Search results

Artificial intelligence (AI) technologies have led to significant transformations across industries and society, including the field of education. The integration of AI in educational settings has the potential to improve students' learning experience and support their individual competencies when paired with non-AI methods. Despite the growing importance of AI in modern education, there remains a noticeable research gap regarding its use in entrepreneurship education and the effects of Chatbots on students' entrepreneurial competencies. To address this gap, an exploratory study was conducted on undergraduate students who were tasked with using ChatGPT to improve their business model canvas.

The chosen methodology aligned with the research purpose, aiming to explore the relationship between Generative AI and competencies. Due to the novel nature of the research problem, an exploratory study was conducted using a mixed methods approach. A survey with open- and closed-ended questions was designed, and statistical and text analyses were performed to interpret data and test identified propositions.

The findings of this study indicate that ChatGPT can enhance the types of students' entrepreneurial competencies considered in this study: spotting opportunities, creativity, vision, valuing ideas and ethical and sustainable thinking. The results show that ChatGPT can be particularly helpful to improve the ability of students of valuing ideas.

Overall, this study highlights the potential of adopting ChatGPT in experiential learning methodologies for enhancing students' entrepreneurial competencies and improving their learning outcomes.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse how different strategic goals of (micro-, small- and medium-sized firms=SMEs) relate to the business model innovation (BMI) paths that SMEs take when improving their business.

The authors conducted 11 in-depth case studies involving SMEs innovating their business models (BMs).

The authors found evidence that strategic goals of SMEs (start new business, growth and profitability) lead them to alternative innovation path in terms of BM components affected. Growth seekers start from the right-hand side of a BM Canvas, while profitability seekers start from the back end, the left side of a Canvas; and new businesses adopt a cyclical approach considering BM components in turn, while at the same time redesigning and testing the BM. The findings of this study also indicate that all three paths gradually lead to improvement in several BM components.

Findings indicate that a strategic management view in which strategic goals define BMI also applies to SMEs. The distinctive BMI paths that the authors identified provide evidence to suggest that, although the SMEs may not have an explicitly formulated strategy, their strategic goals determine the type of improvements they make to their BM. All three SME groups started their improvements from different BM components and changed several elements in their BMs in a specific order, forming distinctive BMI paths. Finally, to understand the BMI in SMEs better, more research is needed into BMI processes and into the way BMI is managed in SMEs.

The findings of this study help SMEs to anticipate the next steps in their path towards an improved BM. By mirroring their approach to the BMI paths, they can better manage their BM makeover process and focus on their innovation activities. For providers of BMI tools and methods, the study indicates which SME innovation tasks could be supported by tools and how the tools should be aligned with the BMI paths.

BMI is attracting growing attention in both research and practice. However, knowledge concerning BMI in SMEs is limited. The authors contributed to BMI research by focussing on the BMI paths of SMEs, i.e. the often sequential, non-linear and iterative steps taken to improve the business by making changes to specific BM components.

This study aims to offer novel insights on how industrial marketing might contribute to bringing innovations to market in the peculiar case of health care. This study aims at shedding first light on how the alignment between dissemination and exploitation activities might contribute to bringing to market innovations developed by public–private partnerships funded by the European Commission (EC).

The theoretical development comes from an inductive research design based on the 42-month pan-European H2020 research project NESTORE aimed at developing an integrated portfolio of innovations for the healthy aging of European citizens.

This study advances the theory and practice of industrial marketing in health care by conceptualizing an actionable method to align dissemination and exploitation activities within EC-funded projects, facilitating that innovations will go to market. The method is composed of five phases. First, an external analysis to define market opportunities and users’/stakeholders’ needs. Second, an internal analysis to identify the most promising exploitable outputs. Third, scenarios crystallization to define the most suitable scenarios (business models) to bring the selected exploitable outputs to market. Fourth, exploitation and dissemination alignment through the identification and involvement of the most relevant stakeholders. Fifth, scenario refinement and business plan.

