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Research on entrepreneurial ecosystems has advanced over recent years and has become a popular topic. Despite the interest, previous work has focused on entrepreneurial ecosystems in large cities in the United States. Ecosystems in small cities, underpopulated rural areas, university towns and outside the USA have not been considered much. This paper begins to address this deficit by reviewing three groups of literature.

From the review, the paper builds a conceptual framework to consider entrepreneurial ecosystems led by universities. After summarizing the literature on entrepreneurial ecosystems, entrepreneurial universities and entrepreneurship education, the paper suggests a conceptual framework outlying the structure, components and mechanisms that enable universities to operate as catalysts in the creation of entrepreneurial ecosystems.

It is evident that on many of the “ingredients” of a successful entrepreneurial ecosystem, a resource-constrained environment would have many gaps. Building an entrepreneurship ecosystem in such contexts would be inherently challenging. The model presented suggests that the presence of a university in such locations should enhance the prospects of progress but that the nature of the university itself would impact any outcomes. Universities that make concerted efforts to be entrepreneurial and that have entrepreneurship programmes have strategies available to them that can enhance entrepreneurship ecosystems over time.

The contribution of this paper is to show “how” a university and its entrepreneurship programme can operationally address deficits in a local ecosystem and how it might bring about positive change. The paper also opens new avenues for entrepreneurship education researchers.

The purpose of this paper is to explore trends in entrepreneurship spaces developed by universities to support entrepreneurship education. It identifies characteristics that make a space conducive to innovation and explains whether current spaces adequately conform to those characteristics. More generally, this paper seeks to clarify what is being built, for which purposes and with what results.

Given the novelty of this research, the paper uses a multiple-method approach to allow for an iterative examination between theory and data. Multiple data and methods were used, including an action research method, a systematic survey of 57 entrepreneurship spaces at US universities and a thematic and content analyses of interviews carried out with individuals directly involved in the functioning of such spaces.

The paper presents a prescriptive model aimed at guiding the practitioner in the design of an entrepreneurship space. It identifies five types of entrepreneurship spaces that differentially support entrepreneurial activities and rely on different characteristics. These characteristics are centrally important for innovation and entrepreneurship spaces.

There are a number of practical implications from the work. It identifies key challenges in the design of entrepreneurship spaces and shows which questions to consider in the decision-making process.

The paper advances research on entrepreneurship spaces, an important yet poorly understood phenomenon. It reviews and introduces the literature on how space can support innovation, entrepreneurship education and entrepreneurial “spirit’” and proposes a typology of entrepreneurship spaces, providing a path toward more robust and comprehensive theory building.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of human and intellectual capital on start-ups’ attainment of government venture capital (GVC). It is theorized that as a result of government predisposition toward enhancing knowledge spillover and certifying underinvested start-ups, different types of human and intellectual capital possessed by start-ups will distinctly affect GVC funding.

The Kauffman Firm Survey, a panel data set of 4,928 new US firms over a five-year period (2004-2008), serves as the data source. Ordinary least squares regression, coupled with generalized estimating equations to check for robustness, is used to determine the effect of human and intellectual capital on GVC funding.

Founders’ educational attainment has a greater impact than their occupational experience in GVC funding. While the number of patents owned by the start-up increases GVC funding, the number of trademarks and copyrights negatively influence GVC funding.

By distinguishing between different aspects of human and intellectual capital, this study provides a more nuanced understanding of the influence of new venture resources in the context of GVC.

This paper analyses buyer‐supplier relationships from the perspective of small and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs). Preliminary results show that actors within a supply chain are not homogeneous in terms of their size, resources and business motives, and this brings into question the validity and relevance of the purchasing literature when examining smaller firms. This paper outlines the usefulness and importance of purchasing behaviour in SMEs in relation to the size and nature of the firm. The research draws principally from a series of in‐depth interviews undertaken with owner‐managers within plastic moulding companies in Lancashire, UK.

The purpose of this paper is to develop knowledge about the nature of student assessment practice in entrepreneurship education.

