Entrepreneurial and Small Business Operations Commons^™

A Comparative Study Of Performance, Impediments, Advantages, And Disadvantages Of Construction And Professional Disadvantaged Business Enterprises, Ravi Sharma

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Construction and professional disadvantaged, minority, and women business enterprises (DBE/MBE/WBEs) face several impediments that hinder their business growth. A questionnaire survey was conducted to determine the important factors that affect their business performance, impediments faced by these business enterprises, advantages, and disadvantages of being DBE (DBE will be an umbrella designation for DBE, MBE, and WBE). This study compares the difference in responses from these two groups. A total of 333 business enterprises responded to the questionnaire. The survey results showed that construction firms gave significantly higher importance to "financial" issues and "safe work practices" as their most important factors …

Is It Time To Dump Your Vendor Management System?, Rihaz Z. Chughatta

Rihaz Z Chughatta

Most companies today have either implemented, or are exploring, some form of a Vendor Management System (VMS) to consolidate their external suppliers. Companies that sell a VMS point out that this system allows a Customer to get the most cost-effective solution for their needs within a certain category of suppliers; the “when suppliers compete, you win” mentality prevails. Some of the VMS even have performance metrics by which suppliers are measured and then rated in the system; thus making the case that not only does a VMS provide the most cost-effective, but also the best performing and most efficient solution …

Lunalight - Bringing Light To The Expanding World, Gabriela M. Igel, Daniel J. Patrick, Kimberley M. Smith

Materials Engineering

The LunaLight, a solar rechargeable light and cell phone charger, addresses the lack of access to electricity faced by 1.4 billion of the world’s population (International Finance Corporation). The LunaTech team has developed a product that is bright, simple, compact, versatile and competitive with existing products. Through a partnership with the non-profit organization One Million Lights, LunaTech has improved a previous team’s design to address user feedback, concerns of durability, and manufacturability.

The LunaLight design includes a 5 component plastic housing held together by 4 screws, a surface mounted PCB, a lithium-ion (Li-Ion) battery, one high-brightness LED, a solar panel, …

Bypassing Roadblocks To Technical Information: Locating Freely Available Technical Information For Entrepreneurs, Anne E. Rauh

Anne Rauh

If you have ever had to seek technical information, you have probably run into an information access roadblock or a pay-wall. This is a major issue for our students as they leave our universities and our subscription resources and move on to become practitioners of their field. This session will outline the different types of freely available technical information - including patents, government funded technical reports, and open access journal literature - and demonstrate how to access them. The session will also give examples of how to integrate these resources into the classroom through design projects and information seeking assignments. …

Bypassing Roadblocks To Technical Information: Locating Freely Available Technical Information For Entrepreneurs, Anne E. Rauh

Libraries' and Librarians' Publications

If you have ever had to seek technical information, you have probably run into an information access roadblock or a pay-wall. This is a major issue for our students as they leave our universities and our subscription resources and move on to become practitioners of their field. This session will outline the different types of freely available technical information - including patents, government funded technical reports, and open access journal literature - and demonstrate how to access them. The session will also give examples of how to integrate these resources into the classroom through design projects and information seeking assignments. …

An Empirical Investigation Of Entrepreneurship Intensity In Iranian State Universities, Behin Elahi

Behin Elahi

The purpose of this study is to propose a framework to evaluate the entrepreneurship intensity (EI) of Iranian state universities. In order to determine EI, a hybrid multimethod framework consisting of Delphi, Analytic Network Process (ANP), and VIKOR is proposed. The Delphi method is used to localize and reduce the number of criteria extracted from a deep literature review, according to the social and economic conditions of Iranian state universities by using an expert panel, including sixty-eight country-wide academicians and practitioners. After that, a group approach to ANP was utilized as an evaluation method to derive the weights of each …

Applying Mobile Application Development To Help Dementia And Alzheimer Patients, Jean F. Coppola Phd, Marc A. Kowtko, Christina Yamagata, Shannon Joyce

Wilson Center for Social Entrepreneurship

Caregiver anecdotes attest that music and photographs play an important role for family members diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease (AD), even those with severe AD. Tablets and iPads, which are prevalent, can be utilized with dementia patients in portraying favorite music and family photographs via apps developed in close partnership with geriatric facilities. This study addresses cognitive functioning and quality of life for people diagnosed with dementia via technology. Research has shown that technology instruments such as iPods, help stimulate those with dementia. This study focuses on innovative devices such as iPads and tablets, which are mainstream and easy to use, …

Techscribe Ste Term Checker: Uwe Muegge Reviews A Free Vocabulary Checking Tool For Asd-Ste100, Uwe Muegge

Uwe Muegge

The Simplified Technical English Maintenance Group (STEMG) recently made its Simplified Technical English (STE) specification ASD-STE100 available to the technical communication community free of charge. While STE was originally developed for the European aerospace industry, the ASD-STE100 specification has become the most widely used controlled language on the planet. The STE Term Checker is a new tool that lets users of Simplified Technical English automatically check texts for compliance with the word lists and vocabulary rules of ASD-STE100.