This study is relevant because many EC-funded projects still fail to move innovations from labs to market, thus limiting the benefits for the European citizens and the competitiveness of Europe with respect to the USA and China. Although this relevance, past studies overlooked the peculiar context of EC-funded innovation projects, privileging pharmaceutical and biomedical companies. This study advance theory and practice of industrial marketing in health care.

This study investigates the sustainability models of non-profit and hybrid organizations, which aim to balance economic, social and environmental objectives. The research introduces the Sustainability Model Canvas to analyze these organizations and identify common patterns, unique characteristics and managerial insights to balance the triple bottom line.

The research utilizes the Sustainability Model Canvas to examine the sustainability models of 200 non-profit and hybrid organizations. Data were collected from secondary sources, including articles, reports and websites. The analysis was conducted using the activity system theoretical framework, which helped to identify design elements and themes within the business models of the studied organizations.

The study reveals four primary sustainability model patterns: donated income, earned income, public income and auto-generated income. An additional mixed approach pattern is identified, combining elements from the four primary patterns. The research highlights the parallels between these sustainability models and multi-sided platform business models, offering managerial suggestions for leveraging these patterns to achieve sustainability.

The study is based on secondary data, which may limit the depth of insights compared to primary data collection. At the same time, the chance to consider hybrid organization through multi-sided platform lenses provides relevant contributions to both the literature streams.

The identified sustainability model patterns and managerial suggestions can serve as blueprints for non-profit and hybrid organizations aiming to design or innovate their sustainability models. The Sustainability Model Canvas offers a practical tool for organizations to visualize and balance their triple bottom line objectives.

The research underscores the importance of integrating social and environmental considerations into business models, promoting a holistic approach to sustainability that can lead to broader social and environmental benefits.

This research contributes to the business model literature by extending the focus beyond traditional profit-oriented organizations to include non-profit and hybrid organizations. The introduction of the Sustainability Model Canvas provides a new tool for designing and analyzing sustainability-oriented business models. The study also suggests considering sustainability models as multi-sided platforms, offering new insights for both academic and practical applications.

Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) are a form of distance education courses. They have been celebrated as revolutionizing the way learners access education and the way colleges and universities could expand education on a global scale beyond their traditional campuses. The purpose of this study is to identify the pedagogical strategies used for instruction and assessment in leadership-oriented MOOCs and gain a more refined understanding of the current state of MOOCs in leadership education. This study examines 96 leadership MOOCs across the platforms of Coursera, EdX, FutureLearn, Canvas.net, and Standford Online through a content analysis research framework. The study concludes with a discussion of leadership MOOC pedagogy and presents the current state of MOOCS among leadership education and professional development.

The transition to a circular economy in the built environment is key to achieving a resource-effective society. The built environment can be made more circular by applying circular building components. The purpose of this paper is to present a design tool that can support industry in developing circular building components.

The tool was developed and tested in five steps. In Step 1, the authors analysed existing circular design frameworks to identify gaps and develop requirements for the design tool (Step 2). In Step 3, the authors derived circular design parameters and options from existing frameworks. In Step 4, the authors combined and specified these to develop the “circular building components generator” (CBC-generator). In Step 5, the CBC-generator was applied in the development of an exemplary component: the circular kitchen and tested in a student workshop.

The CBC-generator is a three-tiered design tool, consisting of a technical, industrial and business model generator. These generators are “parameter based”; they consist of a parameter-option matrix and design canvasses. Different variants for circular components can be synthesised by filling the canvasses through systematically “mixing and matching” design options.

The developed tool does not yet support establishing causal links between “parameter-options” and identification of the most circular design variant.

The CBC-generator provides an important step to support the building industry in developing and implementing circular building components in the built environment.

Whilst existing tools and frameworks are not comprehensive, nor specifically developed for designing circular building components, the CBC-generator successfully supports the integral design of circular building components. First, it provides all the design parameters which should be considered; second, it provides extensive design options per parameter; and third, it supports systematic synthesis of design options to a cohesive and comprehensive circular design.

