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The purpose of this paper is to provide a brief history of the evolution of the Diana Project and the Diana International Research Conference. The authors examine the impact of the publications, conferences and research contributions and consider key factors in the success of this collaborative research organization. They discuss the ongoing legacy, suggesting ways to extend this into the future.

This paper uses an historical narrative and a citation analysis.

The Diana Project was founded by five women professors in 1999 with the purpose of investigating women’s access to growth capital. Following a series of academic articles, and numerous presentations, the first Diana International Conference was held in Stockholm, Sweden. At this convening, 20 scholars from 13 countries shared their knowledge of women’s entrepreneurship, venture creation and growth, culminating in the first volume of the Diana Book Series. Since then, 14 international conferences have been held, resulting in 10 special issues of top academic journals and 11 books. More than 600 scholars have attended or participated in Diana conferences or publications.

Contributions from the Diana International Conferences’ special issues of journals and books have advanced theory across topics, levels, geographies and methods. Articles emerging from Diana scholars are some of the top contributions about women’s entrepreneurship and gender to the field of entrepreneurship. Future research directions are included.

This analysis demonstrates the success of a unique woman-focused collaborative research initiative and identifies key success factors, suggesting how these might be expanded in the future.

To date, more than 600 scholars have participated in the Diana International Conferences or publications. Diana is the only community dedicated to rigorous and relevant research about gender and women’s entrepreneurship. Going forward, efforts to expand work on education for women’s entrepreneurship, women entrepreneurship faculty and careers, and women entrepreneurs, gender and policy will take place to extend this legacy.

The paper is unique in that it is the first to show the substantial legacy and impact of the Diana project since its inception in 1999. Further, it demonstrates how a feminist approach to entrepreneurial principles can yield insights about this unique research initiative and collaborative organization.

The learning outcomes of this study are as follows:▪ evaluate the difficulties of entry-level women entrepreneurs in the South African farming industry;▪ appreciate the entrepreneurial journey of a women entrepreneur in the farming industry;▪ assess the role of networking and support programmes in prompting women entrepreneurs in South Africa;▪ understand the role of diversification in building a sustainable business in today’s COVID-19-affected economic environment;▪ make an informed decision regarding how COVID-19 had negatively affected the farming industry; and▪ critically evaluate which options are available for women entrepreneurs to overcome the negative effects of COVID-19 and remain sustainable businesses.

In April 2021, managing director and co-owner Beverley-Anne Joseph, was considering the long-term business strategy options for Zelpy, her hop farm business outside George, a town in the Western Cape, South Africa. As the first black woman hop farmer in Africa, she had run a successful business supplying hops to South African Breweries (SAB), a subsidiary of the global conglomerate Anheuser-Busch InBev (AB InBev). To date, her hop farming business had not been impacted by the South African Government’s COVID-19 lockdowns that impacted the sale of alcoholic beverages. However, it had given her a wake-up call as to the risk of having most of her eggs in one basket. She now had to consider how to diversify her farming business to minimise risk.

MBA, Masters in Management, Postgraduate Diploma in Business and Executive Education short courses.

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

CSS 3: Entrepreneurship.

Research on entrepreneurship has documented differences in male and female entrepreneurs' growth ambitions. It has sometimes been criticized for disregarding important questions and contributions and for favoring a purely economic perspective. This includes a tendency to compare female entrepreneurs with a male norm. In this article, the authors, therefore, apply a more constructive approach and ask how and why entrepreneurial strategies are gendered. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

By analysing six cases, three female- and three male-dominated companies, the authors examined how men and women do business. The authors based the analysis on Miles and Snow's typology on product and market strategy and at the same time expanded it.

The findings substantiated that women and men have similar qualities as entrepreneurs, but women's ambitions and values tend to be different to those espoused by men. This influences their growth strategies. The Miles and Snow typology was adjusted to encompass different growth strategies; staying small or expanding. The article discusses the implications of these findings for regional development and sustainability.

