Business Commons^™

Seniorpreneurs: The New Aspect Of Retirement, Valentina Cordero

Capstones

In the U.S., entrepreneurs ages 55 to 64 increased by almost 5 percent in the last decade, while the young generation saw a decline. People 55 and older want something new than a traditional employment. They feel more confident in their ability to open businesses.

"First Of It's Kind", Adenike Oyebanjo

Adia Coleman

The Spatial Nature Of Entrepreneurship, Economic Prosperity And, The Informal Economy, Besnik Skenderi, Diamanta Skenderi

UBT International Conference

Businesses are not refining products and they are not adding any value on the sold products, but they are using the opportunity to purchase goods with lower price and then sell those products with a higher price, where the difference between those prices is profit. In addition, knowledge is an important factor, which explains the arrays of known profit opportunities, which entrepreneurs face, and those opportunities are not equally discoverable in all locations. The issue with classical and neoclassical models of land rent is a fact that they were based on an assumption where perfect knowledge of transportation requirements and …

Shaping The Future Through Entrepreneurial Thinking

Business Exchange

Dean Ray Whittington discusses the feature articles on entrepreneurship programs at the Driehaus College of Business, including DePaul's Coleman Entrepreneurship Center and the Evening Cohort MBA program.

New Startup Lab Will Enhance Entrepreneurial Opportunities For Students And Alumni

Business Exchange

DePaul, in collaboration with the Coleman Entrepreneurship Center, is launching a new entrepreneurial startup lab and coworking space. Set to open in 2015, the lab will provide a place for students to work on their new business ventures, alumni to connect, and members of the Chicago business community to network.

Big Ideas In Action: Entrepreneurship Program Helps Alumni Create Winning Ventures

Business Exchange

DePaul's top-rated undergraduate and graduate entrepreneurship programs began in 1982 and have turned out successful entrepreneurs. This article profiles four alumni who have created new businesses, continued family businesses, and invested in new startups with a strong entrepreneurial spirit.

Finance And Social Responsibility In The Informal Economy: Institutional Voids, Globalization And Microfinance Institutions, Hao Liang, Chris Marquis, Sunny Li Sun

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We examine how different types of country-level globalization and the industry structure of microfinance institutions (MFIs) affect organization-level microcredit interest rates which crucially affect the poor's entrepreneurial opportunities. We develop an opportunity structure perspective that argues that MFI interest rates can be reduced by egalitarian-based social globalization but increased by neoliberal-based economic globalization. Moreover, stronger presence of nonprofit organizations in the microfinance industry lowers interest rates. Furthermore, these three forces can moderate the relationship between MFIs' outreach to the poor and average interest rate. Analyses of 2,559 MFI observations across 74 countries from 2002 - 2012 largely support our hypotheses.

Oecd Policy Briefing Informal Entrepreneurship.Pdf, Colin C. Williams

Colin C Williams

Forecasting Demand: Sensitivity Analysis Of Financial Assumptions Using Ms Excel, Gary B. Roberts, Kirk C. Heriot

Atlantic Marketing Journal

According to research on entrepreneurship education, the creation of a business plan is the most popular teaching method (Solomon, 2007). Textbooks in the field will often have a chapter devoted to the contents of the business plan and separate chapters about important elements of a business plan such as marketing, finance, and operations. Instructors must prepare their students for arduous task of writing all of the parts of the business plan within a team.

One of the most challenging aspects of a business plan is the financial projections. Clearly, if an entrepreneurial team intends to present their plan to a …

How Microlending Affects Innovation And Entrepreneurship: Evidence From Ethiopia, Robert Hirth

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Advocates of microlending suggest it is a sustainable intervention that reaches the poor directly and offers them the means to invest and improve their incomes (Khavul, 2010; Morduch, 1999; Yunus, 2007); yet, impact studies of these interventions have suggested they often have little or even a detrimental impact on borrowers (Van Rooyen, Stewart & De Wet, 2012). This dissertation examines the efforts to promote entrepreneurship and alleviate poverty in developing countries through microlending. I begin by reviewing the microlending literature, and in particular, impact studies of the effect microlending is having in developing countries. Next, I review theory and empirical …

