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Craig Hoekenga is CEO of Microboard Processing, Inc. (MPI), a very successful subcontract electronics manufacturing company located in Seymour, Connecticut. There are many reasons why Hoekenga would stand out in any gathering of CEOs, but one of the most arresting reasons would be that Hoekenga credits his success to God and considers MPI a “Christian business.” The New England Journal of Entrepreneurhip editors started with a plant tour and then caught up with Hoekenga in his office.

Crowdfunding campaigns reflect the personality traits of the entrepreneur, influencing the chances of a successful fundraising. In this study, the authors focus on three different entrepreneurs’ personality dark traits: narcissism, Machiavellianism and psychopathy. Through a text analysis of 338 equity-crowdfunding campaigns in the UK, the authors identified narcissistic expressions used by entrepreneurs in their pitches, and their impact on funding success. The authors found an inverted U-shape relationship between entrepreneurs’ narcissism and the crowdfunding success. On the other hand, entrepreneurs’ psychopathy has a negative linear relationship with crowdfunding success. This study contributes to the entrepreneurship literature, highlighting the importance of displayed entrepreneurs’ personality traits in engaging with crowd investors.

A recent paper by Morris et al. (2013b) presented evidence that students can develop entrepreneurial competencies through international fieldwork. This paper explores whether the same results can be developed in a traditional classroom setting.

The study is a systematic replication of the Morris study with the addition of a matched pair, quasi-experimental design, with a self-replication. Data were collected on 13 self-reported competencies at the start of a semester from two groups using the Morris instrument. The treatment group was exposed to a curriculum designed to teach entrepreneurial competencies, and both groups were re-surveyed at the end of the semester. The process was then repeated with a different cohort, one year later, to replicate the initial study.

Five competencies saw significant increases in the first treatment group. However, only three of these competencies increased more in the treatment group than the control group. In the replication study, only one competency was significantly higher in the treatment group, and that competency was not one of the original three.

Educators and policymakers should select a curriculum that is valid and reliable. Entrepreneurship educators and policymaker should devote more time to evaluating the effectiveness of different pedagogical techniques for improving entrepreneurial competencies.

To the best of our knowledge, this is one of the first studies in entrepreneurship education to undertake a matched pair, quasi-experimental design with an in-study replication. The results indicate that serious inferential errors arise if simpler designs are used, even though such designs are the norm in entrepreneurship research.

National systems of entrepreneurship (NSE) broadly act as a means of allocating resources driven by the constant search for opportunities at the individual level through the launching of new businesses and firms with such activities, and their results are governed by the specific institutional characteristics of each country. In contrast to the institutional emphasis on innovation systems, in which such institutions establish and regulate actions, institutions are only able to regulate those who act with the results stemming from such individual actions, the core driver of national entrepreneurship systems.

Given the challenges faced by companies and societies in general over mitigating climate change, support for sustainable entrepreneurship is fundamental. However, there has to be any study of the impact of national entrepreneurship systems on sustainability. This research therefore analyses the impact of national entrepreneurship systems on the sustainability of countries.

The authors conclude that those countries deploying higher level national entrepreneurship systems return better results in terms of their sustainability.

The authors, thus, seek to contribute towards the academic throughout deepening the knowledge prevailing on the relationship between entrepreneurship and sustainability. The authors also seek to enable managers, entrepreneurs and politicians to grasp how entrepreneurship is a systemic factor, and it is at this level that it may make its greatest contribution to bringing about sustainability.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a systematic literature review of the research published on financial inclusion (FI) and financial exclusion (FE) in developed countries using key terms and strict inclusion and exclusion criteria.

In total, 52 papers were deemed to be relevant to the analysis. These works were critiqued using a framework that addressed geographical contexts, topics, methodologies and theoretical frameworks.

This review highlights the uneven level of development of the academic debate between North America, the UK and continental Europe, and identifies the different theoretical frameworks that construe the body of literature in each region. In addition, the findings show the scant offer of work on the impact that the digital economy has on FE, as well as the reduced number of studies which have focused on certain vulnerable groups and the access to some financial services.

The studies reviewed have not analyzed the specific needs of vulnerable groups while considering the different contexts and pathways to exclusion. The evaluation of solutions and strategies to achieve inclusion is one of the least addressed aspects in the literature.

The paper synthesizes the main contributions of the top literature on the redefinition of FI/FE in developed countries, the role of fringe services and new determinants of exclusion. The proliferation of studies regarding FI in low- and middle-income countries has generated a great amount of meta-analysis and systematized reviews of asymmetric results. However, no systematized literature review on the broad scope of FI/FE in developed countries has been published in the last decade. This work sheds light over poorly analyzed areas of research that refer to notable social problems.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the role of creative destruction as mediation between the speed of innovation and competitiveness of food small and medium enterprises (SMEs). Creative destruction that is competence-based and market-based is usually done by incumbent enterprises to create barrier to entry and widen the distance with similar businesses, then the role of creative destruction as a mediation to strengthen the competitiveness is investigated.

