Assessment of Global COVID-19 on SMEs

The purpose of study is the assessment of global Covid-19 on small and medium scale enterprises (SMEs) with the case of Technological Incubation Centre (TIC), Ibadan. Three research objectives were raised. A descriptive survey research design was used. The population of the study is 29 (twenty-nine). Total Census survey was adopted as the sampling technique. SPSS software 20 analysis was used to analyze the data. The study concluded that, there has been increase in all the inputs needed for the production processes at the Centre. Therefore, sales of goods at the period of the Covid-19 have been negatively affected, which has similarly impacted on employment generation. It’s recommended that the management of the TIC should assist the businesses to mitigate the adverse effect of the Covid-19; while the Nigerian government should consider the SMEs as an important sub-sector that could restore the economy to the period of better economic growth.

The effectiveness of e-entrepreneurship training programs in the emerging markets (GCC)

The study aimed to examine the effectiveness of e-entrepreneurship training programs (EETP) content (curriculum), EETP period, EETP trainers (instructors – individual mentor’s role) and EETP candidates’ input (involvement and contribution)) in the higher educational institutions (HEI) in the emerging markets (EM) particularly in the Gulf Countries Council (GCC). The survey instrument was pre-tested to establish its validity and reliability and the quantitative statistical data that emerged from the administration of the survey were analyzed using t-tests, factor analysis, and analysis of variance and correlations (ANOVA). the study concluded that the curriculum defines the experiences presented to the learner, hence the great influence on curriculum effectiveness. Instructors also are the actual implementers of the curriculum. Additionally, they guide students in the actual process. Their role reflects their influence on the effectiveness of EETP.

E-Platform Enabled Transnational E-Entrepreneurship

This paper examines transnational e-entrepreneurs enabled by e-platforms through the lens of entrepreneurship process theories. The authors argue that transnational e-entrepreneurs engaging in necessity-driven e-entrepreneurship have been neglected in current related literature. This paper first proposes that transnational e-entrepreneurship research should be conducted in a framework of cross-country e-entrepreneurial ecosystem that combines host- and home-country entrepreneurial ecosystems and digital ecosystems. Then the framework was tested by case studies and proved to be valid. The paper found that e-platforms enabled necessity-driven transnational entrepreneurs to operate in the same manner with opportunity-drive entrepreneurship. The authors also conclude future research themes for transnational e-entrepreneurship study should separate necessity-driven and opportunity-driven entrepreneurs. It suggests the policymaker needs to emphasize necessity-driven e-entrepreneurs.

Does Gender Really Matter in Crowdfunding Campaigns?

The research aims to understand whether gender can or not influence the success of crowdfunding (CF) campaigns. To attain this objective, entrepreneurs that launch a CF campaign in the PPL platform are surveyed in order to examine if gender influences the characteristics of the projects, the motivations and satisfaction with the campaigns, and the use of social media. The paper uses a quantitative approach, based on an online survey sent to the entrepreneurs who have used the Portuguese CF platform (PPL) for funding. The results indicate that there are no major significant gender differences in the use of CF through the Portuguese platform, the motivations for using CF or the success achieved. In both cases, social media play an essential role in CF campaigns. Only culture-related projects exhibit an association with gender. The results show that CF is a tool that can contribute to reducing the gender gap in entrepreneurship. The design of CF operations and capacity building programs for women could either be improved in accordance with the new insights of the study.

Exploring Women Entrepreneurship Prospects, Challenges, and Barriers in Pakistan

This study aims to explore challenges, prospects, and barriers for young graduate Pakistani women entrepreneurs. The article is qualitative, and the scholars used the case study research method. Researchers conducted semi-structured interviews with young graduate female entrepreneurs and analyzed using Gioia methodology. This study explored that the women entrepreneurs used E-business platforms (e.g., social media marketing) as a tool for promoting their innovative business ideas. Current research documents challenges, barriers, opportunities, and support available to Pakistani women entrepreneurs in light of the experiences of the young graduate female entrepreneurs. Further, this article is vital in terms of exclusive methodology, scarcely studies population, contextual value, theoretical advancement by exploring new themes and practical implications. The present paper portrays implications for policymakers to eradicate barriers, address the challenges, and provide opportunities to females by delivering entrepreneurial training and funding opportunities.

