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This study explores how open innovation (OI) can be instrumental for entrepreneurs in sensing and seizing entrepreneurial opportunities in small and medium enterprises (SMEs). This study also illustrates how OI can help SMEs overcome the liability of smallness.

This is exploratory research using an inductive, multiple-case study approach. This study capitalizes on five in-depth case studies of European SMEs to explore a phenomenon using replication logic and provide a robust basis for theory building.

This study presents a holistic view of the OI process in SMEs and illustrates the crucial role of entrepreneurs. The study provides a better understanding of how OI can help entrepreneurs sense and seize entrepreneurial opportunities by envisioning venture ideas and implementing business model innovation through the management of innovation partners.

The study emphasizes two critical roles of entrepreneurs in implementing OI in SMEs. First, the entrepreneur can be the instigator of strategic change, and second, he/she can orchestrate the innovation network. The findings emphasize that OI helps avoid knowledge corridors at the venture idea stage, leading to a (re)structuring of the business model and the emergence of a network of innovation partners, which should be managed hands-on. This study discusses in detail the two crucial roles of entrepreneurs.

The aim of this paper is to use the special context of the Kenyan encampment policy to interrogate the role of social capital as a driver of resourcing for entrepreneurial action in the resource-constrained environment of refugee entrepreneurship in Kenya.

This paper takes conceptual and case study approaches to investigate how refugees deploy social capital to aggregate and recombine resources for entrepreneurial action and livelihood outcomes. It draws on 21 selected secondary sources and semi-structured interviews of 24 respondents from Kakuma camp and Kalobeyei settlement, as well as Nairobi city in Kenya.

This study proposes a new conceptual framework that illuminates the interaction between social capital, resource aggregation and resource recombination for entrepreneurial action and livelihood recovery. This framework was elucidated within the specific Kenyan context, where social capital was found to play a key role in enabling access to other resources such as financial and human capital to refugee entrepreneurs that would otherwise be inaccessible within the resource-constrained context. It also underlines the capacity of refugees to mobilise these resources in the creation of new ecosystems and institutions.

While the conceptual contribution of the paper holds broad explanatory powers, the empirical aspect is limited in terms of its focus on the Kenyan contexts. Future studies can benefit from cross-country comparisons of empirical, including longitudinal, data.

This paper argues for a new approach that can enable better integration of refugees through the provision of opportunities for full economic participation for refugees. This will be a win-win outcome for both refugees and host communities.

This paper makes original contribution by proposing a new conceptual framework that explains the bricoleur’s resource process through the lense of social capital in a resource-constrained and challenging institutional environment. This framework is elucidated with empirical qualitative data from Kenya. This study also signposts new operational and policy directions for humanitarian action among refugees.

The study explores the decision-making logics driving the usage of social media among internationalising small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), and how it supports entrepreneurial opportunity recognition. The author draws on qualitative data from four internationalising firms all of which had adopted social media. The findings show that causal decision-making logic is the main element driving the initial usage of social media (i.e. pre-adoption). Concerning ongoing usage, the author found evidence of both causal and effectual logic; the choice being dependent on the firm’s resources. The findings also show that both drivers of social media users have a paramount role in entrepreneurial opportunity recognition.

All entrepreneurs interact simultaneously with multiple entrepreneurial contexts throughout their entrepreneurial journey. This conceptual paper has two central aims: (1) it synthesises the current literature on gender and entrepreneurship, and (2) it increases our understanding of how gender norms, contextual embeddedness and (in)equality mechanisms interact within contexts. Illustrative contexts that are discussed include entrepreneurship education, business networks and finance.

This conceptual paper draws upon extant literature to develop its proposed conceptual framework. It provides suggestions for systemic policy interventions as well as pointing to promising paths for future research.

