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The value of relational capital generated by entrepreneurs with their internal and external environment (Hormiga et al., 2011a, b), provides considerable resources when properly leveraged. It is particularly important in environments such as the high tech sector of incomplete information and weak economic markets such as new products, markets or technologies (Davidsson and Honig, 2003). The purpose of this paper is to examine how incubated technology entrepreneurs build relational capital for a new venture formation in the social context of a Higher Education Institution.

The study took a qualitative approach based on content analysis of business plans and in-depth interviews with 25 technology entrepreneurs on an incubation programme – South East Enterprise Platform Programme – for technology graduates in the South East of Ireland.

The study found that technology entrepreneurs during new venture formation engaged in four types of relational capital activities, namely, development of networks and contacts, relationship building, accessing and leveraging knowledge experts and members of associations.

Incubator programmes need to actively support social building activities of technology entrepreneurs. Higher Education Institutes knowledge assets and networks are critical elements in supporting incubator technology entrepreneurs.

The study identified four types of relational capital building. The authors also found using Jones-Evans (1995) categorisation of technology entrepreneurs that users, producers, opportunists and non-technical entrepreneurs engaged in client focused relational capital building, whereas researcher types networked with service providers and displayed arms length relational capital building styles.

This paper seeks to provide insights into key areas of business support used by technology entrepreneurs who start businesses in north west Wales.

This research uses a qualitative research approach and a purposive sample of eight small technology firms based on and off technology parks. A card research methodology is piloted in one firm and then incorporated into semi‐structured interviews with entrepreneurs.

Technology entrepreneurs access direct and indirect support including: grants from local and central government; help from, banks and professionals; universities; technology incubation units, and; collaborations and networks. Evidence also confirms some of the challenges that entrepreneurs face in accessing business support.

This research provides clear indications to public sector organisations, universities and business support agencies as being the most important aspects of business support needed for new technology‐based firms.

Successful development of technology firms is recognised as a driver for change, particularly in deprived regions. Solutions to issues faced by technology entrepreneurs in terms of business support and accessibility to grants may increase the likelihood of business success and the boosting of local economies.

Although researchers have explored the value and role of university incubator firms and the role of networks, and also the importance of geographically situated incubation units in relation to stimulation of innovation and entrepreneurial activity, there is a paucity of research in the area of business support for technology entrepreneurs which this paper addresses.

The study examines how adopting e-paisa technology (a mobile payment system) enhances micro-entrepreneurs' perceived success and subjective well-being during the COVID-19 global pandemic. The study also theorizes the moderating effects of gender through a moderated-mediation model.

The data are collected from 282 micro-entrepreneurs in Pakistan using a two-week time-lagged approach to test the hypothesized framework. The analysis was conducted using the PROCESS macro moderated-mediation method.

The results affirm that adopting e-paisa technology positively relates to perceived entrepreneurial success, ultimately increasing the entrepreneur's subjective well-being. Furthermore, in hypothesized moderated-mediation paths, the moderation effect of gender was stronger for women than men.

From the perspective of diversity, equality and inclusion, adopting a digital mobile payment system can be regarded as a catalyst for the inclusion of women entrepreneurs in marginalized communities, enabling them to continue their micro-businesses in times of global crises. Further, it is also suggested that public–private sector partnerships are essential for promoting a sustainable entrepreneurial ecosystem that subsequently leads to social and financial inclusion in marginalized communities.

The mediating role of perceived entrepreneurial success contributes to understanding the importance of psychological functioning among technology acceptance model (TAM) attributes and entrepreneurs' subjective well-being. In addition, theorizing gender differences in TAM and subjective well-being relationships revealed women's advantages, challenging the prevailing belief that women are less fortunate in entrepreneurial endeavors. This raises the need to reconsider and maybe change the perspective to consider women as a disadvantaged group in entrepreneurship.

Business plan writing seems the panacea to gain stakeholder legitimacy and financial backing. Our chapter explores the contributions and disconnections between business plan writing and the start-up process for incubated technology entrepreneurs. The study is set in the South East Enterprise Platform Programme (SEEPP), an incubator programme for technology graduate entrepreneurs in the South East of Ireland. Using a purposive sample of technology entrepreneurs in start-up mode, we took a qualitative approach consisting of content analysis of 40 business plans and in-depth interviews with 25 technology entrepreneurs. Our research found that writing a detailed business plan constrains the technology entrepreneur’s natural penchant for action, compelling them to focus on business plan writing rather than enactment. Technology entrepreneurs favour a market-led rather than funding-led operational level document to plan, and learn from, near-term activities using milestones.

The aim of this chapter is to present and analyze the role of public entrepreneurship programs in fostering technology-based entrepreneurship in Turkey. More precisely, the authors of the chapter present and analyze the public policy programs aimed at entrepreneurship that have been put into action in Turkey in the last 20 years. The particular focus is on the type of programs that have been introduced, what have they achieved so far, and their contribution to the economy in terms of technology-based entrepreneurship. Together with the statistics about the output of the programs, data are also provided by a series of interviews with technology-based entrepreneurs to develop a deeper understanding of the effectiveness of those programs. Recommendations and ideas are derived from the research to improve these programs.

The objective of this article is to map and assess current evidence in women's technology entrepreneurship in business incubators with the aim of producing a conceptual framework that will allow us to understand how gender shapes the life of women technology entrepreneurs.

