potentially involved in entrepreneurship can be identified as being innovators or opportunity‐alert. Specifically, this exploratory project attempts to answer the following question: “Are some individuals better at being innovators, while others are better able to recognize entrepreneurial opportunities and, if so, does academic‐career training matter?”

The study relied on purposive sampling and received survey responses from postgraduate students in business and engineering. The 26‐item survey was made up of demographic indices and questions from the Schumpeter and Kirzner literature. A total of 242 business and 525 engineering students received the e‐mail from academic advisors. Usable responses were received from 36 business students (15 percent response rate) and 67 engineering students (13 percent response rate).

The research found evidence that individuals with engineering training were not as proficient at recognizing opportunities as their business‐trained contemporaries.

This is an exploratory research project which acknowledges the associated limitations. As well as contributing to a deeper understanding of two core entrepreneurship topics these findings have pedagogical and practitioner implications. From a pedagogy vantage point, instructors will be better equipped to frame courses in entrepreneurship if they better understand the propensity of their audience. The results indicate that this is particularly relevant to engineering schools. In practitioner terms, funding groups and various supporters of entrepreneurs (business angels, family financiers, and the like) will be better able to understand and work with individuals if they are aware that they are not, for example, alert to new opportunities.

This paper contributes to a deeper understanding of innovation and opportunity alertness.

The purpose of this exploratory research was to investigate whether: entrepreneurship in the higher education context can be distinguished by disciplined‐based needs; and curricula can be developed around these needs.

The authors reviewed the literature related to the development of professions in order to establish a sound theoretical base to distinguish disciplines that require stringent criteria, and which potentially would challenge the introduction of a more flexible curriculum that includes contemporary concepts such as entrepreneurship. The research then focused on two other groups of disciplines which lead to entrepreneurial opportunities with distinct needs in (principally) people management and intellectual property law. This discussion was couched in the occupational motivation literature. Semi‐structured interviews (n=31) were conducted with individuals randomly selected from three groups associated with an American Land Grant Research University. Additional survey data were collected from 58 respondents.

The research found support for the categorization of disciplines into the framework of profession‐, industry‐, or invention‐based entrepreneurial ventures.

Although this is an exploratory investigation, the framework sets out clear pathways through the entrepreneurial processes and has crucial implications for a variety of stakeholders. For example: curriculum designers will be better able to understand and address the demands and vagaries of multiple disciplines; critical assumptions (that often plague those involved with technology transfer) will be able to be addressed prior to or in the early stage of the commercialization process because inventors will be better informed and prepared; equity stakeholder negotiations (particularly those that involve government‐operated institutions) will be more realistic as both parties, over time, become increasingly “market‐savvy”; and students (tomorrow's entrepreneurs) will be better able to plan for an entrepreneurially‐focused career.

Given the nature of entrepreneurship, a domain-specific self-efficacy scale should pertain to venture creation, be unidimensional, and be developed and validated using nascent entrepreneurs – persons for whom self-efficacy may be most important. Extant measures employed in entrepreneurship research do not meet all these criteria. The purpose of this paper is to develop and validate a unidimensional entrepreneurial self-efficacy (ESE) scale based on samples of nascent entrepreneurs.

Data from a sample of nascent entrepreneurs and items from PSED I were used to develop and assess the validity of a new ESE scale. To further establish scale validity, a comparison group from PSED I along with a sample of nascent entrepreneurs from PSED II were employed.

A unidimensional three-item self-efficacy scale for assessing a person’s belief that s/he can create a new business successfully is developed and validated using samples of nascent entrepreneurs and a control group.

The scale offers opportunity to enhance research-based assessment using a parsimonious, reliable, and valid unidimensional measure of ESE. The scale may enhance future research findings, as well as promoting reconsideration of past research findings, on many issues in the entrepreneurship literature.

This research uses a sample of nascent entrepreneurs to provide a new three-item scale for assessment of ESE that is parsimonious, valid, and unidimensional.

This chapter reports on findings from a study that explored the experiences of African American young men who graduated from Du Bois Academy, an all-boys public charter secondary school in the Midwestern region of the United States. The chapter considers issues of African American male persistence and achievement and how they are impacted by school culture. Specifically, the author discusses how school culture can help shape these students’ educational experiences and aspirations. Using student narratives as the guide, a description of how Du Bois Academy successfully engaged these African American male students is provided. The students articulated three critical components of school culture that positively shaped their high achievement and engagement: (a) sense of self, (b) promotion of excellence, and (c) community building. The student narratives provided a frame for promoting positive school culture that enhances the educational experiences and academic aspirations of African American male students.

This research furthers our understanding of the interaction between the fields of entrepreneurship and family business. It presents a framework that introduces the family dynamic to Timmons’ driving forces model of entrepreneurship. The framework highlights the influence of the family in the entrepreneurship process and the importance of the fit among the three driving forces and the family. It highlights the importance of, and the pivotal roles played by, outside boards of directors when entrepreneurial activities are undertaken by family businesses. Using extracts from interviews with family and non‐family executives and board members, the research employs a single case study that describes an actual series of events to provide a practical application of the theory.

This chapter outlines the extent to which the traditional characteristics of masculinity in sport – initially played out in sports stadia and the traditional media in the late nineteenth and throughout most of the twentieth century – are now also a feature of social media and digital technology platforms in the twenty-first century. At the outset, this chapter discusses the historical association between masculinity and sporting competition and how this has played an important role in presenting a normative heterosexual identity among players, fans, and the traditional media. The chapter then discusses the introduction of social media and digital technology platforms and the impact this history is having in these rapidly consumed spaces, with a particular focus on language, such as hate speech.

This chapter examines and discusses a myriad of literature from inside and outside of academia that explores masculinity, sport, and the internet. These discussions are backgrounded within a historical context and connected to contemporary examples.

Social media and digital technology platforms have provided opportunities for athletes, the media, and fans, to engage in more of an active debate on masculinity in sport than existed in the twentieth century. However, the chapter also addresses the traditional characteristics of masculinity that remain in the culture of sport and in online environments, especially surrounding hate speech.

This chapter, while engaging in an emerging topic of discussion, offers important recommendations for future research and the ways in which this can be methodologically carried out on the internet on a variety of topic areas surrounding masculinity in sport from a sociological perspective.

Extending research on cultural differences in aesthetic appreciation, the purpose of this paper is to show how a more interdependent self-construal, a cultural and individual difference variable related to one’s social self, impacts the influence of visual harmony on consumer evaluations of marketing artifacts’ attractiveness.

Data were obtained via three studies from a total of 1,498 consumers in Australia, Brazil, China, France, Germany, and Italy. Marketing visuals included the design of products, packages, typefaces, and logos. Self-construal was both measured and manipulated.

The results indicate that a person’s self-construal moderates the effect of visual harmony on attractiveness. Specifically, the positive effect of visual harmony on attractiveness – through self-congruity – is more pronounced with consumers possessing a more interdependent self-construal, and with products that are more hedonic than utilitarian.

Given the pivotal role attractiveness has in influencing consumer behavior, understanding what differences, at the individual and cultural levels, impact the harmony-attractiveness relationship helps marketers to better match the visual design of marketing stimuli to target audiences.

This study is among the first to show how the social-self impacts consumer response to marketing visuals. Further, value stems from adopting a holistic perspective on design, clarifying the process mechanism, and identifying boundary conditions.