My Wardrobe in the Cloud

In response to the 2008 global financial crisis, a range of disruptive business model innovations emerged. The fashion industry saw the introduction of fashion rental platforms, aimed at appealing to price-conscious consumers still hungry for the latest styles. While these new business models filled a gap in the market and saw, in some cases, profit in the millions, the phenomenon remained rather niche. The recent pandemic, alongside other isomorphic pressures, have put further constraints on these fashion rental businesses and their entrepreneurs, leaving them struggling in the current economic climate. This chapter explores the entrepreneurial motivations behind rental platforms, the different platform models in operation, and the challenges these businesses face in the 21st century, including increased technological developments, environmental sustainability, and external pressures, such as the most recent pandemic, which saw economies shutting down. Empirically, the authors draw upon a novel dataset comprising six international case studies.

An exploration of changing student entrepreneurial motivators – a longitudinal analysis

Purpose Entrepreneurial motivations are considered key determinants of the direction, intensity and duration of entrepreneurial processes and outcomes. To measure attitudes and outcome expectations related to an entrepreneurial career, researchers often use a set of predetermined behavioral beliefs or motivators. However, motivators can be numerous, context-specific and there is a lack of evidence regarding their stability over time. This study addresses this gap, while also providing a rich description of how Portuguese college students perceive entrepreneurship and how these perceptions relate to levels of entrepreneurial intentions (EI).Design/methodology/approach Using qualitative and quantitative methods to analyze data over a 5-year period, this study seeks to confirm existing evidence on entrepreneurship motivators' diversity and heterogeneity and to explore differences in motivators' temporal stability. Using an initial sample of 851 Portuguese college students and 3 different survey waves, this study first aggregates the most frequently cited motivators for EI to compile a series of meaningful motivational factors. Subsequently, it extensively analyzes the robustness of these factors by examining their validity against EI and stability over time.Findings Based on their superior association with EI and greater temporal stability, the findings suggest that entrepreneurship-intrinsic motivational factors are more relevant for college students' EI models. Prominently, being motivated to create one's own new business due to a particular occupational interest is the most consistently stable individual motivation.Practical implications The results may interest those studying entrepreneurial motivations and EI longitudinally and who invest in promoting entrepreneurial behavior of college students.Originality/value To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to analyze entrepreneurship motivators/reasons' temporal stability, which is relevant for assessing their value for longitudinal entrepreneurship research and education. It is also the most complete assessment of Portuguese college students' perceptions of entrepreneurship.

Venture creation patterns in academic entrepreneurship: the role of founder motivations

The path to academic entrepreneurship is characterized by a sequence of venture creation activities, which can be classified into operational-, financing- and commercialization activities. Academic entrepreneurship research is concerned with the question how different motives of scientists affect the patterns of these venture creation activities. Using a longitudinal two-period dataset of 165 academic entrepreneurs from 73 universities in Germany, we propose and test a multi-activity-based model that links different types of entrepreneurial motives to venture creation activities. The findings show that founder motives related to self-realization, necessity and an increased financial income increase the likelihood of completing venture creation activities, whereas work-life balance motivations and the drive to make better use of one’s professional knowledge decrease that likelihood. The desire to translate research ideas into practice has no effect. Our results further show that the positive effects of seeking self-realization and an increased financial income are more pronounced for completing commercialization activities than for operational activities. Our study contributes to research on academic entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial motivations and helps university administrators and policymakers to design their entrepreneurship support programs more effectively.

Nexus between entrepreneurship education, motivations, and intention among Indian university students: The role of psychological and contextual factors

This study assesses the impact of different psychological and contextual factors on entrepreneurial motivations and the role of entrepreneurial motivations in determining the entrepreneurial intention of students at Indian universities. The paper also explores whether gender acts as a moderator in the entrepreneurial motivation–intention relationship. Cross-sectional data were collected by administering a questionnaire to 329 students who had received entrepreneurship education during their course program. A confirmatory factor analysis model was run to ensure the model’s fitness, reliability, and validity, while structural equation modelling was used to test the hypotheses. The study validates the following key findings. First, the psychological factors of perceived cultural support and entrepreneurship education foster entrepreneurial motivations, which help determine students’ entrepreneurial intention, whereas fear of failure negatively affects students’ entrepreneurial motivations. Second, the contextual factors of government support policies and access to entrepreneurial finance do not influence entrepreneurial motivations. Third, entrepreneurial motivations significantly enhance the entrepreneurial intention of students. Fourth, gender negatively moderates the entrepreneurial motivation–intention relationship. The study contributes to the literature on the entrepreneurial motivation–intention relationship using psychological and contextual factors and also explores the interaction effect of gender on that relationship.