To test this, data were collected from 161 SMEs that is the food SME population in Great Malang covering three areas namely Malang Municipality, Malang Regency and Batu Municipality. warp partial least square-structural equation modeling (WarpPLS-SEM) was applied because parameter estimation with WarpPLS-SEM is very efficient because it has greater statistical requirements than other covariant-based methods, which is more likely to deliver results that match the population condition (significant if that is in fact significant in the population).

The pace of innovation development is very important to improve the competitiveness of food SMEs. The idea of innovation is quickly realized and products that enter the market faster have a greater chance to improve competitiveness through profit and productivity. The pace of innovation development enhances the competitiveness of food SMEs. This study proves that competitiveness can be increased once the pace of innovation development is followed by creative destruction. Creative destruction in this case is done through increased competence and maintain the innovations that have been achieved by food SMEs. Increased business competence could be conducted through cost efficiency enhancing product quality and improving worker skill. It is conducted while maintaining the achieved innovation to strengthen the market network customer service and innovation in product packaging. The government’s role is proven not to strengthen the relationship of the pace of innovation development and competitiveness of food SMEs. The role of the government is reflected through credit facilities business licensing promotion marketing and training. These have been carried out by the government. Nevertheless, these activities do not generate widespread impact in strengthening the pace of innovation development to enhance the competitiveness of food SMEs.

The main limitation of this study is that it analyzes processed foods and innovations in general. Future research should investigate one type of processed food based on the typology of innovation so as to provide more effective and efficient recommendations.

This is the first known analysis of innovation speed and creative destruction for SMEs of food sector.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how network competence is related to the growth of domestic and international SMEs originating from the Nordic region. Business networks have been found to drive internationalization of SMEs in the Nordic context, but the impact of network-related organizational competencies on them has not been considered.

The authors apply regression analysis on a sample of 298 Finnish SMEs across five industry sectors, gathered via an online survey in 2008, and with the data having been updated for its financial indicators up to 2010.

The authors find that cross-relational network competence is a significant predictor of growth in internationally operating SMEs. This result is robust across measures among the firms. In comparison, the network competence of domestically operating SMEs is not related to their growth, and relationship-specific competence does not influence growth.

The study does not account for longitudinal aspect of competence development. Growth is measured by the growth in sales and assets, and there are other ways to measure organizational growth. A single-country context also extends some restrictions on the generalizability of the results, although they could be expected to hold across small, open economies similar to Finland and the Nordic area.

The results imply that the strategic aims of SMEs determine their need for network competence, those SMEs seeking internationalization and growth through geographic expansion come to benefit from developing certain types of network competence.

Policy implications arise where governments in Finland and in the Nordic area may aid SMEs’ internationalization efforts by enabling the growth-seeking firms with increased resources for competence development.

This is the first study to examine how the organizational competencies to develop and manage business networks, in particular dyadic and network-level competencies, come to determine realized growth outcomes in domestic and international SMEs. It contributes to the theory of SME internationalization and international entrepreneurship from the business network point of view, while providing further knowledge on internationalization of SMEs originating from the Nordic area.

The purpose of this paper is to present personal testimony of one of the early researchers on small to medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs) and entrepreneurship in France.

The story of a half‐century evolution is divided into five decades, of SME and entrepreneurship development in France. The development of the French academic system of research on SME and entrepreneurship is described through some teams.

During the two early decades (1955‐1975), both the social legitimacy and economic competitiveness sharply and deeply lowered, while that after the world crisis (1975) until nowadays (2005), the social, political, and economic interest for SME and entrepreneurship has continuously increased.

The academic research pioneered SME during the 1960s, and entrepreneurship during the 1980s. The historical development of the national network of teams and associations is described, increasingly including the international context.

Beyond the personal testimony, this contribution enlightens the problems entailed by the lack of legitimacy of the spirit of enterprise anchored in French society, and, more generally, in all the societies averse to individual risk taking.

The testimony is based on the personal experience of one scholar who early promoted in the French academic system Master and Doctoral courses on SME and entrepreneurship. It outlines some original concepts relative to small firms.

Examines the characteristics of the entrepreneurial personality and the effects of changes in the entrepreneur’s personal relationships. According to the empirical findings, becoming an entrepreneur and acting as an entrepreneur are both aspects of the entrepreneur’s learning process, which in turn has an effect on the personality characteristics of the entrepreneur. The entrepreneur’s drive to solve problems (= mastery) had increased, and control by powerful others decreased since the start‐up phase. Changes in the entrepreneur’s relations with others were also observed to have an effect on the entrepreneur’s personality characteristics. The empirical findings also show that as the number of co‐operative partners decreased, control by powerful others also decreased, and that, since the start‐up phase, entrepreneurs whose personal relations had increased also showed a clear increase in mastery.