This paper introduces general assessment practice issues and highlights key considerations. It explains prior research on assessment practice in entrepreneurship education and argues that there is too little empirical research on the subject. Finally, it outlines a typology of entrepreneurship education that highlights variation between different: forms; learning outcomes; subjects; and, possible methods of assessment practice. The methodology for the study gathers data from course outlines (syllabi) and explains how these were collected and analysed.

The results show that educational practice in entrepreneurship education continues to be dominated by the “About” form and highlight that there are different cultures of assessment practice in the UK and the USA. The paper finds compelling evidence that different forms are using assessment in different ways.

This paper identifies that there have been few studies exploring assessment practice in entrepreneurship education and argues that further research is required in this area. It also highlights a need for a focus on assessment practice in disciplines beyond the business school. The work demonstrates that further research could explore other stakeholders in the assessment process and seek to understand how these external assessors affect student learning.

In conclusion, the paper highlights that assessment generally needs to become more innovative, more reflective in nature and include more stakeholders in the process.

Understanding is enhanced because the paper explores what entrepreneurship educators actually “do” when they assess entrepreneurship education and, therefore, the research moves beyond prescriptive accounts and provides a detailed understanding of actual practice.

This paper aims to introduce current debates on assessment practice in higher education and to explore educational research on assessment.

The paper progresses by exploring a number of outcomes and highlights their role in helping one to understand the potential reasons for engaging in enterprise education. The paper then applies this outcomes framework to assessment practice. It does so by reporting a series of focus groups undertaken at the International Small Business and Entrepreneurship (ISBE) Conference in 2005.

The focus groups engaged over 40 entrepreneurship and small business academics in a brainstorming exercise, which explored forms of assessment that could be used to meet particular outcomes in enterprise education. These results are presented according to different potential entrepreneurial outcomes.

The concluding part of the paper categorises these practices to develop and present the views of the participants and it provides a detailed analysis of assessment practice in enterprise education.

This paper aims to identify criteria for assessing the viability of institutional strategies for enterprise education and to develop models that describe methods of organising enterprise education.

The paper identifies and explains a number of key criteria including: educational impact, financial sustainability, academic credibility, human capital, structural embeddedness, context and infrastructure, alignment with institutional strategy and policy, community engagement, and alignment with policy context and funding. The paper then considers a number of models. These models are separated into two clusters: single department‐led models and campus wide models. The evaluative criteria are applied to each model to explore the impact of particular strategies and the criteria are used to assess the long‐term viability of each model. The paper concludes by making judgements about each criteria and their usefulness for helping understand long‐term sustainability of enterprise education.

The paper shows that different models may be valuable in different higher education contexts and illustrates the temporal nature of the relationships between the models.

This is principally a conceptual paper that can be developed further by the application of the evaluative criteria empirically. The models developed can be tested and analysed further through reference to observations of practice.

The paper makes a valuable contribution to knowledge in this subject area by describing and analysing the various models of organisation that could be used to support enterprise education in higher education institutions.

To analyse the philosophies underlying economic studies in entrepreneurship and to explain how they contribute to the understanding of entrepreneurial behaviour.

A range of historical studies is reviewed that examine entrepreneurship from an economic perspective. A framework of social science research paradigms is used to categorise these approaches according to their philosophical assumptions.

The paper finds that certain philosophies can harm the development of theory and that study using a wider range could help improve the value of research.

This paper fills an identified gap in philosophical discussions by exploring the economic theories. In doing so, it provides a structured approach to understanding some of the differences that underlie economic policy supporting the promotion of enterprise.

This paper has analysed the impact of the South East Asian crisis on the recruitment strategies of multinational hotel companies. In the paper a brief review of expatriate recruitment is conducted. From this review a number of strategies of recruitment are identified. The paper proceeds to use the method of environmental scanning to analyse how the South East Asian economic crisis may affect the usefulness of these strategies. In conclusion the paper introduces a process of expatriate recruitment and shows how the process could help address some of the difficulties that may arise as a result of the crisis.