Women Entrepreneurship across Nations

Since the past two decades the concept of women entrepreneurship has gained recognition as a significant contributor towards the economic growth of the country. This can be attributed to the many encouraging factors like family support, flexibility in work family schedule, encouraging policies etc. Nevertheless, there also exist certain barriers that hinder their path of progress. In the context of globalization today, women entrepreneurs across nations are also engaged in identifying opportunities for further growth. In this pursuit they face a number of challenges amidst the opportunities. The chapter intends to make a contribution to the topic of women entrepreneurship by examining what initiates entrepreneurship among individuals, comparison between male and female entrepreneurs, factors that encourage women entrepreneurs as well as those that inhibit their growth and on ways to overcome the challenges they face.

Innovative Management of Spanish Academic Science Parks

The correct management of academic science parks is strategic for universities, as well as has synergistic effect for companies there in installed. Park managers choose who the tenants for the parks are, but also they take other strategic decisions relative to: (a) academic spin-offs creation, (b) investment in technology-based companies, o (c) consolidation the start-ups that have finished their incubation period. Managers have tools to increase quality decisions and reduce the level of risk associated. However, the park' nature and characteristics are unique, thus tools must be flexible, and able to adapt to the changing reality of the companies, park and environment. Based on the previous ideas, the present chapter proposes to design and test a management tool for science parks based on organizations and entrepreneur's characteristics. Results obtained show that the tool is very useful, due that its simplicity, flexibility and adaptability for be used in any Science Park.

Innovation and Agronomy

This chapter presents an empirical discussion about the relationship of agricultural industry and innovation in emerging economies. Then, a general revision of the innovation, agronomy and public policies associated will be reviewed. This chapter is immersed in the Chilean case. The author justifies that Chile can be a representative case because it is a country that wishes to become a world power in agro-food, but has very low investment in innovation. Besides, it has very low participation of agricultural innovative firms in the market. After the background is presented, innovation and development will be reviewed; subsequently, innovation in developing countries will be discussed, concluding with agro-innovation in Latin-American countries, especially in Chile.

Motivations and Challenges of Female Entrepreneurship in Developed and Developing Economies

Globally, women entrepreneurs manage micro enterprises, social enterprises, small-to-medium enterprises (SMEs) and knowledge-based businesses. The entrepreneurship rates for women vary globally and, in general, are smaller than those for men. Both the Individual-centric approach and country-specific approach is necessary since women in different countries operate in a specific socioeconomic context (Singh, 2012; Pathak et al., 2013). For increasing the entrepreneurial rates of women businesses in a country, one has to consider the individual, psychological, socioeconomic and political context including education, mentoring, financial support, networking, and social, cultural and religious norms (GEM, 2014). An egalitarian social paradigm is proposed which removes social, cultural and religious constraints for women and counts on men to share equally in the household and family care activities. The motivations and challenges, of women entrepreneurs have to be understood in the context of the gender role and the duality of modernization vs. tradition (Belwal, 2014).

Organisational Structure in Small and Medium Enterprises

Extant studies conducted in regard to organisational structures have produced unclear and descriptive knowledge, applicable only in theory. As a result, a confusing mixture of hypotheses, recommendations, and decision-making rules has been created, without actually contributing to the practical application of designing an organisational structure. This chapter considers contrasting scholarly and practitioners' perspectives and offers a new prism on the role of organisational structure in small and medium enterprises.

SME's Innovation and Internationalization in Knowledge-Based Economy

The main goal of the chapter is to make an assessment of the innovative position, the level of internationalization and potential of small and medium-sized enterprises in the EU in the light of challenges implied by the building of knowledge-based economy. The chapter comprises several parts. Main attention is paid to the substance and factors that shape the knowledge-based economy, determinants of innovation in SMEs and the assessment of SMEs' innovation and internationalization in the EU. We also analyzed dependence between the development level of the EU Member States and R&D expenditure and the level of innovation and competitiveness of individual countries. To this end we used Spearman's rank correlation coefficient. Final part of the chapter is devoted to the EU support scheme for small and medium-sized enterprises, in particular it focuses on instruments connected with innovation and internationalization.

Service Logic Business Model Canvas for Lean Development of SMEs and Start-Ups

Business models have made a breakthrough both in the academic and in business community in the area business development. Old fashioned business plans are in many cases considered as a waste of time and resources. Particularly start-ups and SMEs have a great potential to take advantage of business model approach which allows lean and agile product and service development. However, the existing widely used business model frameworks are lacking the new service logic orientation. They mostly see the world in terms of goods logic. Since all sizes of businesses in all industries are increasingly adopting the service logic or service-dominant logic, there was a clear need to develop a new service logic based business model framework. Based on an extensive empirical study with both practitioners and academics, a new Service Logic Business Model Canvas was developed to fill this need. This chapter explains the theoretical foundations of this framework in SME and start-up context, as well as the framework itself and its application.

Entrepreneurship Education for an Entrepreneurial Society

Education determines the capital, wealth and prosperity for multiple generations in a knowledge based economy and society. Relationship of knowledge to entrepreneurship, technology and economy is examined to understand the needs of entrepreneurial society. Exploration of realities is done to maximize the transition towards entrepreneurial society. Structural limitations of existing educational framework are explored in the backdrop of its origin and implications. The need of integrating entrepreneurship education as integral part of all institutional patterns is concluded as a vital element for entrepreneurial society.

Entrepreneurship Education and University Students' Entrepreneurial Intentions in Bangladesh

A university plays a fundamental role in establishing and developing an entrepreneurial-oriented economy. The entrepreneurship education has been recognized very important which helps students to understand and foster entrepreneurial intention and attitude. The purpose of the present study is to examine entrepreneurship education and associated entrepreneurial intentions of students of public and private universities of Bangladesh. Few empirical studies done in Bangladesh have examined the entrepreneurial intentions of the university students. This study will fill the research gap in this respect. This study implies that university role, types of course programs influence attitude and intention and elevates the chances that students would eventually choose an entrepreneurial career. The findings of this study have policy implications in inducing more university graduates to start their own businesses.

Solidarity Entrepreneurship in Knowledge Economies

Solidarity Entrepreneurship is a new economic paradigm characterized by public-private cooperation to fight poverty. The objective of this chapter is to introduce new concepts and classifications to analyze this paradigm. To cope with this goal, the main Pro-Poor Growth Indexes are described, but they are insufficient to eliminate, or at least reduce, poverty. After being warned about the dangers between the generation of poverty and the rise of populism, the author proposes four solutions to avoid this problem: the development of solidarity entrepreneurs, strengthening education in entrepreneurship, boosting the venture partnership, and increasing the amount approved for the Official Development Aid. The work ends with a conclusion and future research directions.