Raising the Bar: Values-Driven Niche Creation in U.S. Bean-to-Bar Chocolate

We examine how entrepreneurs might build a viable, values-driven niche. Extant templates for niche creation typically employed in moral markets depend on instrumentally rational logics that privilege economic ends such as profitability and efficiency. Entrepreneurs seeking to construct a nascent niche whose purpose and objectives include the amelioration of social ills, however, may find such templates inadequate. Using the emergence of the U.S. bean-to-bar chocolate niche, through which entrepreneurs attempt to address the social and environmental shortcomings of conventional chocolate production, we demonstrate that constructing an alternative model for niche creation is feasible. Most bean-to-bar entrepreneurs deliberately opted out of extant private regulation initiatives, developing instead alternative encompassing, values-driven sourcing and cooperative relationships, which we term collaborative governance. This is enacted throughout the niche by promoting shared values, best practices, and transparency and is supported by strategic meaning-making work to cultivate customers. Together, these three values-driven strategies form a novel template of niche creation based not on cognitive repositioning or exploiting exogenous change within existing structures and institutions, but on a reconceptualization of how markets might work to support the implementation of nonmarket goals. Based on our mixed-methods analysis, we find that, instead of hoping to accomplish nonmarket goals through established market structures, entrepreneurs built a niche centered on the achievement of specific social goals. Our findings suggest that to understand the strategies supporting emergent socially oriented markets, researchers must explore the intersections of values, entrepreneurial motivations, and operational complexities.

Entrepreneurial intention of engineering students: the role of motivations and barriers

The purpose of this study is to explore perceptions of entrepreneurial motivations and barriers and to assess their influence on the entrepreneurial intention of engineering students. Using data of 350 respondents who are students at HCMC University of Technology, VNU-HCM, the study identifies the key motives and barriers towards entrepreneurship. The data are then subjected to statistical regression in order to identify causal relationships between the motivations, barriers, and entrepreneurial intention. The results indicate that creativity, independence, and economic motivation have a positive impact on entrepreneurial intention and that the most important motivator for the entrepreneurial intention of engineering students is creativity. On the contrary, lack of knowledge is the only barrier (an internal barrier) that impedes the students' intention of entrepreneurship. These results imply that the students' entrepreneurial intention is more affected by internal factors (for both motivations and barriers) than external factors. In terms of the relative power of the effects of motives and barriers on students' entrepreneurial intention, the results suggest that the impact of motivations is generally more powerful than that of barriers. The findings have important implications for educators and policymakers.

Individual entrepreneurial orientation, entrepreneurship education and entrepreneurial intention: The mediating role of entrepreneurial motivations

This paper examines the direct and indirect roles of individual entrepreneurial orientation and entrepreneurship education in determining students’ entrepreneurial intention through the mediation of entrepreneurial motivations. The study also attempts to ascertain the influence of entrepreneurship education on individual entrepreneurial orientation. Cross-sectional data were collected from 323 university students using the convenience sampling method. Confirmatory factor analysis was used to assess the model fitness and the reliability and validity of the data while hypotheses were tested using structural equation modeling. The findings affirm that entrepreneurship education facilitates both individual entrepreneurial orientation and entrepreneurial motivations and also has a positive association with entrepreneurial intention. More importantly, entrepreneurial motivations significantly mediate individual ‘entrepreneurial orientation–entrepreneurial intention’ and ‘entrepreneurship education–entrepreneurial intention’ relationships. The findings provide practical support for the framing of new educational policies to assist students in their existing and future entrepreneurial projects. The study contributes to the literature by recognizing the mediating effect of entrepreneurial motivations on the above relationships. It also adds to the scarce literature on the lately recognized individual entrepreneurial orientation construct.