Family Firms And Entrepreneurship: Contradiction Or Synonym?, Sascha Kraus, Justin Craig, Clay Dibrell, Stefan Mark

Justin B. Craig

Extract: This Journal of Small Business and Entrepreneurship (JSBE) Special Issue was motivated by increasing intellectual curiosity from within the entrepreneurship academic community to study entrepreneurial phenomenon in a family business context. Family enterprises dominate the commercial landscape in all economies, and interest in the unique challenges facing this business genre is growing. In many family firms, ownership and management are maintained across several generations, and a key challenge for long-term survival is to sustain the entrepreneurial spirit of the founding generation of entrepreneurs (Littunen and Hyrsky, 2000). All firms regularly need to renew their way of doing business in …

Impact Of Effectuation Based Interventions On The Intentions To Start A Business, Muhammad Shahid Qureshi, Fawad Mahdi

Business Review

Intention plays a very important role to measure one’s willingness to pursue entrepreneurship as a career. Previous researchers have differed about various antecedents that impact the entrepreneurial intention to start a business. Entrepreneurship education (EE) assumes to play an important role in shaping traits and attitudes of an entrepreneur, contrary to the “entrepreneurs are born” school of thought. We use the Individual entrepreneurship orientation (IEO) construct as developed by Boltan and Lane (2011) to measure its impact on the intention levels of students. The use of Effectuation (Sarasvathy, 2001)as a pedagogical tool is used as a mediating variable between IEO …

Innova Technology (B): Growing The Business For Anti-Loss Devices, Desai Narasimhalu, Sarita Mathur

Arcot Desai NARASIMHALU

This case is the second part of a two-part series on Innova Technology, a technology start-up company based in Singapore. The two cases focus on: Case (A) – Developing, producing and marketing a product innovation Case (B) – Growth strategies and its related challenges for a young technology company The case is set in November 2012, two months after the launch of PROTAG, a new anti-loss device developed by Rick Tan and his partner, Jonathan Lim. Tan is the chief executive officer of Innova Technology Private Limited, the company that manufactures and sells PROTAG. After a highly successful product launch, …

Innova Technology (A): Seeking A Market For Anti-Loss Devices, Desai Narasimhalu, Sarita Mathur, Adina Wanjun Wong

Arcot Desai NARASIMHALU

This case is the first part of a two-part series on Innova Technology, a technology start-up company based in Singapore. The two cases focus on: Case (A) – Developing, producing and marketing a product innovation Case (B) – Growth strategies for a young technology company The case is set in May 2012, and begins with the protagonist, Rick Tan, chief executive officer of Innova Technology Private Limited, contemplating what his company’s go-to-market strategy should be. Tan and his business partner, Jonathan Lim, who is also the Chief Technology Officer for Innova Technology, developed PROTAG, a new anti-loss device, using Bluetooth …

Quantine: Virtualising The Interview Process, Arcot Desai Narasimhalu, Adina Wong

Arcot Desai NARASIMHALU

The case is set in January 2012, and begins with Kenneth Yap, the founder of Quantine Pte Ltd, strategising on an effective growth plan for his company. Quantine was a job candidate pre-screening service provider, which specialised in asynchronous video interviews. In the three years since its inception, market forces and internal factors had necessitated a change in its original corporate strategy. The business had started out in 2009, focusing on competency assessments for testing technical skills for the information technology industry. It also provided aptitude tests for companies to assess candidate qualities such as numerical skills and the ability …

Entrepreneurial Culture: Developing A Theoretical Construct And Its Measurement, Matthew A. Wong

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The concept of “entrepreneurial culture” has existed for decades, described as an organizational culture embodying and championing entrepreneurial characteristics and attributes. These have included risk-taking, innovation, and creativity; the elements one would expect to see among entrepreneurs as individuals. The literature suggests that entrepreneurial culture is related to a number of positive organizational outcomes, such as generating new business and improving firm performance.

