Entrepreneurial and Small Business Operations Commons^™

Business Plan For Airplane Mode Llc, Colette Kim

MA Projects

The purpose of the thesis is 1) to introduce the official business plan for the newly founded collective, Airplane Mode LLC, and 2) to further outline the curatorial blueprints of its inaugural exhibition titled 01, at Superfine! Art Fair, happening during the 2016 edition of Art Basel Week in Miami.

Business Plan - Art Marketing, Michelle Yu

MA Projects

Michianna & Co. is an art marketing company focusing on promoting Chinese contemporary artists in the Western art market (mainly New York).

Strategies Independent Coffee Shop Owners Require To Survive Beyond Five Years, Bruce Higdon

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Successful independent coffee shop owners in Washington struggle to compete with the larger coffee shop chains. The purpose of this qualitative multiple case study was to investigate what strategies owners of independent coffee shops in Washington use to survive beyond the first 5 years. Five independent coffee shop owners in Washington participated in the study and shared their practices and observations. Systems theory directed the study exploring the perspectives of successful independent coffee shop owners in Washington. Using communication skills and personal availability to answer questions and remain in contact throughout the research process built a rapport with participants. Data …

Micro-Loans: A Socially Responsible Corporate Investment, Olivia D. Marshall

Senior Honors Theses

This thesis seeks to examine the socially responsible actions of corporations across America in the funding of micro-financing endeavors both of foreign and domestic intent as a means to alleviate poverty. Micro-loans are examined in light of the history of corporate social responsibility and the magnitude of impoverishment across the globe. The overarching purpose of this paper stands to prove that funding micro-loans is a sufficient means of acting socially responsible for corporations nationwide as a sustainable solution to poverty.

A Formative Evaluation Of The Bloomington-Normal Entrepreneurial Ecosystem, Emily Rego

Capstone Projects – Politics and Government

This study serves as a formative evaluation of the Bloomington-Normal-McLean County, IL region’s entrepreneurial ecosystem, which the development thereof is a tactical strategy outlined in the recently created Bloomington-Normal economic development plan (also known as BN Advantage). An entrepreneurial ecosystem is a network comprising of entrepreneurs, supporting organizations and entities such as investors, governments, universities and various other organizations with a focus on economic development. Vibrant entrepreneurial ecosystems strengthen local entrepreneurial capacity, which then spurs economic development through job creation and growth, economic diversity and increasing a region’s competitive advantage. The methodology of this study involved combining qualitative and quantitative …

Legitimacy Of Local Food In The U.S. Market: Comparative Consumer Perspectives, Ali Asgari

Theses and Dissertations--Agricultural Economics

Measures of legitimacy have been described in terms of four legitimacy types, regulatory, normative, cognitive, and industry. This study provides one of the first and only empirical examinations of legitimacy, particularly with an application to local foods and sheds light on how consumers view various types of legitimacy related to local food. To apply the concept of legitimacy to local foods marketing, we take an empirical survey asking about consumer perspectives of local food, along with different shopping behavior questions.

Using cumulative logit models, results of the legitimacy models suggest that core consumers are more likely to place a high …

Friends Of The Children: Strategies For Scaling Impact, Jacen Greene, Nicki Yechin Lee, Eric Nelsen

Business Faculty Publications and Presentations

Friends of the Children, a nonprofit organization in Portland, Oregon, was founded in 1993 by retired entrepreneur Duncan Campbell to serve youth at the highest risk of teen parenting, incarceration, or dropping out of school. Each youth client was matched with a paid mentor from first grade through the end of high school. The costs of this intervention were high, but the outcomes were extremely impressive in each of the three risk areas. The total benefits to society of Friends of the Children’s intervention was estimated at $7 for every $1 spent on the program.

In the United States alone, …

A Systems Approach To Evaluation Metrics: A Case Study Of Salvation Farms, Julia D. Scheier

Capstone Collection

This paper examines how integrating systems thinking into nonprofit work and evaluation metrics can help to advance an organization’s mission and clarify that mission to the public. The researcher will utilize her practicum site at Salvation Farms, a small nonprofit in northern Vermont, as a case study to observe the extent to which this organization utilizes systems thinking and how current evaluation metrics can be improved to more effectively inform and involve the community. Salvation Farms’ mission, after all, is to build greater resilience into Vermont’s food system through agricultural surplus management.

