Growing Women Entrepreneurship in the Creative Industries in South Africa

This chapter interrogates the potential of women entrepreneurship as an economic strategy to address unemployment and job creation. The chapter focusses on creative industry to demonstrate that creativity and innovations can activate entrepreneurship among women in South Africa. It is through entrepreneurship that entrepreneurs transform their innovative and creative ideas into business enterprises and job creation. Although female entrepreneurship for economic development is recognised internationally, it lags behind those of men especially in the number of women business owners and the size of businesses including access to economic resources. The chapter argues that entrepreneurs are central in boosting the economy and the optimal use of their skills, innovative new ideas that sustain entrepreneurial creative projects. The chapter makes use of a visual profile, participant observation, case studies, and face-to-face interviews with women involved in creative industries such as bead making, pottery, traditional dress-making, and traditional dance.

The Sustainability of Informal Entrepreneurs

This chapter will examine the role of different stakeholders towards alleviating the constraints towards the growth of informal entrepreneurship. The stakeholders that will be investigated include the government, consumers, and the private sector. This study will comprise of a literature review that explores the challenges that affect the growth of informal entrepreneurship. While exploring these factors the role played by different stakeholders to alleviate the challenges are identified and analysed. A methodology that is based on desktop qualitative research, key findings, and discussions are examined, and conclusions based on the acquired research are drawn.

Entrepreneurial Business Ethics and Good Governance

Small medium enterprises (SMEs) have proven and are known to be one of the biggest contributors to the economy of developing countries. Evidence shows that SMEs provide a number of job opportunities, which results in unemployment reduction, poverty eradication, and a bigger boost towards other economic activities. However, most SME entrepreneurs face an array of problems such as access to funding, building up international connections, getting appropriate knowledge and access to adequate technology. These issues are then further intensified by the lack of proper governance and the avoidance of business ethics by most SME entrepreneurs. Over the past years, the number of SMEs has grown drastically in developing countries (Nigeria, Algeria, Brazil, and Vietnam), which has also resulted in an increase in competition within the sector. This has given rise to the need to install the strategies of corporate governance with the aim of strengthening the competitiveness of SMEs.

Is Entrepreneurship Education Key to All Entrepreneurial Initiatives?

Entrepreneurship is a worldwide reality. Since the beginning of times and all around the world people have created businesses. Entrepreneurial orientation, from a macroeconomic perspective, allows income and employment generation, thus boosting growth. At the microeconomic level, it is a competition booster playing a central role in a globalized market. In this entrepreneurial ecosystem in which knowledge-based activity is the core booster of employment, economic growth, and competitiveness, universities and, in particular, entrepreneurial universities play either the role of knowledge production and dissemination. The present work aims to understand the role of education (formal and entrepreneurship) on entrepreneurial activity combined with heterogeneous individual characteristics and different cultures and geographies. Specifically, the study identifies substitution and complementary effects among both types of education according to individual taxonomies.

Strategic Capabilities for the Sustainability of Small, Medium, and Micro Enterprises

Sustainability of small, medium, and micro enterprises has been an issue due to the lack of strategic capability of many entrepreneurs. This chapter examines the strategic capabilities that are necessary for the sustainability of small, medium, and micro-enterprises. A literature review approach was adopted by the authors to examine the relationship between the measures of strategic capability of small, medium, and micro-enterprises, and the sustainability measures of the small, medium, and micro-enterprises. The result shows that there is a positive relationship between strategic capability and sustainability of small, medium, and micro-enterprises. The measures of strategic capability include sensing, seizing, transforming, and innovative capabilities. The sustainability measures of the small, medium and micro enterprises are strategic objectives, customer satisfaction, and retention, organisational value, networking, availability of resources, innovation capability, profitability, and organisational competitiveness.

A Conceptual Model on the Challenges Affecting the Growth, Sustainability, and Survival of Small, Medium, and Micro Enterprise

This chapter addresses the changes (finance, human resources management, supply chain management, and regulatory) that affect the growth, sustainability, and survival of SMMEs world. These challenges are common among SMMEs in every country. In order for SMMEs to achieve growth, sustainability, as well as survive in the competitive global market, SMMEs must deal with these challenges. This chapter also creates a conceptual model that addresses these challenges and provides solutions that can be used to improve SMME challenges. SMMEs from South Africa, Nigeria, and Ghana were also discussed.

Developing Authentic Leadership and Fostering Social Entrepreneurial Innovation

Despite their inherent complexity, social entrepreneurs seek to create social innovation to stem society's wicked problems. To do so requires a balanced consideration of varying social expectations, all while trying to lead a sustainable enterprise. Educators look to equip the social entrepreneur with the right skills and mindset; with program failure, sadly, more common than not. This chapter seeks to explore the commonalities of such failures, highlighting the importance of behavioral development and facilitating an effective learning environment. Following an investigation into the notion of social entrepreneurship, authentic leadership is identified as a response some of the shortcomings of contemporary entrepreneurship education. The incorporation of authentic leader behaviors in entrepreneurial education can offer an injection as the social entrepreneur seeks to address the various challenges of social enterprise.

Institutional Support and Entrepreneurial Self-Efficacy

Factors that facilitate successful entrepreneurship range from cultural, educational, financial, environmental, technological factors to other macro and micro-economic factors. Scholars, for instance, report that continuance of entrepreneurship for lengthy periods may be an indicator of a culture of entrepreneurship amongst the residents of a given population, which could be significant in the development of the regional economy. The question is, do these factors each singularly or combinatorically result in entrepreneurial success? Since institutional support could foster the successes and failures of enterprises, entrepreneurial self-efficacy, which defines an individual's belief in their ability to achieve success in entrepreneurship, is joined in the investigation presented in this chapter. The chapter explores both factors as possible recipes for entrepreneurial success in Sub-Saharan Africa. The implications of the chapter for successful entrepreneurship literature are defined.

Entrepreneurship Without Innovation Is Unsustainable

Entrepreneurship has some element of innovation to begin with; however, the meeting of the market gap demands innovative gesture allowing for the vibrance of entrepreneurial entry into the market. Even though the essential market entry is influenced by creative propositions, it has in recent times become subjected to the question of if it is not sustained by innovation, will it cease to be competitive? This chapter will focus on the understanding of entrepreneurship and its benefits, innovation and its benefits, as well as relevant theories to the subject.

Innovation as an Improvement Tool for SMMEs

Innovation is one of the major instruments used to improve on the present position of an organisation. Innovation is a way of improving on the present market share while also enhancing competitive advantage for the organisation over its existing rivals. Innovation may be in the form of new products, or new services, or improvements to previous offerings. Innovation is the implementation of any new or significantly improved products (good and services), operational process (methods of production and services delivery), and new marketing methods (packaging, sales, and distribution methods), or new organisation or managerial methods or processes in business practices, workplace organisation, or external relations. Encouraging innovation in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) plays the role of policy initiatives for stimulating growth and development at the local, regional, and national levels.