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The purpose of this paper is to integrate knowledge inheritance theory with the social capital perspective to explain the initial endowments of spinoffs.

The authors maintain that social capital plays a crucial part, both as a mechanism supporting the generation of intellectual capital prior to a spinoff’s foundation, and as an endowment that complements this capital once the spinoff is founded. Knowledge inheritance remains a fundamental mechanism for the formation of a spinoff’s intellectual capital. Its other endowment, social capital, derives from three types of relationship that future entrepreneurs develop within, through and outside their parent firm, all three of which are crucial to the formation of a spinoff’s intellectual capital.

The first result of the theoretical research is an integrative framework of a spinoff’s endowments. Moreover, the authors apply this framework to address two key research questions in the spinoff literature, i.e. whether spinoffs can differ from their parents in terms of intellectual capital; and why spinoffs tend to co-locate near their parents, in geographical clusters. The integrative approach helps to tackle these questions.

This conceptual paper offers a more comprehensive explanation of the emergence of spinoffs in terms of their initial endowments than the knowledge inheritance theory.

The purpose of this paper is to theorize how the industry life cycle unfolds differently across places and how economic agglomeration varies over time.

The paper relies on literature review and conceptual analysis.

It generates a dynamic geographic concentration model (i.e. an industry’s degree of geographic concentration drops in the growth stage, rises in the mature stage, and drops again in the new growth stage) and a localized industry life-cycle model (i.e. temporal dynamics differ between the center and the periphery).

It makes contribution by theorizing that the extent to which an industry is geographically concentrated changes over time, and by demonstrating how an industry’s center and periphery may experience different temporal dynamics.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the inter-organisational dynamics, in terms of the triggers to spin-off formation and the genealogical inheritance of spin-offs, between a parent characterised by an adverse event and the spin-offs that emerge. The study focusses on the nature of the triggering event, exploring the heterogeneous nature of the processes by which some spin-offs are formed to exploit new opportunities created unexpectedly by an adverse event, and on the genealogical inheritance that forms the pre-entry experience of the founder.

A case study based on interview data with founders of spin-offs, supplemented with interviews with managers and industry experts, and with secondary data sources. The case study is of the spin-offs from a successful firm, Élan Corporation, reported to be the world’s 20th largest drug firm in 2002, that experienced an adverse event in 2002. The Élan case offers the opportunity to focus exclusively on what Buenstorf (2009) refers to as necessity spin-offs. Prior to collecting data it was necessary to identify the population of spin-offs from Élan.

This study extends existing research by identifying “opportunistic spin-offs”: spin-offs that occur in the wake of an adverse event where the entrepreneur exploits an unexpected opportunity to engage in entrepreneurship but does not feel compelled to establish the spin-off. These spin-offs are characterised by “unexpected opportunities”, “opportunistic acquisition of assets” and, perhaps reflecting the seniority and experience of those involved, “alternative employment opportunities”.

Understanding the process of spin-off formation is important because it provides insight into how and why individuals initiate new ventures. Spin-offs are an important source of new firms and an important mechanism in the process of industry evolution. The study contributes to the literature on spin-offs by providing evidence of the heterogeneous nature of spin-offs that occur in the aftermath of an adverse event, leading to the classification of some spin-offs as “opportunistic spin-offs”. The study contributes to the entrepreneurship literature by demonstrating that an important trigger for venture creation is unexpected changes in an individual’s employment circumstances.

The purpose of this study is to explore the early stage of development of a cluster. The literature on early stage of cluster development shows that there are often random effects such as an entrepreneur and spin-off companies, and in this study, a coordinated approach for cluster development is described.

A single exploratory case study approach is followed. The aerospace cluster in the Spokane region, State of Washington, is described. Data from a variety of sources are triangulated to enhance the credibility of the case study findings.

It was found that although there are many types of collaborations occurring in the region, which involve policy and government organizations, the main driver of the early-stage cluster development is manufacturers-led coordinating mechanism. Individual manufacturers are too small to be successful in the aerospace industry, and they are collaborating to present a united “front” to out-of-the-region customers. Once customers place an order, then within this coordinating mechanism, the work is divided among different manufacturers.

The research has two main limitations. First, it is a single case study, and therefore, the results may not be generalizable. Second, the cluster is in an early stage of development, so it is not (yet) clear whether this manufacturers-led coordinated approach will have long-term success.

The studies offer potential for cluster development that go beyond relying on a single entrepreneur or on mostly government- or policy-driven initiatives. Instead, this is an approach that can be used by industry to lift the overall competitiveness of their region.

This cluster development approach offers potential for economic development of smaller regions which mainly consist of small- and medium-sized companies without endowment benefits or a large local customer base.

This study adds to the existing knowledge on clusters and cluster types. The identified cluster approach does not fit with the main types of clusters that have been identified in the literature. The companies involved are mainly small- to medium-sized companies, but by coordinating their capabilities, they are able to present core capabilities in a much more attractive manner to customers. This cluster development approach is not driven by or achieved through advantages in innovation, vertical or horizontal supply chain competition and advantages, creation of spin-off firms, or a regional demand base as customers are located outside the region. It deviates in terms of the types of companies involved and, mostly, in a sense that it acts as one unit to customers who are located outside the region.