A literature-generated conceptual framework is developed to explain and address the systemic barriers faced by opportunity-driven women as they engage in entrepreneurial contexts. This conceptual framework visualises the interplay between gender norms, contextual embeddedness and inequality mechanisms to explain systemic disparities. An extra dimension is integrated in the framework to account for the power of agency within women and with others, whereby agency, either individually or collectively, may disrupt and subvert the current interplay with inequality mechanisms.

This work advances understanding of the underrepresentation of women entrepreneurs. The paper offers a conceptual framework that provides policymakers with a useful tool to understand how to intervene and increase contextual embeddedness for all entrepreneurs. Additionally, this paper suggests moving beyond “fixing” women entrepreneurs and points towards disrupting systemic disparities to accomplish this contextual embeddedness for all entrepreneurs. By doing so, this research adds to academic knowledge on the construction and reconstruction of gender in the field of entrepreneurship.

The purpose of this paper was to determine the factors that enable entrepreneurial opportunity recognition and the significant role of education and training in enhancing opportunity recognition.

This paper follows a systematic literature review method to answer the research questions. A systematic literature review allows us to determine the work carried out to date, how it was done, assess literature and report all relevant research. The authors have used the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic and Meta-Analysis procedure.

The findings of this study showed that prior knowledge, social networks, external environment, entrepreneurial alertness, creativity, self-efficacy and entrepreneurial passion are the main factors that play a role in the opportunity recognition process. The authors were also able to establish the importance of education and training in enhancing opportunity recognition. Experiential learning is at the forefront of education methods used to improve prior knowledge and experience that directly impact the ability to recognize entrepreneurial opportunities.

The paper provides human resource development practitioners and entrepreneurship educators with factors that determine entrepreneurial opportunity recognition. It pinpoints the factors that can be exploited in enhancing employees and novice entrepreneurs’ ability to recognize viable entrepreneurial opportunities.

Opportunity recognition is recognized as the first step in the entrepreneurship process. Therefore, it is crucial for entrepreneurs to have the ability to recognize opportunities that are viable. Understanding the factors that contribute to a successful opportunity recognition is important. In addition, the role of education and training in opportunity recognition and enhancing entrepreneurial opportunity recognition cannot be overlooked.

Entrepreneurship institutions exhibit substantial gender discrimination despite worldwide efforts to decrease the phenomenon. The MENA area has a low percentage of women entrepreneurs since little is known about women’s desire to start their businesses. The authors use the theory of planned behavior (TPB) to explain what influences women's propensity toward entrepreneurship and what factors discourage them.

TPB is a psychological theory explaining how individuals act in certain situations. The authors created their database by using a systematic questionnaire. Overall, 350 women entrepreneurs contributed to their dataset. Finally, the authors used structural equation modeling to verify their hypotheses.

This study helps them to shed light to better understand the dynamics of Entrepreneurial Intention, in women from Lebanon. The authors do not find any relationship between lack of knowledge, funding, networking and entrepreneurial startup intention for Lebanese women. The role of dynamic capabilities in the entrepreneurial landscape of Lebanon, particularly for women, is substantially highlighted by the full mediation observed in the relationship between lack of knowledge and entrepreneurial start-up intentions. The findings discovered that these capabilities could fully mediate the negative impact of lack of networking on the intention to commence entrepreneurial ventures.

This research illustrates and explains how dynamic capabilities mediate the relationship between women entrepreneurs' challenges and their intention to start a business in the Lebanese context.

This study examines the role of passion in gender-specific entrepreneurial responses in times of crises and how passion manifests itself in a digital environment. Entrepreneurial passion feeds energy, tenacity, self-confidence and momentum, creating added value for a given economy.

A qualitative approach was used to conduct semi-structured interviews. To reach the research objectives, the author examined a sample of 22 female entrepreneurs and 19 male entrepreneurs in a comparative design.

The results obtained through a qualitative study prove that entrepreneurial passion is a driver of self-confidence for entrepreneurs. Moreover, the nature of entrepreneurial passion differs across gender in times of crises. Indeed, female entrepreneurs try to take their lives into their own hands by creating their own destinies. They have seized opportunities arising from purely technological progress to create their own businesses on social networks and solve the unemployment problem. Meanwhile, male entrepreneurs pursue opportunities based on market supply and demand to increase their market share and face a crisis.