The authors conducted a systematic literature review. The data set comprises 49 publications, including peer-reviewed articles and prominent book chapters. These are first categorized according to their feminist approach and second analysed using an inductive thematic approach to map dominant concepts and research methods.

The authors develop a framework with four dimensions: (1) antecedents, (2) challenges, (3) outcomes and (4) solutions. The authors show that current literature mainly focuses on the challenges faced by women technology entrepreneurs in incubator settings. Although liberal feminist research is present, social feminist perspectives dominate, with poststructuralist research as a close second. Interestingly, current research has not focused much on individual characteristics; in other words, the baggage that women bring with them in terms of prior experiences is hardly investigated, even though there is general agreement that socialization shapes women's experiences of and responses to gender challenges.

The authors contribute to the literature in the following ways: The developed framework assists in understanding how gender is an overarching factor that shapes every facet of the life of a women technology entrepreneur, and how incubator environments intensify gender issues. Indeed, being in an incubator environment adds an extra layer of gendered conditions, thus intensifying the challenges that women meet, creating a “triple masculinity trap”. The review highlights that little is known about how early conditioning shapes women technology entrepreneurs' reactions to the gendered conditions they meet and that there is a lack of research on how women “do entrepreneurship”.

The purpose of this paper was to ascertain how social entrepreneurs were required to recognize their new ventures’ scope and scale of operations. The firm boundary was based upon two dimensions, namely, the scope of the offering and its scale. The objective of this research was to ascertain the thinking regarding this of social entrepreneurs engaged through technology-based social entrepreneurship (TBSE).

This study conducted an in-depth interview of 26 technology entrepreneurs engaged in social entrepreneurship ventures in India. The interview was carried out based upon a semi-structured open-ended questionnaire. This study undertook thematic and relational content analysis to develop a model of technology-based social entrepreneurs’ venture scoping and scaling.

This study found that the antecedent variables were the level of support perceived by social entrepreneur from government and at the industry level. Furthermore, the variables’ entrepreneurial and market orientation of social entrepreneurs were found to be the independent variables. These four variables in turn determined the explorative and exploitative horizon of the technology-based social entrepreneurs. Finally, an interplay of these variables ascertained the perspectives of social entrepreneurs engaged in TBSE regarding the notion of their firm’s scope and scale.

The theoretical insights developed in this research study provided an integrated theoretical perspective accommodating both environmental perspectives (industry support and government support) and organizational perspectives (entrepreneurial and market aspects). This was in context of TBSE.

The insights from this research study could provide a robust and comprehensive understanding to social entrepreneurs regarding the strategic thinking towards scale and scope for a technology-based social venture.

To the best of the author’s knowledge, this study was one of the first theoretical works in TBSE towards scaling versus scoping perspectives.

This study examines the social and human capital of successful Arab and Jewish technological entrepreneurs in Israel, and explores how human and social capital differ between technology-based industries.

A quantitative study was conducted using a sample of 1,184 technology-based ventures from two technology-based industries—life science (LS) and information technology (IT)—that were founded by Jewish and Arab entrepreneurs.

The results show that in the LS industry, successful Arab entrepreneurs possess higher human and social capital compared with Jewish entrepreneurs. However, in the IT industry, the Jewish entrepreneurs possess higher human and social capital. These findings reflect the deeper entrepreneurial challenges and opportunities regarding ethnic entrepreneurs' ability to break through technology-based industries. Future research directions are provided.

This study makes two contributions to the theoretical understanding of ethnic entrepreneurship and technology-based ventures. First, this study focuses on the impact of human and social capital on economic growth in the context of technological entrepreneurship in technology-based industries, since the ethnic entrepreneurship literature has mainly focused on traditional industries. Second, this study examines the effect of the founders' ethnicity, and explores how human and social capital factors vary across industries due to their specific contextual characteristics.

High technology entrepreneurs have received increased attention over the past decade as it is now recognized that these entrepreneurs are able to build companies that generate high wage employment and high levels of wealth. While much anecdotal evidence has been offered as to who these entrepreneurs are, little is known about their early efforts to launch a high technology company. Based on the most recent data that specifically profiles nascent entrepreneurs throughout the United States, we extrapolate and discuss implications of our findings. Specifically, we identify who, where, when, and why these entrepreneurs are engaged in this important form of business launch. We conclude by suggesting how decision-makers and institutions can better facilitate and nurture the launch of high technology firms.

Discusses case study and interview evidence to examine the evolution and development of entrepreneurial strategies in the high technology small firm (HTSF). Evidence from case study material suggests that a period of non high technology development can be an advantage for the entrepreneur to gain essential contacts, networks and learn to develop strategy, as well as time to acquire income and funding to permit the development of the technology‐based firm. The paper discusses evidence from four rich case studies. Each of these involved a non‐high tech start‐up, yet this was still crucial to the entrepreneurship process and learning of the entrepreneur. Material from case evidence is also combined with interview evidence to discuss the critical factors in the learning process and the development of entrepreneurial strategies from a programme of interviews with HTSFs. It is argued that the evolution of a marketing strategy is part of the learning process involved in entrepreneurial development, we need to understand the diversity of this process if intervention is to be better informed by practitioners and by policy makers. In this paper we stress the diversity of entrepreneurial development, within HTSFs, discuss the importance of learning in entrepreneurial development for developing marketing strategies and develop policy implications for intervention.