Search results

Startups have attracted increased attention over the past years. While entrepreneurs develop startups to capture new business opportunities, also large companies are turning to these fast-growing organizations in efforts to become more agile. However, managing business model innovation and validation is challenging. A number of methodologies, like the Lean Startup (LS), emerged to reduce uncertainties concerning innovation-based projects, and to contribute to business model validation. Despite its popularity, the literature on the LS and its key underpinnings (Agile Methodologies and Customer Development) is sparse, lacking an integrated and structured analysis of their impacts and potentialities. The paper aims to discuss this issue.

The authors conducted a comprehensive systematic literature review on the topic fully analyzing a final set of 71 papers.

There is a turning point in the research stream’s maturity with publications in conferences and major journals, with the predominance of empirical investigations in the European region. Articles on the topic are on the rise in several technology fields. However, the literature on the subject falls short on providing guidance to assist practitioners and scholars on the adoption and investigation of these methodologies.

The paper provides guidance for practice by presenting a staircase roadmap for the LS implementation drawing from the final set of papers reviewed.

The study categorizes the current literature through a concept map, and offers a structured research agenda beyond the categories from the thematic analysis.

Most studies investigating the adoption of lean startup (LS) practices by technology new ventures focus on software startups in mature entrepreneurial ecosystems and disregard their applicability for opportunity exploitation in other technological backgrounds. This study contributes to this research stream by exploring how Brazilian technology new ventures (in different technological fields) tentatively adopt LS to exploit opportunities and whether LS is suitable to their emerging economy context.

The authors adopt an exploratory multiple-case study based on qualitative data collection and analysis of nine Brazilian biotechnology, engineering and software startups.

The study shows how technology new ventures tackle the activities of opportunity exploitation – namely, developing a product or service, acquiring human resources, gathering financial resources and setting up the organization – by leveraging LS tools and practices for business model validation; also, it identifies six contextual constraints hindering the systematic adoption of LS and reveals how technology new ventures cope with such constraints in their early stages by integrating LS with complementary strategies and practices. Furthermore, the study reveals that the systematic and comprehensive adoption of LS nurtures the development of an entrepreneurial experimental capability to explore opportunities in a quasi-scientific and hypothesis-driven fashion.

The study investigates how Brazilian engineering, biotechnology and software startups exploit opportunities and overcome constraints to business model validation through the combined adoption of LS and complementary strategies and practices and provides a set of propositions to guide future research.

We present a critical literature review debating Brazilian research on social and environmental accounting (SEA). The aim of this study is to understand the role of politics in the construction of hegemonies in SEA research in Brazil. In particular, we examine the role of hegemony in relation to the co-option of SEA literature and sustainability in the Brazilian context by the logic of development for economic growth in emerging economies. The methodological approach adopts a post-structural perspective that reflects Laclau and Mouffe’s discourse theory. The study employs a hermeneutical, rhetorical approach to understand and classify 352 Brazilian research articles on SEA. We employ Brown and Fraser’s (2006) categorizations of SEA literature to help in our analysis: the business case, the stakeholder–accountability approach, and the critical case. We argue that the business case is prominent in Brazilian studies. Second-stage analysis suggests that the major themes under discussion include measurement, consulting, and descriptive approach. We argue that these themes illustrate the degree of influence of the hegemonic politics relevant to emerging economics, as these themes predominantly concern economic growth and a capitalist context. This paper discusses trends and practices in the Brazilian literature on SEA and argues that the focus means that SEA avoids critical debates of the role of capitalist logics in an emerging economy concerning sustainability. We urge the Brazilian academy to understand the implications of its reifying agenda and engage, counter-hegemonically, in a social and political agenda beyond the hegemonic support of a particular set of capitalist interests.

The native species from western Mato Grosso do Sul provide fruits with unique sensory characteristics and high nutrient concentrations. Tropical fruit consumption is increasing due to the growing recognition of the nutritional value. These fruits play important roles through the marketing of their products and nutritionally through their consumption. All fruits are edible and are used in the food industry and well sensory accepted. The purpose of this paper is to verify the physicochemical characteristics, bioactive compounds and antioxidant activity in fruits collected in the Cerrado and Pantanal biomes from western Mato Grosso do Sul.

The fruits of baru, bocaiuva, jatobá, jenipapo and pequi were collected. To characterize them, longitudinal diameter, transverse diameter, total soluble solids, acidity, pH, ascorbic acid, total phenolics, antioxidant capacity, total sugar, glucose and macro and micronutrient contents analysis were performed in triplicate.

Jatobá presented the highest values of vitamin C. For phenolics, baru and jatobá stood out; bocaiuva presented the highest results for sugars, while jatobá was superior for glucose. The fruits with the highest antioxidant capacity, DPPH, were pequi and baru, while via ABTS the jatobá was the highest. Baru presented higher levels of nitrogen, phosphorus, magnesium, copper, zinc and iron. The bocaiuva presented the highest results for potassium and sulfur, the jatobá calcium and manganese. Jenipapo stood out with its boron content. Magnesium presented superior results in the baru, jenipapo and bocaiuva. The results reinforce the diversity of physicochemical characteristics.

The increase of the flow of available information, together with the growth of multicultural influences, the search for wholesome diet and the diversity of flavors and colors make these fruits important regional development tools. Their characteristics encompass national and international exploration potential that arouse consumer interest and contribute to the pursuit of innovations. In addition, the native species mentioned above provide fruits with unique sensory characteristics. Their consumption is increasing in the markets due to the growing recognition of their nutritional value. Therefore, these fruits play important roles, economically, through the marketing of their products and nutritionally through their consumption.