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As a “unicorn” devoted to the rural market, Huitongda has gone through a major evolution since its establish-ment in 2010 from a rural home appliance distributor, a supply chain platform, an O2O service platform to an industry Internet platform of the rural e-commerce ecosystem, based on its deep understanding of the pain points in the rural market and operational experiences. After 2017, as the platform scaled with more vendors, Huitongda was no longer satisfied with selling a single product from urban to rural areas, but was committed to promoting the two-way flow of diverse commodities between urban and rural areas. It also set out to promote employment by entering the rural human resource market, expanding the single-industry O2O service platform to a complete multi-industry ecosystem. In 2018, with a service network covering over 17,000 townships across 20 Chinese provinces, Huitongda's sales reached RMB 35 billion yuan, enabling over 500,000 rural dwellers to start their own businesses or to find employment.

However, the depth, breadth and complexity of the rural industry Internet gradually multiplied, as more member stores joined the business ecosystem with more valuable commodities and services. As a rural industry Internet network owner, how could Huitongda better tap into digitalization in order to support its industry Internet business model and the huge network? How can it further widen the network boundaries to drive more business innovations and maximize network value?

This case is based on primary and secondary data collection. ABCo’s Founder, Jocelyn Sheppard, sat down with the author for a 75-min recorded interview in July 2022, and she provided follow-up information via email. Interview data was supplemented with secondary data from publicly available sources to fill in portions on the founder, the company’s history and its location; and triangulate the collected interview data (Creswell and Poth, 2018). There are no conflicts of interest that the author needs to disclose related to the founder or company.

The case was piloted at one institution in the Fall 2022, Spring 2023 and Fall 2023 semesters, with 59 undergraduates in an in-person social entrepreneurship course and 165 undergraduates and 33 graduate students in an online asynchronous social entrepreneurship course. All students worked through the case in groups, and as a requirement of their corresponding assignment submission, they provided feedback that was de-identified. In total, 60 groups reported their feedback, which was considered during the subsequent drafts of the case and instructors’ manual IM.

According to the anonymized feedback, the protagonist, product line, desired social impact and experienced challenges of ABCo were all said to be interesting, approachable and relatable for students, and the case piqued the interest of students coming from different majors (e.g. business, environmental issues, human services and criminal justice). Students from rural areas, or those who have family in rural areas, felt the case was particularly interesting; a handful of the students in the asynchronous online class who were unfamiliar with such settings suggested providing students with some additional contextualization of rural environments, either through class discussion with other students who had experience in those environments or additional media or text-based supports. Further adjustments also included removing a reading and a corresponding question and revising elements within the Teaching Approaches section of the IM to support the additions they suggested within the feedback (i.e. spending time to define and walk through the provided model and highlight the differences of rural entrepreneurship and entrepreneurship in the rural as a class before engaging in the related write-ups for that question).

Jocelyn Sheppard, Founder of Appalachian Botanical Company (“ABCo”), had built her company not just on a vision of revitalizing reclaimed coal mine land through planting and producing products with lavender, but also to have a social impact on the rural town of Ashford and its greater region of Boone County in West Virginia, USA. While she understood that hiring workers in need of a second chance would present its challenges, she was shocked by the depth of social need her new employees presented, which contributed to many employees’ disruptive behaviors and turnover. To approach the problem at hand, Sheppard needed to reflect on the resources around her, namely, other entities and organizations who might be able to support her efforts to improve how ABCo delivers on its social mission and, thus, helps to improve the local community and its economy. The case draws upon literature and models within rural entrepreneurship and community development to have students advise Sheppard on what she should do next to improve the social outcomes for ABCo and its employees.

This case is geared for both upper-level undergraduate and graduate courses in entrepreneurship, including in social, environmental and rural entrepreneurship courses and course modules. The case introduces students to a social enterprise struggling to get its footing in a rural context. The case would be suitable for both introductory and advanced courses, especially when placemaking/place-based entrepreneurship or ecosystem building are discussed.

By analyzing the mechanisms by which rural infrastructure resilience (RIR) impacted population loss in Longxi County, this study proposes measures to improve RIR, which provides a practical reference for realizing China's rural revitalization strategy, besides providing ideas for alleviating population loss in similar regions around the world.

This study considered 213 administrative villages in Longxi County in the Longzhong loess hilly region as the evaluation unit. Based on the construction of a multidimensional RIR evaluation system, the spatial spillover effect of RIR on population loss was determined using the spatial Durbin model (SDM).

The average resilience of each subsystem of rural infrastructure in Longxi County was low, and there were large differences in the spatial distribution. The mean RIR index value was 0.2258, with obvious spatial directivity and agglomeration characteristics. The population loss index of Longxi County had a value of 0.1759, with 26.29 of villages having a high loss level. The population loss was relatively serious and was correlated with the spatial distribution of RIR. The villages with larger RIR index values had lower population loss. The RIR had a significant spatial spillover effect on population loss. Productive infrastructure resilience and living infrastructure resilience (LIR) had negative spillover effects on population loss, and social service infrastructure resilience (SSIR) had a positive spillover effect on population loss.

By analyzing the mechanisms by which RIR impacted on population loss in Longxi County, this study proposes measures to improve RIR, which provides a practical reference for realizing China's rural revitalization strategy, besides providing ideas for alleviating population loss in similar regions around the world.

Limited research exists on the role of information access as a key success factor for rural entrepreneurs. The purpose of this study is to examine the importance of information access, among other inequality forms, in shaping entrepreneurial outcomes.

The authors used a qualitative, inductive research methodology. They conducted interviews with rural entrepreneurs and gained insights into the role of information access and basic tangible resources in shaping their ventures.