The researcher offers a literature review on systems …

Women's Professional Sports: A Case Study On Practices That Could Increase Their Profitability, Danielle H. Mcardle

Honors Undergraduate Theses

Women’s professional sports leagues have often been considered a risky business endeavor. Critics cite low attendance, lack of sponsorships, lack of media rights deals, and numerous other reasons for why women’s professional sports leagues are not profitable. In analyzing the current landscape of women’s professional sport leagues, this paper uses a case study approach to develop a strategy that will highlight lessons learned from past women’s professional sports leagues, current professional sports leagues, sponsorship agreements, fans, social, digital, and mobile marketing strategies, and management practices to show how the business of women’s sports could be made into a more profitable …

Is The Woman-Owned Federal Contracting Program A Good Choice For Your Business?, Mary L. Graff

White Papers

Set asides narrow the playing field and increase your chance of winning contracts. A contracting specialist explains the federal government set-aside program for woman-owned businesses and explores the advantages and disadvantages.

Customer Service Through Incoterms, Josh Nichol-Caddy

White Papers

Settling for the "one size, fits all" shipping solutions typically offered by large logistics companies, small businesses miss out on customer service options that could help differentiate their products. This paper defines the terms and conditions of all the options Incoterms present.

Five Key Ways To Pitch Your Idea To Investors, Wei Jing

White Papers

Here are five key ways by which a startup can effectively pitch their ideas, focusing specifically on communicating financial information.

Perceptions Of Cause-Related Marketing Tactics, Robert Bernier

White Papers

Study of small business owners in Nebraska reveals reluctance to make judgements about tactics intended to manipulate customers and more certainty about genuine charitable actions.

Startups And Unmet Legal Needs, Alice Armitage, Evan Frondorf, Christopher Williams, Robin Feldman

Utah Law Review

Our survey results demonstrate that startup companies are exposed to a wide variety of legal needs from an early stage: when attorneys associated with the Startup Legal Garage were asked to handle a company’s most pressing legal needs, the average startup received assistance with over three distinct legal matters over the course of a thirteen-week academic semester. These issues often spanned multiple categories. Although matters frequently touched on a variety of topics within companies, strong similarities emerged in the types of issues faced by all startups in our sample. Almost 90% of the legal matters addressed by Startup Legal Garage …

The Entrepreneurial Commons: Reframing The Relationship Between Intellectual Property And Entrepreneurship, Michael J. Burstein

Utah Law Review

Reconceptualizing entrepreneurial activity as a knowledge commons leads us to ask a different set of questions than previous studies have, and to utilize a different set of methodological tools. As Part II described, existing approaches to understanding the relationship between IP and entrepreneurship focus on the firm and its reactions to various IP laws. By contrast, to the extent that the exemplar entrepreneurial activities described in Part III can be described as instances of commons governance, the analysis must necessarily be broader. The knowledge commons framework forces us to acknowledge that much of information production and dissemination depends on relationships …

Strategy/Enterprise Discourse Bounds In Business Talk., Brendan O'Rourke

Articles

Corporate strategy emerged as large non-owner managed firms became economically important (Knights and Morgan, 1991). Strategy became the substitute for the earlier enterprise discourse, which depended on the dominance, in entrepreneurial capitalism, of owner-managed firms. The discourses of strategy and enterprise developed as separate academic areas and as logics of two very different economic domains. From the late 1970s however, large organizations (Kanter, 1983:27) and governments have been urged to be more entrepreneurial (Klein et al., 2010; Osborne and Gaebler, 1993). Meanwhile, small firms were encouraged to be more strategic (Carr, 2000). This article looks at evidence from small …

Entrepreneurship Research In Management And Organizational Studies: A Contribution-Based Assessment Of The Literature, Vishal K. Gupta, Sajna Ibrahim, Chun (Grace) Guo, Erik Markin

New England Journal of Entrepreneurship

Entrepreneurship-related research in management and organizational journals has experienced rapid growth, particularly in the last several years. The purpose of this study is to identify the researchers and universities that have had the greatest influence on entrepreneurship research since the turn of the century. Using a systematic and comprehensive study identification protocol, the authors delve into the individual and institutional actors contributing to scholarship in entrepreneurial studies for the period from 2000 to 2015. Examination of top-tier management and organizational journals revealed that a total of 371 entrepreneurship-related articles were published during this period by 618 authors from 303 different …

The Glass Cage: The Gender Pay Gap And Self-Employment In The United States, Leanna Lawter, Tuvana Rua, Jeanine K. Andreassi Ph.D.

