Search results

Entrepreneurship education is rapidly growing, both in the number of schools offering programs and in the range of courses. But, survey data shows that entrepreneurship education is more likely to focus on how to evaluate business opportunities, write a business plan, present a proposal to investors, and conduct analytical exercises to determine value. The success of a venture begins with the entrepreneur, and as students become entrepreneurs, they will need to wear a variety of “hats” and serve as the primary finance, marketing, human resources, and operations person. High self-efficacy, emotional intelligence, and well-developed interpersonal skills have been shown to equate to a firmʼs success.These skills are rarely polished and perfected in the classroom. But, because they are so critical, more concentration on their development is needed in the entrepreneurship curriculum. This article presents the case and provides a model for developing “Use of Self” skills in the entrepreneurship classroom.

Product trials are an effective way to influence consumer attitudes. While research has established several factors that influence whether consumers will try a product or not, it is less understood how marketers can optimize the trial experience itself. The purpose of this paper is to explore flow as an optimal state and the factors that give rise to it during a product trail.

This research consists of three experimental studies in which people trial new music. This paper explores the ability of curiosity to optimize consumers’ flow experience during the trial and their attitudes toward the trialed product. This paper manipulates curiosity before the trial using information about the music (Study 1) and music previews (Study 3) and also demonstrates that curiosity is naturally elevated among those high in openness to experience (Study 2).

The results demonstrate that curiosity before a product trial fosters an optimal experience during the trial in the form of flow states, defined as an enjoyable state of full engagement, which in turn mediates more positive attitudes toward the trialed product. This paper demonstrates that curiosity can be evoked using product information or a preview of the content and can vary based on individual differences in openness to experience. The relationship between curiosity and flow is moderated by the valence of the information that is used to elicit curiosity, such that negative-valence information thwarts the relationship.

While the studies conducted by the authors focus on the positive influence of curiosity in the trial of music, the effects may be different for other products. These studies are also limited to two different manipulations of curiosity.

This research has implications for marketers, as it demonstrates the relevance of flow and how to enable it in product trials to optimize effectiveness. The manipulations also demonstrate how to manage the amount of information that is given to consumers before they trial a product.

This research reveals that flow states optimize the product trial experience. This research also advances the understanding of the relationship between curiosity and flow by moderating their relationship with the valence of information that elicits curiosity. The findings also broaden the relevance of curiosity and flow in marketing by demonstrating their benefits within product trials.

This paper aims to examine containership routing and speed optimization for maritime liner services. It focuses on a realistic case in which the transport demand, and consequently the collected revenue from the visited ports depend on the sailing speed.

The authors present an integer non-linear programming model for the containership routing and fleet sizing problem, in which the sailing speed of every leg, the ports to be included in the service and their sequence are optimized based on the net line's profit. The authors present a heuristic approach that is based on speed discretization and a genetic algorithm to solve the problem for large size instances. They present an application on a line provided by COSCO in 2017 between Asia and Europe.

The numerical results show that the proposed heuristic approach provides good quality solutions after a reasonable computation time. In addition, the demand sensitivity has a great impact on the selected route and therefore the profit function. Moreover, the more the demand is sensitive to the sailing speed, the higher the sailing speed value.

The vessel carrying capacity is not considered in an explicit way.

This paper focuses on an important aspect in liner shipping, i.e. demand sensitivity to sailing speed. It brings a novel approach that is important in a context in which sailing speed strategies and market volatility are to be considered together in network design. This perspective has not been addressed previously.

Cross-docking is a supply chain distribution and logistics strategy for which less-than-truckload shipments are consolidated into full-truckload shipments. Goods are stored up to a maximum of 24 hours in a cross-docking terminal. In this chapter, we build on the literature review by Ladier and Alpan (2016), who reviewed cross-docking research and conducted interviews with cross-docking managers to find research gaps and provide recommendations for future research. We conduct a systematic literature review, following the framework by Ladier and Alpan (2016), on cross-docking literature from 2015 up to 2020. We focus on papers that consider the intersection of research and industry, e.g., case studies or studies presenting real-world data. We investigate whether the research has changed according to the recommendations of Ladier and Alpan (2016). Additionally, we examine the adoption of Industry 4.0 practices in cross-docking research, e.g., related to features of the physical internet, the Internet of Things and cyber-physical systems in cross-docking methodologies or case studies. We conclude that only small adaptations have been done based on the recommendations of Ladier and Alpan (2016), but we see growing attention for Industry 4.0 concepts in cross-docking, especially for physical internet hubs.

When we take the lens of race, ethnicity, gender, and class to the collected academic work on women business owners, what does it reveal? What do we really know? Are there differing definitions of success across segments of the women businessowner demographics? Do the challenges faced by African American women entrepreneurs differ from those confronting white female entrepreneurs? Do immigrant female women businessowners face more significant institutional barriers than their counterparts who have been U.S. citizens for at least two generations? Are there similar reasons for starting their businesses?