Entrepreneurial and Small Business Operations Commons^™

500 Year Documentation, Francis T. Marchese, Phd, Maninder Pal Kaur Shergill

Wilson Center for Social Entrepreneurship

Museum visitors today can regularly view 500 year old art by Renaissance masters. Will visitors to museums 500 years in the future be able to see the work of digital artists from the early 21st century? This paper considers the real problem of conserving interactive digital artwork for museum installation in the far distant future by exploring the requirements for creating documentation that will support an artwork's adaptation to future technology. In effect, this documentation must survive as long as the artwork itself -- effectively, in perpetuity. A proposal is made for the use of software engineering methodologies as solutions …

Open-Source It Support For Effective Social Entrepreneurship, Lixin Tao

Wilson Center for Social Entrepreneurship

To better support its mission, a non-profit organization needs to effectively reach out to the public, collect information and opinions form the public, support effective brainstorming and discussions, implement effective business processes for non-profit operations, and support effective governance of the organization. The latest information technologies have provided better alternative for non-profits to run smoother and more effectively.

In this paper we conduct a critical study of two popular open-source contents management systems, Drupal and WordPress, introduce Drupal to social entrepreneurs, and explain how it can support most of the tasks outlined above. Specific guidance is provided for setting up …

Back To Square One: An Examination Of Social Entrepreneurship Centers And Programs, Noushi Rahman, Phd, Rebecca Tekula, Phd

Wilson Center for Social Entrepreneurship

Prominent social entrepreneurship (SE) centers and programs in North America, Europe, and Asia are examined in terms of their position in the institutional structure, initial and additional funding, teaching initiatives, research achievements, and outreach activities. Performance was computed using a transparent coding scheme. Low correlations with institutional endowment and SE center/program performance offer some evidence of discriminant validity of our rankings approach. Performance scores were used to rank-order SE centers and programs. Such an approach to examine SE center/program performance goes beyond the perception-based ranking instruments that popular magazines employ to evaluate subject-specific rankings. We examined data from 28 centers/programs, …

Entrepreneurial Passion: Sources And Sustenance, Melissa S. Cardon Phd, Michael Glauser

Wilson Center for Social Entrepreneurship

Entrepreneurial passion helps coordinate cognition and behavior of entrepreneurs, providing the fire that fuels innovation, persistence, and ultimate success. But where does entrepreneurial passion come from? Using a phenomenological approach, we conduct a qualitative study of 80 entrepreneurs and analyze their oral histories to explore the sources of entrepreneurial passion, as experienced by entrepreneurs. Our discovery process in the interviews suggests six major sources of entrepreneurial passion: passion for building/developing the venture, passion for people, passion for the product or service, passion for inventing, passion for competition, and passion for a social cause.