Despite years of entrepreneurial culture discussion, however, it remains a relatively ambiguous theoretical construct. Numerous perspectives have emerged describing the phenomenon and the concept, yet it remains unfocused and equivocal. Different definitions and sets of characteristics and …

Law Estates Wine, Devon Pitts, Cheyenne Jepsen, Will Akkaya

Case Studies in Agribusiness

Law Estate Wine differentiates its high end wines through quality and highly personal wine tastings. Believing that word of mouth and personal experience is the best way to market high end wines, Law offers tastings only through appointments, with 4-6 people per tasting. They also submit wines to selective wine journals and competitions. This selective business model appears to be successful for this boutique (under 10,000 cases) winery.

Adventure Tourism Management, Nikki Fabrizio

Honors College Theses

Adventure tourism management is one of the fastest growing sectors in the tourism market, and while much is known about the rapid expansion of this niche as well as the consumers of it, little is known about its management side. This study seeks to discover why managers enter this industry and what keeps them here, while also gathering demographic data. The data gathered from this study will help flesh out the little information there currently is about the managerial aspect of the industry. The results of this study can be used to better recruit and train future employees, a vital …

The Development And Production Of The Comodo Keeper, Ashley Cook

Senior Theses

As a musician of large ensembles, I have seen the destruction the harsh sound of a metal mouthpiece cap falling onto the cold, hard floor can do to both the concentration of the members of the rehearsal as well as the mood of the conductor. Many saxophonists and clarinetists keep their mouthpiece caps on the edge of their flimsy music stands because during periods of rest, it is best to preserve the reed with the cap. However, with virtually every rehearsal I partake in, shuffling one’s music and grabbing pencils off the stand results in an accident. Witnessing this interruption …

Huntsman Students Collect Entrepreneurship Prizes, Usu Jon M. Huntsman School Of Business, Klydi Heywood

Jon M. Huntsman School of Business News Collection

The final stage in the Utah Entrepreneur Series, the Utah Entrepreneur Challenge, is one of the largest business plan competitions in the nation. This April five out of nine challenge prizes were awarded to two Huntsman students’ businesses.

Western Perspectives On Entrepreneurship And Their Sensitivity In The Context Of Asian Cultures, Helen Gamage, Ananda Wickramasinghe

Ananda Wickramasinghe

This paper explores western perspectives and discursive practices rooted in entrepreneurship, and argue their limited applicability in non-western cultures. It appears that the western entrepreneurship paradigm does not draw on the deep-rooted settings in society and culture of many developing countries. As a result, indigenous entrepreneurial realities are not well understood. The methods employed to transform western ideologies into other cultural settings were ineffective as they were not developed to be flexible to contextual variations. The different disciplinary perspectives and the reductionist approach of the western paradigm resulted in limited returns to entrepreneurship programmes since one disciplinary perspective can never …

Culture Of Social Institutions And Behavioural Manifestations In Entrepreneurship Development: A South-Asian Case, Helan Gamage, Ananda Wickramasinghe

Ananda Wickramasinghe

This paper is based on the South Asian culture, social institutions and entrepreneurship in particular to Sri Lankan entrepreneurship. Sri Lankan culture demonstrates various complex and unique behavioral patterns. Sri Lankan entrepreneurial culture can be identified to have evolved through two different routes. One can be traced to the origins of Sri Lankan civilization and the other to the western influence, originating from the Industrial Revolution, and imposed through colonization which systematically destroyed the indigenous feudal system. Moreover, the ideology of entrepreneurship training and education in Sri Lanka is exclusively western in origin and character. Observations of this research showed …

Financial Literacy And The Success Of Small Businesses: An Observation From A Small Business Development Center, Pearl Dahmen, Eileen Rodríguez

Numeracy

Small business is the backbone of the U.S. economy; when the financial literacy skills of entrepreneurs fall short of those needed to operate a successful business, it is more than the individual business at risk. In 2012, 14 small businesses requesting growth-acceleration consulting services from the Florida Small Business Development Center at the University of South Florida were assessed financially as part of the service provided by the Center. Financial ratios were used to analyze the business’s financial condition. While performing the financial analysis of these firms, we also surveyed the business owners to determine their level of financial understanding …

