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The purpose of this article is to determine the factors in the context of entrepreneurship that are evident in Ecuador, a country that has the highest rate of female entrepreneurship worldwide with 34% according to the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) (2019).

A qualitative study was carried out with 39 cases, applying in-depth personal interviews and focus groups to selected cases in the main cities of Ecuador.

The results suggest that “mumpreneurship”, copreneurship and sustainable thinking arise in response to the environment. Deepening then in the perspective of the 5M proposes by Brush et al. (2009) that give us a framework of the macroenvironment of women entrepreneurship and offers a holistic understanding of women's entrepreneurship, adding a sixth “M” which is “Environmental Thinking” or the environmental thinking that is present in the current context.

This article is one of the first to analyse the context of female entrepreneurship in Ecuador and determine the context factors that influence the identification of opportunities and the exploitation of entrepreneurial opportunities. It also presents the expectations and challenges of the women who shape the authors’ case studies and give voice to Ecuadorian women. Consequently, this research will support the configuration of policies that supports each of the stages of women's entrepreneurial processes.

Este artículo pretende determinar los factores del contexto del emprendimiento que se evidencian en el Ecuador, país que ostenta la tasa más alta de emprendimiento femenino a nivel mundial con un 34% de acuerdo al GEM (2019).

Se realizó un estudio cualitativo con 39 casos, aplicando entrevistas personales a profundidad y grupos focales a casos seleccionados en las principales ciudades del Ecuador.

Los resultados sugieren que el “mumpreneurship”, el copreneurship y el pensamiento sostenible surgen como respuesta al entorno. Profundizando entonces en la perspectiva de las 5Ms propuesta por Brush et al. (2009) que ofrece una comprensión holística del emprendimiento de mujeres, añadiendo una sexta “M” que es el “Medioambiental Thinking” o el pensamiento ambiental que está presente en el contexto estudiado.

Este artículo es uno de los primeros en analizar el contexto del emprendimiento femenino en Ecuador y determinar los factores del contexto que influyen en la identificación y en la explotación de oportunidades emprendedoras. Además presenta las expectativas y retos de las mujeres que configuran nuestros casos de estudio y dan voz a las mujeres ecuatorianas. En consecuencia nuestra investigación servirá de apoyo para la configuración de políticas que apoyen cada una de las etapas del proceso emprendedor de las mujeres.

The sustainable transition towards the circular economy requires the effective use of artificial intelligence (AI) and information technology (IT) techniques. As the sustainability targets for 2030–2050 increasingly become a tougher challenge, society, company managers and policymakers require more support from AI and IT in general. How can the AI-based and IT-based smart decision-support tools help implementation of circular economy principles from micro to macro scales?

This chapter provides a conceptual framework about the current status and future development of smart decision-support tools for facilitating the circular transition of smart industry, focussing on the implementation of the industrial symbiosis (IS) practice. IS, which is aimed at replacing production inputs of one company with wastes generated by a different company, is considered as a promising strategy towards closing the material, energy and waste loops. Based on the principles of a circular economy, the utility of such practices to close resource loops is analyzed from a functional and operational perspective. For each life cycle phase of IS businesses – e.g., opportunity identification for symbiotic business, assessment of the symbiotic business and sustainable operations of the business – the role played by decision-support tools is described and embedding smartness in these tools is discussed.

Based on the review of available tools and theoretical contributions in the field of IS, the characteristics, functionalities and utilities of smart decision-support tools are discussed within a circular economy transition framework. Tools based on recommender algorithms, machine learning techniques, multi-agent systems and life cycle analysis are critically assessed. Potential improvements are suggested for the resilience and sustainability of a smart circular transition.

There is a large literature about crisis entrepreneurship, spanning from necessity, natural disaster and long-term conflict entrepreneurship. This paper situates pandemic entrepreneurship as a unique form of crisis entrepreneurship.

The authors utilize the Kirznerian and Schumpeterian theories of entrepreneurship to understand pandemic entrepreneurship. Using evidence from the US COVID-19 pandemic, the authors argue that pandemics impact both the “identification” and “action” moments of entrepreneurship.

The Kirznerian identification moment becomes much more uncertain for entrepreneurs because of fluctuating conditions, such as public health conditions, new potential variants of the virus causing the pandemic, shifting government mandates and rules and so forth. The Schumpeterian action moment becomes more challenging because of the necessity of physical distancing and because, generally, all crises raise the cost of entrepreneurial action. That said, the authors still document considerable entrepreneurship during pandemics as entrepreneurs adapt to the increased uncertainty and costs by rely upon local and customary knowledge.

This research finds that entrepreneurs, depending upon the crisis, face differing constraints. Specifically in times of pandemic, entrepreneurs face difficulty recognizing opportunities because of shifting conditions and acting upon opportunities because of financial and political constraints. This research thus implies that there are large opportunities for alleviation of such constraints if there were to be future variants or pandemics.

Practically speaking, this research affects how people study entrepreneurship. By recognizing the differing constraints that pandemic entrepreneurs face, the authors can better understand the last several years, and can also prepare better policy wise for future pandemics or further variants of COVID-19.

Socially, entrepreneurship can be a large factor in recovery from disasters and crises. By recognizing and perhaps alleviating constraints that pandemic entrepreneurs face, future crises could have better responses and recoveries.

Although several studies have examined entrepreneurship during the COVID-19 pandemic, the extant literature on pandemic entrepreneurship remains relatively underdeveloped and has not yet focused on what distinguishes pandemic entrepreneurship from other forms of crisis entrepreneurship. The authors highlight what pandemic entrepreneurship has in common with other forms of crisis entrepreneurship and pinpoint the various ways that is distinct.

