Business Commons^™

Competitive Sustainability: The Intersection Of Sustainability And Business Success, Clyde Eiríkur Hull

Articles

Sustainability that beats the competition is different from sustainability that does not. Some who care very much about sustainability may not care at all about business success. However, they should. If businesses were to see that competitive sustainability leads to financial success, they would take it up and abandon nonsustainable practices

Acquiring An Entrepreneurial Mindset, Maw Der Foo

Asian Management Insights

Key ingredients to facilitate the acquisition.

Entrepreneurship, Ouafaa Hmaddi

Open Educational Resources

Syllabus for ECO 41250 Entrepreneurship

Experiential Learning: The Case Of Training Mba Students In An Asian School, Chiyachantana N. Chiraphol, Kuan Yong David Ding, Jack Jiajun Hong

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Consulting for a startup company is an effective way for Master of Business Administration (MBA) students to learn about management consulting, and the ways and means of a startup company. This paper discusses the experience of an MBA startup project within the context of a core corporate finance course. The project requires the active engagement of several groups of stakeholders—MBA students, the university’s entrepreneurship incubator, a selection of startup companies, and the project’s academic collaborators. In line with the literature, we find that entrepreneurship education through student-startup collaboration contributes to the students’ entrepreneurial learning, and that the offering of an …

Distinguishing Unpredictability From Uncertainty In Entrepreneurial Action Theory, Ryan W. Angus, Mark D. Packard, Brent B. Clark

Marketing & Entrepreneurship Faculty Publications

The traditional view that perceived and archival uncertainty measures are substitutable proxies for “true” environmental (entrepreneurial) uncertainty presumes an “all-seeing eye.” Adopting a representationalist epistemology, we distinguish environmental (objective) unpredictability from entrepreneurs’ subjective uncertainty, which has so far been theoretically confounded. It is, in fact, possible for an entrepreneur to be highly certain despite excessive unpredictability and vice versa. Theoretically distinguishing these constructs has fundamental implications for entrepreneurial action theory. For example, because intentional action is consciously originated, unpredictability influences action only indirectly, while uncertainty has direct effects. Outcomes, on the other hand, are directly affected by the complexity and …

Burning The Flame Of Entrepreneurship, Singapore Management University

Perspectives@SMU

From starting a business in a foreign land to adapting to the internet economy, Florence Fang is all about enhancing human lives

Is Guanxi Still Everything When Doing Business In China?, Singapore Management University

Perspectives@SMU

Research finds that traditional guanxi-style connection-building is no longer the main key to success when doing business in China, and a new generation of Chinese entrepreneurs form business ties based on reputation and capabilities

Turtletree: Cultivating Food Sustainably, Fengru Lin

Asian Management Insights

Lin Fengru, co-founder of TurtleTree, speaks about her entrepreneurial journey in the biotech space.

Sacred Business: Outlining Business As Mission For The Fulfillment Of The Great Commission, Eli Jackson

Senior Honors Theses

Business as Mission (BAM) is the operation of a for-profit business located in a cross-cultural setting and aimed toward the fulfillment of the great commission. This definition reveals four key success factors for BAM: support, financial and otherwise, for both the business and the missionaries; the ability to gain access to cross-cultural settings; the opportunity to advance the gospel; and the requirement of managing both missional and business goals. Examining each of these areas, along with the historical effectiveness of BAM, reveals that BAM is an efficient and effective missional strategy, which should be used to see the Great Commission …

Raising Capital: The Startup Journey, Simon J.D. Schillebeeckx, Guarav Nagar

Perspectives@SMU

Make sure you get a lawyer to read your term sheet, and keep talking to VCs and other founders

Entrepreneuring Ahead While Helping Others, Anna Haotanto

Perspectives@SMU

Anna Haotanto is a living example of what financial prudence and planning can create. In this month of celebrating women, her advice to women is to achieve financial freedom so that they too can finance their dreams

A Foot In The Door: Field-Experiments On Entrepreneurs’ Network Activation Strategies For Investor Referrals, Jared Nai, Yimin Lin, Reddi Kotha, Vissa Balagopal

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We investigate entrepreneurial network activation—the processes by which entrepreneurs select specific contacts from their existing personal network and persuade the selected contacts to provide referrals to access targeted early-stage investors (venture capitalists or angel-investors). We differentiate between selection of entrepreneur-centric contacts versus investor-centric contacts. We also distinguish between persuasion tactics that induce contacts' cooperation through promises of reciprocity versus offers of monetary incentives. We conducted two field-experiments in India and one in Singapore. Our primary field-experiment involved 42 Singapore-based entrepreneurs seeking referrals from 684 network contacts to reach a panel of four investors. Our evidence suggests that selecting investor-centric contacts …

Qalo: When Is It Time To Exit?, Jeff Cohu

Faculty Publications

The case follows the origin story of the startup company QALO from its inception and launch through the first few years of scaling up the business to a potential exit decision by a co-founder. The case is intended to be used in undergraduate entrepreneurship or sales and marketing courses at the junior and senior level. The case is designed to illustrate the challenges of scaling a fast-growing startup and to evaluate the options of a founder's exit strategy. The case is useful to demonstrate concepts such as lean startup methodology, sales channel selection, startup business model development, and exit strategy …

Opportunity Zones: A Program In Search Of A Purpose, Ofer Eldar, Chelsea Garber

Faculty Scholarship

In 2017, Congress created the Opportunity Zone (“OZ”) program to stimulate economic growth in low-income communities. The program was characterized by its unprecedented scale relative to previous place-based development efforts and was described as “perhaps the most ambitious economic development tool to come out of Congress in a generation.” However, the program was quickly criticized on numerous grounds, and its design flaws are so severe that several legislators have called for its reform or repeal.

This Essay argues that the root of the OZ program’s problems is a strong mismatch between its stated purpose and its actual terms. We discuss …