The Chinese Social Enterprise: A Global Phenomenon With Chinese Characteristics, Amanda Jingtong O'Malley

Honors Theses

Social entrepreneurship, a concept that integrates business strategies with achieving social goals, is gaining traction in China. However, it is a distinctly Chinese variant of an approach exported by Western entrepreneurs. The purpose of this thesis to is analyze the Chinese social enterprise by identifying China’s socioeconomic and political forces that create the unique environment in which this trend is taking root. By examining how these factors are changing in China’s progressively more market economy, I conclude that key characteristics of the Chinese social enterprise are also shifting in response—moving from a civil society- originated model to a market‐based social …

From The Editor, Spring 2014, Joshua Shuart

New England Journal of Entrepreneurship

No abstract provided.

Internationalising Family Run Business: Overcoming Conflict, Embracing Cohesion And The Role Of Entrepreneurship, Marty Reilly, Pamela Sharkey Scott

Conference papers

Family run businesses, despite their importance to both local economies and at a broader national level have traditionally received significantly less attention in business research than either Small to Medium Enterprises (SMES) or new venture business start-ups.

The study proposes to examine the internationalisation of family run businesses with a focus on cohesion, leadership and the role of entrepreneurship, both during and directly thereafter the critical interim of expanding operations across international borders.

Proposing a multiple case study methodology, we intend to explore the practicalities of how family run enterprises expand beyond their national borders and embrace wider, international markets. …

A Case Study On Empowering A Non-Profit Organization To Better Help People With Disabilities Through M-Health, James Lawler, Hannah Moller, Robert Salloum

Wilson Center for Social Entrepreneurship

Local non-profit organizations are constrained in developing efficient methods for helping people with disabilities confined at their own homes. The cost of labor of physically serving such people is a continued issue at the organizations. This case study explores an entrepreneurial focus on best-in-class applications of m-Health devices for improving methods of home medication support furnished by a leading metropolitan non-profit organization. This study explores further the potential of hosted infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) m-Health remote monitoring systems technology. The findings of this study can benefit non-profit organizations considering economic entrepreneurial innovation in interactive managed care technology.

Regional Institutional Development, Political Connections, And Entrepreneurial Performance In China's Transition Economy, Wubiao Zhou

Wubiao Zhou

While previous research has emphasized the role of political connections in facilitating entrepreneurial performance in China’ early reform period (1978 – 1999), this study argues that regional institutions had been increasingly conducive to entrepreneurial activities and, thus, also played a key role in China’s entrepreneurial success during that period. The purpose of this study is twofold. First, it aims to demonstrate how regional institutional development facilitated entrepreneurial performance in China. Second, it aims to understand how formal institutional development among Chinese regions affected the role of political connections. Using a two-level hierarchical dataset on Chinese private enterprises, this study finds …

Rethinking The Worker Classification Test: Employees, Entrepreneurship, And Empowerment, Griffin Toronjo Pivateau

Griffin Toronjo Pivateau

The structure of the American workplace depends on the ability to distinguish between employees and independent contractors. Unfortunately, the law provides little to guide employers in classifying workers. The legal tests to determine worker status are confusing, yield inconsistent results, and are not suited to the evolving employment relationship. Traditionally, courts examine the amount of control exerted over the putative employee by the employer: The more control exerted by the employer over the work, the more likely it is that the worker will be considered an employee. Control, however, is not the only factor to examine in determining worker status. …

Booties, Bounties, Business Models: A Map To The Next Red Oceans, Steffen Roth Dr.

Dr. Steffen Roth

This quest is for pirate maps to blue oceans. The key problem involved is that blue oceans turn red whenever these maps make their way from pirates to mainstream entrepreneurs. Pirates therefore have an essential need for maps to the next blue oceans. In drawing on form theory, this article develops a map sheet, on which it appears that, throughout history, pirates navigated social borders. An analysis of the gaps in past and present maps of social differentiation then allows for the discovery of a largely uncharted quadrant of the blue ocean for entrepreneurship and entrepreneuring.