The research design in this article does not necessarily allow the authors to grasp the internal workings of a typical small- or medium-sized business. Neither does it provide generalizable information. Instead, the authors chose to focus on highly gendered sectors of industry to identify potential gender differences.

This article contributes to theory on the motivation for entrepreneurship and to research on growth strategies. It also contributes to the literature on Miles and Snow's typology questioning the taken-for-granted goal of growth in economic theories and raising the question of advantages of the choice of staying small. The authors direct the focus to perspectives of embeddedness and intersectionality as a direction for future research.

COVID-19 pandemic triggered unexpected crises, which were beyond the imaginations of a common man. It changed the order of routine life and the business world. In this challenging condition, the survival of the small business was at high risk. Following experiential learning theory, the purpose of this paper is to explore women's entrepreneurial learning obtained during the COVID-19 pandemic, the challenges experienced by them and strategies undertaken to transform businesses.

To explore Pakistani women entrepreneurs' lived experiences and learning during the COVID-19, researchers used a qualitative interview design. The interviewees reported their experiences about the effects of COVID-19 on their business and entrepreneurial learning from such a crisis.

The findings of the study indicate new fractions of knowledge from the novel learning of the female entrepreneurs throughout the experience of the COVID-19. The transformation from manual business dealings and financial transactions to virtual dealing and the online transaction was the addition of novel learning. Furthermore, the analysis provides insights into the challenges experienced by women entrepreneurs, strategies undertaken and lessons learned from COVID-19. The life lessons learned showed the importance of technical skills and their business operations during the crisis.

This study is very specific in its context and limitations of this study offers new avenue for research to extend study in different perspectives. First, interviews were conducted from women entrepreneurs running businesses in sub-urban cities of Pakistan, where study can be extended to include both male and female in a comparative study which can expose new dimensions. Second, this study is conducted in the sub-urban areas of the Sindh province of Pakistan, which can be extended to other areas of the country because Pakistan is multicultural and multilingual, which offer different gender specific factors for entrepreneurial activities in general terms but in case of the Covid-19 situation, there exists great variations and social stratifications. Third, this study can be extended to other developing or developed countries or comparative study can provide a new flavor of knowledge.

The study's finding offers few implications for the entrepreneurs, societies and government at large. Although the pandemic crisis has had devastating effects on health and lifestyle activities, there is always a ray of coming to innovative approaches to fulfill the entrepreneurial desires and serve the community. Thus, entrepreneurs are encouraged to contribute to the economy as a part of society through their sustainable products and services for the greater good. There is also a need for some social policies to find entrepreneurial ways to deal with the COVID-19 crisis that integrates value co-creation for society (Ratten, 2020b). Government and society should also intervene and play their role to encourage women entrepreneurs to feel a sense of empowerment, contribute to family income, alleviate poverty, create jobs and help in economic growth.

This study's unique contribution and origin are to explore the COVID-19-related entrepreneurial learning experiences of women entrepreneurs in a developing country (Pakistan). Moreover, this study theoretically contributes to the development of experiential learning theory by expanding its insights during COVID-19.

To examine the availability and quality of clinical guidelines on perioperative diabetes care in hospital units before and after a randomised clinical trial (RCT) and international accreditation.

Interventional “before‐after” study in 51 units (38 surgical and 13 anaesthetic) in nine hospitals participating in a RCT in the greater Copenhagen area; 27 of the units also underwent international accreditation.

The proportion of units with guidelines increased from 24/51 (47 percent) units before to 38/51 (75 percent) units after the trial. Among the 27 units without guidelines before the trial, significantly more accredited units compared to non‐accredited units had a guideline after the trial (9/10 (90 percent) compared to 5/17 (29 percent). The quality of the systematic development scale and the clinical scales improved significantly after the trial in both accredited units (both p<0.001) and in non‐accredited units (both p<0.02). The improvement of the systematic development scale was significantly higher in accredited than in non‐accredited units (p<0.01).

The combination of conducting both the DIPOM Trial and international accreditation led to a significant improvement of both dissemination and quality of guidelines on perioperative diabetic care.