These findings offer novel insights into research on social media entrepreneurs. This study could help new entrepreneurs highlight their abilities, particularly those that are most salient and central.

This study adds a new dimension to the literature on the role and nature of entrepreneurial passion in times of crises.

Prior literature has long argued that knowledge networks contain great opportunities for innovation, and researchers can identify these opportunities using the properties of knowledge networks (PKNs). However, previous studies have examined only the relationship between structural PKNs (s-PKNs) and innovation, ignoring the effect of qualitative PKNs (q-PKNs), which refer to the quality of the relationship between two elements. This study aims to further investigate the effects of q-PKNs on innovation.

Using a panel data set of 2,255 patents from the Chinese wind energy industry, the authors construct knowledge networks to identify more PKNs and examine these hypotheses.

The results show that q-PKNs significantly influence recombinant innovation (RI), reflecting the importance of q-PKNs analysed in this study. Moreover, the results suggest that the combinational potential of an element with others may be huge at different levels of q-PKNs.

This study advances the understanding of PKNs and RI by exploring how q-PKNs impact RI. At different levels of PKNs, the potential of the elements to combine with others and form innovation are different. Researchers can more accurately identify the opportunities for RI using two kinds of PKNs. The findings also provide important implications on how government should provide support for R&D firms.

This study aims to systematize the drivers of nascent entrepreneurship in tourism and to suggest avenues for future research. As a consequence of the pandemic, a reduction in early-stage entrepreneurial activity was reported worldwide. The countries that responded best to this situation were those that fostered entrepreneurship at this early stage, designated as nascent. Hence, research on nascent entrepreneurs requires particular attention.

To address this study’s goal, the authors have examined the development of nascent entrepreneur literature in the last two decades and discussed how the literature on tourism nascent entrepreneurship relates to the mainstream literature in terms of theoretical frameworks. The authors explored specificities of the tourism industry to propose new research avenues to explore the theme of new venture creation in the hospitality and tourism sector.

The authors divided the implication of tourism specificities into main themes: motivations, human and social capital and government and incubators. Several research questions for future research are proposed.

By focusing on nascent entrepreneurship, researchers and policymakers can obtain important insights from projects that have not been implemented, going beyond those that have been successfully undertaken, as aimed at in entrepreneurship research.

This research contributes to the nascent tourism entrepreneurship literature by providing theoretical and empirical research questions to advance existing knowledge in tourism nascent entrepreneurship.

Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) use networks to overcome knowledge deficiencies in pursuing innovation. However, balancing the cost and risk of growing networks, especially internationally, with potential gains in knowledge remains a critical challenge. Searching for innovation knowledge in international and domestic networks can be complementary when learning is compressed or as competing when the SMEs capacity to use the new knowledge is exceeded. This paper aims to investigate whether knowledge searches in domestic and international networks are complementary or conflicting in pursuit of innovation.

This study is based on firm-level data set comprising 426 SMEs located in New Zealand, an advanced small and open economy. Using multi-level modelling, this study tests competing hypotheses, asking whether domestic and international network searches are complements or substitutes when seeking ambidexterity.

The research finds that, in contrast to earlier research, which shows increasing network breadth drives innovation activity, SMEs benefit less from knowledge search across combined domestic and international networks for exploration innovation and ambidexterity. In contrast, exploitation shows no effect, suggesting that combined networks could support exploitation.

This paper highlights how SMEs mitigate the influence resource constraints have on the partnerships they form and how this translates to ambidexterity. Specifically, recognising that an opportunistic approach to network development may impose future constraints on SME ambidexterity. From a management perspective, the paper recognises that balancing knowledge search across domestic and international networks can facilitate ambidexterity; however, to prevent spreading resources too thinly, this likely requires exit from early domestic innovation network partnerships.