This paper proposes an Exchange-Based View of the value creation process. The Borrowing from marketing literature, the EBV advances that entrepreneurs and stakeholders are tied by exchange relationships, through which they co-create value by reciprocally making and realizing promises of value.

Propositions are developed and offered to advance the role of exchange in the entrepreneurial value creation process.

The authors conceptualize the enterprise as a system of exchange relationships between entrepreneurs and their stakeholders, thus proposing an exchange-based view of entrepreneurship.

Such an account of the role of entrepreneurs and of their relationship with the stakeholders has meaningful implications for our understanding of the entrepreneurial tasks of opportunity recognition and exploitation.

Recognizing novel entrepreneurial opportunities arising from a crisis is of paramount importance for firms. Hence, understanding the pivotal factors that facilitate firms in this endeavor holds significant value. This study delves into such factors within a representative empirical context impacted by a crisis, drawing insights from existing literature on opportunity recognition during such tumultuous periods.

The authors conducted a qualitative inspection of 14 Italian firms during the COVID-19 pandemic crisis. The authors collected a rich body of multi-source qualitative data, including 34 interviews (with senior managers and entrepreneurs) and secondary data (press releases, videos, web interviews, newspapers, reports and academic articles) in two phases (March–August 2020 and September–December 2020).

The results suggest the existence of a process model of opportunity recognition during crises based on five entrepreneurial influencing factors (entrepreneurial knowledge, entrepreneurial alertness, entrepreneurial proclivity, entrepreneurial personality and entrepreneurial purpose).

Various scholars have highlighted that, in times of crises, it is not easy and indeed very challenging for entrepreneurs to identify novel entrepreneurial opportunities. However, recent research has shown that crises can also positively impact entrepreneurs and their capacity to identify new entrepreneurial opportunities. Given these findings, not much research has analyzed the process by which entrepreneurs identify novel entrepreneurial opportunities during crises. This study shows that some entrepreneurial influencing factors are very important to identify new entrepreneurial opportunities during crises.

The purpose of this paper is to establish a conversation between international business and international entrepreneurship literatures by analyzing if and how international opportunities are related to the internationalization process of the firm.

This paper reports finding from a backward-looking longitudinal, qualitative, embedded case study of an internationalized Brazilian firm, covering all 13 foreign markets where the firm has operated over 18 years.

Modal shifts within foreign markets were rare. Over time, the firm learned how to refine, rather than change, the servicing modes within each foreign market; it also learned how to better develop internal and exploitative opportunities, manage a portfolio of servicing modes across foreign markets, and use more complex mode servicing packages. Overall, international opportunities and the internationalization process of the firm were inextricably connected.

The authors acknowledge limitations related to the statistical generalizability of the research method and suggest that statistical validation is needed as the research on opportunities and the internationalization process of the firm progresses.

Internationalizing firms should carefully consider the choice of entry mode in foreign markets. They should also understand that learning is not necessarily associated with change.

The authors show that the internationalization process of a traditional firm can be analyzed through an opportunity lens. This means associating characteristics of international opportunities with mode continuation and modal shifts in all foreign markets where the firm operates.

The aim of this paper is to investigate how social media use (SMU) affects the entrepreneurial orientation (EO) and entrepreneurial opportunities (EOP) of start-ups.

The hypothesis testing and analysis were conducted using the partial least squares approach to structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM).

The research shows that SMU has a strong positive impact on EOP, while it has no impact on start-ups' EO. Interestingly, the impact of SMU on EOP is stronger than the impact of EO on EOP.

The findings add new knowledge to the emerging research stream that focuses on SMU in the context of entrepreneurship and provides useful insights for both scholars and practitioners. In particular, the evidence suggests implications for stakeholders with regard to their firms' entrepreneurial activities. This research offers several possible avenues for future research.

Entrepreneurial profits flow from differences in expectations between buyers and sellers regarding the future value of resources. This article investigates whether differences in expectations can be influenced by an entrepreneur to produce greater profits. It is argued that there are several points in the entrepreneurial process where such interventions can occur and that the use of these techniques should be associated with superior wealth creation. The article also explores the ethical implications of influencing stakeholders in this way.

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.

Entrepreneurial trait and behaviour approaches are used to identify differing entrepreneurial profiles. Specifically, this study aims to determine which entrepreneurial competencies (ECs) can predict entrepreneurial action (EA) for distinct profiles, such as male versus female, start-up versus established and for entrepreneurs within different age groups and educational levels.

The research was conducted using a survey method on a large sample of 1,150 South African entrepreneurs. Chi-squared automatic interaction detection (CHAID) algorithms were used to build decision trees to illustrate distinct entrepreneurial profiles.

Each profile has a different set of ECs that predict EA, with a growth mindset being the most significant predictor of action. Therefore, this study confirms that a “one-size-fits-all” approach cannot be applied when profiling entrepreneurs.

From a pedagogical standpoint, different combinations of these ECs for each profile provide priority information for identification of appropriate candidates (e.g. the highest potential for success) and training initiatives, effective pedagogies and programme design (e.g. which individual ECs should be trained and how should they be trained).

Previous work has mostly focused on demographic variables and included a single sample to profile entrepreneurs. This study maintains much wider applicability in terms of examining profiles in a systematic way. The large sample size supports quantitative analysis of the comparisons between different entrepreneurial profiles using unconventional analyses. Furthermore, as far as can be determined, this represents the first CHAID conducted in a developing country context, especially South Africa, focusing on individual ECs predicting EA.