The purpose of this paper is to identify and describe the drivers of lean approaches and successful management of wearable technology start-ups. The paper is a descriptive study that employed a case study methodology based on semi-structured interviews with ten start-ups’ managers in Wearable Technology 2017 conference. Participants were selected based on convenience sampling and the pre-set criteria. The current study contributes to this field through the main findings, which suggest that four stages need to be considered by starts-up for a successful market readiness, including the time of entry and overcoming market entry barriers, product attributes, product development process, and commercialization. Finally, findings were categorized in the form of an iterative learning loop model and also, practical strategies and methods were recommended for successfully going through each stage.

One of the leading factors that shape product and service delivery are data collected in databases and other repositories maintained by companies. The transformation of such data into knowledge and wisdom may constitute a new source of income. This paper aims to explore how small/medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) advance their business models (BMs) around data to handle data-driven products and how this contributes to their innovativeness and performance.

To investigate the phenomenon, the as-is BM of a multinational SME was mapped and its limitations were revealed through a qualitative study. The BM canvas was used. Then the data-driven approach was innovated within the facility management (FM) industry, where a high volume of operational and sensor-based data being collected creates added value in terms of new data-based products.

A data-driven business model (DDBM) blueprint for the FM industry that supports the need to complement service-driven operations with the data-driven approach is delivered. Enhanced BM equips a facility manager with additional managerial tools that enable decreasing property utilization costs and opens up new opportunities for generating revenue. This paper drafts the way to evolve from service to data-driven business and point out the attitudes that managers should adopt to promote and implement DDBM.

The DDBM constitutes a guideline that supports FM organizations in focusing their activities and resources on generating business value from data and monetizing data-driven products.

The research expands knowledge regarding BMs and their evolution. The gap regarding the DDBM innovation within the FM industry is filled.

The purpose of this article is to promote an innovative approach to education development projects by the application of business modelling tools and methods.

The proposed method is based on tools and methods from the business modelling area, such as stakeholder mapping, SWOT analysis, business modelling canvas and scenario analysis. The applicability of the approach is illustrated by a case study conducted on an engineering programme, where qualitative and quantitative data were gathered through interviews, surveys and workshops.

Utilising business modelling tools for development projects in higher education gives several benefits: (1) knowledge-informed decision making; the methods require good understanding of the current situation as well as possible strategies to be applied, that is data gathering is necessary before decision making; (2) structured decision making by applying a step-by-step approach for the development project; (3) including different stakeholder's perspectives in order to gain a holistic understanding and avoid sub optimisation.

The approach promotes innovation and action driven development rather than a bureaucratic and metric based improvement process. Tools and models from the business area have previously been applied for educational development. However, a holistic business modelling approach for educational development has not yet been applied.

Taking the dialogic organizational development perspective, this study aims to investigate the framing processes when engaging in dialogue for strategy implementation and how these enable the evolution of implementation opportunities.

Through a qualitative exploratory study conducted in a large multinational, the authors analyse the dialogue and interactions among 25 dyads when identifying opportunities to contribute to strategy implementation. The data analysis relies on a process-coding approach and linkography, a valuable protocol analysis for identifying recursive interaction schemas in conversations.

The authors identify four main framing processes – shaping, unveiling, scattering and shifting – and provide a framework of how these processes affect individuals’ mental models through increasing the tangibility of opportunities or elevating them to new value hierarchies.

From a theoretical perspective, this study contributes to the strategy implementation and organizational development literature, providing a micro-perspective of how dialogue allows early knowledge structures to emerge and shape the development of opportunities for strategy implementation.

From a managerial perspective, the authors offer insights to trigger action and change in individuals to contribute to strategy when moving from formulation to implementation.

Rather than focusing on the structural control view of strategy implementation and the role of the top management team, this study considers strategy implementation as a practice and what it takes for organizational actors who do not take part in strategy formulation to enact and shape opportunities for strategy implementation through constructive dialogue.