New England Journal of Entrepreneurship

Self-employment is often viewed as a more desirable work arrangement than working as an employee for a firm. Women are pushed into self-employment due to organizational factors, such as a shrinking workforce or limited job opportunities, while being attracted to self-employment by the many psychological and social benefits (e.g., independence, flexibility, work-life balance, job satisfaction). Despite more women moving into self-employment, this type of employment still has different financial consequences for men and women. This article investigates whether a pay gap exists for self-employed women after controlling for industry, occupation, and hours worked and seeks to quantify the gender wage …

Classics In Entrepreneurship Research: Enduring Insights, Future Promises, Vishal K. Gupta, Dev K. Dutta, Grace Guo, Golshan Javadian, Crystal Jiang, Arturo E. Osorio, Banu Ozkazanc-Pan

New England Journal of Entrepreneurship

Academic inquiry into entrepreneurial phenomena has had a rich history over several decades and continues to evolve. This editorial draws attention to the classics: seminal articles that make profound contributions to the development of an academic field in entrepreneurship studies. We focus on the formative years of entrepreneurship research, specifically the 1970s and 1980s, to identify classics using a key informant approach that surveys members of the journal editorial board. Each nominated classic is introduced and discussed by an editorial board member, with particular focus on research opportunities that may be pursued going forward. Analyzing classics allows for the recognition …

Women Business Owners’ Start-Up Motivations And Network Content, Jalleh Sharafizad, Alan Coetzer

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to examine how women small business owners’ (SBOs) business start-up motivations influence their network content.

Design/methodology/approach

Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 28 women SBOs who were recruited through purposeful sampling methods. Interview data on their start-up motivations were used to categorise them into three types: classic, forced and work-family. The interviews explored the network contents of the three categories of participants.

Findings

There were many similarities between network contents of classic and forced SBOs, as both groups had started their business for financial reasons rather than family reasons. All the participants’ networks contained …

Creativity, Design And Management In Australian Fashion Enterprises, Bruno Santarelli

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

In this study a number of Australian fashion enterprises are investigated in an effort to understand how product development is managed and creativity facilitated. Of particular interest was the interaction between the various actors in the creative process and the manner in which they influenced creative output. The study was underpinned by a wideranging review of the literature that reflects the multidisciplinary nature of creativity and innovation in business.

The study is timely because Australian fashion enterprises are operating in an increasingly challenging market with a perfect storm of competitive drivers at play. Technology enables instant dissemination of fashion trends …

Preparing Employees For Entrepreneurship In Retirement: A Case Study, Samuel Omonowa Aikhuomogbe

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

In Nigeria, 92% of retirees live in poverty because of insufficient preparation for entrepreneurship that could serve as an alternative income in retirement. Guided by the human capital theory, the purpose of this case study was to explore how 15 civil service employees in Grade Levels 15-17 at the public service attained small scale business information before retirement. All employees had knowledge, training, and experience in small-scale business operation. Fifteen employees participated in individual interviews and 5 participated in a focus group; data were also gathered from, employee training records, organizational policy documents on training, and public service documents regarding …

Women Entrepreneurs: Keys To Successful Business Development And Sustainability Beyond Five Years, Delores Duncan Foster

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Women-owned businesses are one of the fastest growing entrepreneurial populations, accounting for 8 million of the 28 million small businesses in the United States. Small businesses fail at a rate of 55% by the 5th year of operation and women, who own over 30% of all small businesses, contribute significantly to the 55% small business failure rate. Using Schumpeter's framework, this single exploratory case study investigated how women entrepreneurial small business owners use strategies to sustain their business operation beyond 5 years. A purposeful sample identified 2 women salon small business owners located in the Macon, Georgia metro area. Data …