The authors identified two critical factors that impact rural entrepreneurs: inequalities in access to information and basic tangible resources. They found that inequalities in rural entrepreneurship are often interrelated, rather than isolated. The authors demonstrated that the relationship between entrepreneurship and inequality is not solely characterized by a positive or negative correlation but is a dynamic interplay where certain inequality forms may create barriers to opportunities for some individuals while creating opportunities for others.

The authors uncovered key barriers in rural entrepreneurship and constructed a roadmap to effectively address these challenges, providing valuable insights to policymakers and support initiatives and enabling the target of high-impact resources. This research supports efforts to provide rural entrepreneurs with equal opportunities to grow and succeed.

This research significantly contributes to the field by examining the complexities of entrepreneurship in emerging economies, with a particular focus on rural areas. The authors introduced a comprehensive conceptual model linking inequality and entrepreneurship, explored the challenges faced by rural entrepreneurs and offered strategic policy recommendations for development initiatives.

In China, supply chain finance (SCF) has gradually emerged as a new service for the retail industry. This case systematically discusses how JD conducts product design and risk control of supply chain finance and related financial services, and analyze the impact of supply chain finance on JD's retail operations. The case also analyzes the relationship between JD supply chain finance and traditional financial institutions, and explore the future development of retail supply chain finance.

This study explores resilience learning from uncertainty, taking a holistic view by considering individual, firm and contextual factors. Resilience development is understood by focusing on how uncertainty is related to entrepreneurs and their environment, suggesting that developing resilience needs to be a continuous learning process.

This qualitative study explores factors related to entrepreneurial uncertainty, resilience and learning. Evidence is drawn from interviews with rural entrepreneurs in two regions of Indonesia, and analyzed using a rigorous approach to generate codes, second-order themes and aggregate dimensions for the theoretical contributions.

Uncertainty readiness, uncertainty response and uncertainty opportunity for resilience emerge as the key learning areas from this study. They are related to resilience on a personal, community and systemic level. The proposed framework relates learning from uncertainty to the process of developing resilience for entrepreneurs and their communities.

This study proposes a framework based on resilience motivation and learning from uncertainty as usual. It explores the relationships between uncertainty readiness, responses and opportunities with personal, relational and systemic resilience factors. This contributes to entrepreneurship behavior research at the intersection of organization studies and management in the socio-economic and often informal context of developing countries.

Innovation is critical to the tourism industry. Living Labs (LLs) are innovation ecosystems which are becoming popular in tourism. LLs are a model of open innovation characterized by a networked approach to innovation. Local communities and businesses are usually excluded from processes of decision-making concerning the management of tourism. LLs enable local communities' participation in the sustainable development of tourism, thereby providing them the opportunity to increase their share of benefits. This chapter focuses on a case study of an LL recently created in Portugal and discusses LLs as an environment for tourism innovation where the local community is stimulated to explore competencies to cocreate value.

Despite the popularity of the entrepreneurial ecosystem (EE) concept, research on its value-adding activities receives less attention. Thus, in this article, the authors investigate the role of EEs in supporting global value chain (GVC) activities.

The authors employ the fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) technique to identify practical configurations of EE’s framework and systemic conditions spurring GVC activities in 80 countries.

The findings suggest different configurations of EE`s framework and systemic conditions necessary for various GVC activities regarding input-output structure, geographical scope, upgrading, and forward and backward participation.

This study contributes to the extant literature by pioneering the EE approach to explaining GVC development. Moreover, the findings provide novel insights for understanding the EE – GVC interplay. As a result, the study offers a more nuanced understanding of how the EE supports GVC activities.

The aim of this study is to discern the role of digital finance in driving rural industrial integration and revitalization. Specifically, it intends to shed light on how the deep development of digital finance can contribute to the optimization and transformation of the rural industrial structure. The research further explores the particular effects of this financial transformation in the central and western regions of China.

This research studies the influence of digital finance on rural industrial integration across 30 Chinese provinces from 2011 to 2020. Utilizing the entropy weight method, a comprehensive evaluation index system is established to gauge the level of rural industrial integration. A two-way fixed effects model, intermediary effect model, and threshold effect model are employed to decipher the relationship between digital finance and rural industrial integration.

Findings reveal a positive relationship between digital finance and rural industrial integration. A single threshold feature was identified: beyond a traditional finance development level, the marginal effect of digital finance on rural industrial integration increases. These effects are more noticeable in central and western regions.

Empirical outcomes contribute to policy discourse on rural digital finance, assisting policymakers in crafting effective strategies. Understanding the threshold of traditional finance development provides a new perspective on the potential of digital finance to drive rural industrial integration.

This study aims to investigate the impact of environmentally sustainable innovation practices on consumer resistance to innovation in eco-hotel enterprises and the moderating influence of value co-creation based on the service-dominant logic and innovation resistance theory.

Partial least squares structural equation modeling was used to test the study’s hypotheses on a sample of 382 eco-hotel enterprise consumers surveyed online.

Results reveal that adopting environmentally sustainable innovation practices and consumers’ participation in value co-creation can negatively influence consumer resistance to innovation. In addition, value co-creation partially moderates the influence of environmentally sustainable innovation practices on consumer resistance to innovation, implying that other variables can influence this relationship. Finally, the results showed that value co-creation is a multidimensional construct with dimensions of meaningfulness, collaboration, contribution, recognition and affective response.

This study contributes significantly to knowledge of value co-creation and innovation resistance in service ecosystems through the lens of sustainability. Incorporating value co-creation as a moderator demonstrates how to address sustainable activities to decrease consumers’ resistance to eco-hotel enterprises’ environmentally sustainable innovation practices. By empirically analyzing these relationships, this study makes various contributions and gives helpful decision-making insights.