Aim of the present monograph is the economic analysis of the role of MNEs regarding globalisation and digital economy and in parallel there is a reference and examination of some legal aspects concerning MNEs, cyberspace and e‐commerce as the means of expression of the digital economy. The whole effort of the author is focused on the examination of various aspects of MNEs and their impact upon globalisation and vice versa and how and if we are moving towards a global digital economy.

This paper aims to examine the extent to which urban social enterprises (SEs) have diversified their funding sources and shifted towards loans and development finance in recent years. The paper seeks to consider the underlying reasons for a limited demand for loans by comparing two theoretical perspectives on SE development. The concept of “social bricolage” implies SEs do not seek conventional business loans or equity finance, because they survive in resource poor environments by improvising and re‐using redundant capital. A second evolutionary approach implies that SE financing will be dominated by a reliance on habits and practices learnt from the contexts in which social entrepreneurs have operated.

The paper is based on analysis of interviews with 40 SEs in four English cities.

The paper finds a limited degree of change and scant evidence of local decentralisation in social enterprises' financial contexts. It argues that both conceptual approaches offer important insights into the causes of the low level of demand for development finance by emphasising the importance of practical and improvised financial management. This is an adaptive response to uncertainty but is also a manifestation of SEs' inherited capabilities in public and charitable finance.

The research is based on a relatively small sample of social enterprises in central and deprived urban areas. The financial practices of social enterprises in other types of environment also require examination.

It is unrealistic to expect the majority of SEs to secure conventional loan finance, instead they require “softer” finance and intensive support from intermediaries.

The paper makes a novel empirical contribution by revealing social enterprises' views and recent experiences with funding. Its approach allows an intensive examination of key financial issues. It makes an original theoretical contribution by seeking to apply, develop, and evaluate two theoretical perspectives on the form and practices of social enterprises.

This paper describes a comprehensive approach to examine how technological innovation contributes to the renewal of a firm’s competences through its dynamic and reciprocal relationship with R&D and product commercialization. Three theories of technology and innovation (the R&D and technological knowledge concept, product‐process concept, technological interdependence concept) are used to relate technology and innovation to strategic management. Based on these theories, this paper attempts to identify the dynamic relationship between product innovation and process innovation using system dynamics by investigating that aspect of the dynamic changes in the closed feedback circulation structure in which R&D investments drive the accumulation of technological knowledge.

When is it more profitable for multinational manufacturers to manufacture in high-cost environments and when in low-cost environments? While the literature offers many cues to answer this question, too little empirical research directly addresses this. In this study, we quantitatively and empirically investigate the financial effect of companies' production footprint in low-cost and high-cost environments for different types of production networks.

Using the data of 770 multinational manufacturing companies, we analyze the relationship between production footprints and profitability during four calendar semesters in 2018 and 2019 (N = 2,940), investigating the moderating role of companies' production network type.

We find that companies with networks distinguished by both high levels of product complexity and process sophistication profit the most from producing to a greater extent in high-cost countries. For these companies, shifting production to low-cost countries would be associated with negative performance implications.

Our findings suggest that the production geography of companies should be attuned to their network type, as defined by the companies' process sophistication and product complexity. Manufacturing in low-cost countries is not always the best choice, as doing so can adversely affect profits if the products are highly innovative and the production processes are complex.

We contribute to the scarce empirical literature on managing global production networks and provide a data-driven analysis that contributes to answering some of the enduring questions in this critical area.

For the past 20 years, Latin American countries have gone from being a low-cost region to significant players in the world economy, with five of its countries ranked among the world’s 50th largest by gross domestic product. This paper aims to study the contribution of Latin American researchers in the field of supply chain management (SCM) to aid an understanding of the Latin American impact within global supply chains (SCs).

The authors present a study which includes a bibliometric analysis of the papers authored by Latin American researchers in the SCM field and which were exclusively published in journals included in the Journal Citation Reports. In addition, the authors conducted a survey to Latin American researchers and consultants to gain greater understanding of the main difficulties, which in their opinion, have negatively affected the SCM area in Latin America within the past five years, and identify possible misalignment between Latin American research and the challenges for SC in the region.

The results show that Latin American research on SCM in the past nine years is not significant for the field considering the number of papers, citations and the papers published in top journals. Another interesting finding is the lack of collaboration among researchers from different Latin American countries, as well as with corporate. Finally, survey results reveal significant differences regarding the main difficulties each country perceived as relevant.

Comparing results from both analyses, relevant misalignments stand out between published research and the main difficulties detected. These suggest a challenging opportunity for Latin America, emphasizing the need to increase research contribution of the scientific community, through collaboration and alignment toward overcoming the most troublesome difficulties for Latin America. Therefore, the authors suggest future regional research directions which could also help global companies to tackle the challenges faced and optimize performance of their Latin American SCs.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, no previous research on the quality and impact of Latin American research in SCM has been conducted. Also, misalignments between researchers and practitioners in the region, which allow identifying weaknesses of Latin American SCs, have not been studied before.