Small Business Survivability Beyond Five Years, Koyandome Freddy Koyagialo

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

The United States has a high failure rate of small businesses, with 30% of small business failing within the first 2 years. The objective of this case study was to explore strategies successful small business owners use to achieve profitability beyond 5 years. The purposive sample for this study included 4 owners of successful small businesses in Atlanta, Georgia, who have been in business for at least 5 years. The conceptual framework was built upon disruptive innovation and susceptibility theory. Data were collected through semistructured interviews and company documents. The analysis revealed 3 themes, market research, passion and determination, and …

Success Strategies Among Immigrant Small Business Owners In The Southeastern United States, Tony Nnabue

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Although considerable concern exists regarding immigrant businesses, few studies address immigrant small business owners' strategies for success and sustainability. The purpose of this phenomenological study was to explore the strategies that immigrant small business owners in metro Atlanta, Georgia can use to sustain their business beyond 5 years. Cultural theory formed the conceptual framework for this study. A purposeful sample of 20 immigrant small business owners in metro Atlanta provided the data garnered from semistructured interviews for this research study. Using open coding, and modified van Kaam analysis of the interview data, 5 themes emerged for immigrant small businesses that …

Ethiopian And Eritrean Businesses Growth Barriers In The Washington, Dc Area, Sereke-Berhan Meres

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Prior studies have revealed that recent Asian and Hispanic immigrant entrepreneurs have made significant contributions to social change in the United States. Although African immigrant entrepreneurs have made such contributions, few studies exist about them, and there is limited knowledge about this business community. The purpose of this qualitative case study was to identify the barriers of growth in Ethiopian and Eritrean immigrant-owned firms in the Washington, DC area who were in business for a minimum of 3 years and represented various trade lines and geographical locations. The enhanced integrated model of ethnic business development, which proposes growth strategies by …

Success Strategies Saudi Entrepreneurs Used To Navigate Through Regulations In Jeddah, Farah Mehar Spencer

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Saudi Arabian entrepreneurs face major difficulties with the country's complex regulatory system. Based on Schumpeter's theory of entrepreneurship, the purpose of this phenomenological study was to reveal the lived experiences of Saudi entrepreneurs in navigating regulatory procedures in Jeddah. Data were collected through prolonged, face-to-face phenomenological interviews with 22 Saudi businesspeople who started successful businesses. The van Kaam method and member checking helped validate the transcribed data, which were subsequently coded into 4 themes. Four themes emerged from the data analysis: (a) obstacles in regulatory processes, (b) lack of information, (c) cumbersome procedures and need for alternatives to stringent protocols, …

Strategies For Growing And Sustaining Successful Small Businesses, Patrick Modilim Modilim

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Small business manufacturing enterprises represent viable means of creating employment, stimulating economic growth, and accelerating development. Many newly formed small business enterprises do not continue beyond 5 years after formation. The purpose of this multiple case study was to explore the strategies used by small business manufacturing leaders in Lagos, Nigeria to sustain their businesses, using general systems theory as the conceptual framework. The sample comprised 3 small business leaders who have sustained their business enterprises beyond 5 years after formation in Lagos, Nigeria. The data collections were through semistructured, in-person interviews and the review of business feasibility and planning …

Quantifying A Mining Investability Quotient To Mitigate Junior Mining Investment Risk, Jonathan Mickey Merguerian

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Uncertainty and risk are inherent features of investing in mineral exploration ventures. Investors rely on qualitative and quantitative analysis to evaluate risk of capital. The distinction between risk and uncertainty pertaining to mineral exploration is that risk is an opportunity for loss and uncertainty can be described as the range of probabilities that some condition may occur (Rose, 1987). Stakeholders rely on a combination of investment conferences, risk analysis equations, press releases, financial reports, and investment research to determine if an investment potential. J. M. Cozzolini developed a formula for Risk Adjusted Value (RAV) of an exploration venture. The study …

Life Is Good No Matter What, Daniel J. Wyrock, Emily Kosuda, Brian Raglow

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

As part of our Leadership Experience Project through the Institute of Leadership Advancement, our goal was to create an alternative revenue stream for an Akron cancer charity, Life Is Good No Matter What. As a team of three, we had to plan, development and implement our strategy over the course of a year. We researched charities and trends in the charity space which led us to the development of a product. After much time, we developed the idea of an ice cream line that not only fit the message of Life Is Good No Matter What, bus also helped define …