Business Incubation Initiatives Impact on Entrepreneurs and SMEs

Business incubation (BI) is a strategic tool that helps a country to grow its entrepreneurial base and reduce the high mortality rate of SMEs. Kingdom of Eswatini adopted the business incubation initiatives to promote entrepreneurship and SME development. To date, no data exist on the impact made by business incubation initiatives. Adopting methodological triangulation of both quantitative and qualitative data collected through questionnaires and interviews where the participants consisted of SME owners, BI managers, and BI trainers, this exploratory study aims to investigate business incubation initiatives' impact on entrepreneurs and SMEs. Findings reflect that BIs measure their impact by seeing an increase in revenue, increase in the number of people employed, and SME survival post the incubation period. Though SMEs agreed that the BI effects positively, the study also revealed that some SMEs remained in the incubation for more than 10 years. Policy implications emerging are the need to introduce graduation policy and proper determination of requirements for incubation.

Development of Entrepreneurship in Universities

It is necessary for university students to be trained with real cases so that they experience experiential learning, where they have a concrete experience and learn from it. Integrating training, education, and soft skills arm them with the necessary tools to develop an entrepreneurial intention. This will be done by training multidisciplinary work using business models adapted to teaching entrepreneurship. Thus, achieving avoids drifting talent trained in universities, which does not find a stimulus to knowledge to achieve the development of their venture. It should be provided from schoolwork that can lead to potential businesses, through the association of different university careers to generate and enhance multidisciplinary professional student-student relationships.

Measuring Satisfaction and Loyalty of Guests Based on Vietnamese Hotel Online Reviews

Measuring customer satisfaction is a key task for hotels today. Analyzing online reviews of experienced guests will help the managers to know if guests are satisfied or dissatisfied with the service that they provided. Hence, they have solutions to improve service quality. This study presents a method to measure guest satisfaction based on sentiment lexicon that is developed for hospitality domain to increase the accuracy of the analysis results. Actual data is downloaded from TripAdvisor with 35 four-star to five-star hotels of five cities in Vietnam to analyze guest satisfaction that shows that nearly 80% of customers are satisfied with the quality of Vietnamese hotels. Based on data analysis, the study also evaluating guest loyalty through phrases like “came here several,” “come back,” “recommend,” etc. This rate corresponds to the number that was reported by the Vietnam National Administration of Tourism.

The Prediction of Venture Capitalists' Investment Propensity Using Machine Learning

This paper describes the most visible data science methods suitable for entrepreneurial research and provides links to literature and big data resources for venture capitalists. In the results, first, all organizational characteristics such as the characteristic of parent company of VC, the fund size of VC, and the reputation of VC, have significant influences on the risk-taking investment of venture capitalists, while functional background, school prestige, and VC experience except educational level among individual characteristics have significant influences on the risk-taking investment of venture capitalists. Second, for the full model, the accuracy rate is 0.855, which implies that the error rate is 0.145. Among the venture capitalists who are predicted not to do risk-taking investment, the accuracy that would not do risk-taking investment is 85.75%, and the accuracy that do risk-taking investment is 79.59% among the venture capitalists who are predicted to do risk-taking investment.

The Effect of Leadership on the Performance of Chinese Manufacturing Companies

The aim of this paper is to find out the effects of leadership, mediated by value innovation on the business financial performance of the manufacturing SMEs in China. Second, to examine what kind of links there are among leadership, value innovation and financial performance of Chinese manufacturing firms are explored. Last but not least, this paper will investigate Chinese manufacturing companies, which have survived and grown. To discuss what kind of key factors they have and how they adopt these strategies in order to achieve value innovation for their corporate growth in emerging markets, the result of this study is that there is a positive relationship between leadership value innovation, and financial performance of companies. Meanwhile, results illustrated that product innovation mediated the relationship of leadership with financial performance, but business model innovation has no mediating role on the relationship of leadership with financial performance.