Small family business succession has gained increasing attention during the past decade. In Finland, research projects on family businesses as well as family business succession have, however, been rare. In this research project, a group representing two generations of small family businesses from Southwest Finland was interviewed in order to answer to the research topic, namely, What are the problems of family business succession in Finland at the moment? Findings of the present study are in line with previous results. However, time-consuming planning and open discussions within the extended family' were named as the biggest and most important problems to be overcome in a succession process. SME policy measures and limitations of the study are also discussed in the article.
The primary aim of this paper is to explore organizational success of technology-based firms. The novelty of the study is that it mines the relationship between organizational success and the strategies with regard to the age, development phase, and core business of the firm. Having analysed a sample of 115 Norwegian technology-based firms, significant links were found between the firm’s strategy and organizational success. The analysis demonstrated that the strength of association between different strategic dimensions and organizational success varies with the firm age, through the firm lifecycle, and from industry to industry. A relationship between several dimensions of the technology and business strategies was also found It is therefore reasonable to assume that a proper combination of the technology and business strategies, rather than each of them taken along, is an important factor of successful performance of technology-based firms. Finally, two alternative measures of organizational performance were used in the study and a significant difference between them was discovered. The subjective measure in contrast to the objective tends to lower, even, dramatize the effects of technology strategy and favour those of business strategy.
This paper examines the evidence for the existence of a link between social capital and the propensity to become an entrepreneur. Entrepreneurship is proxied by self-employment and the influence of social capital is indicated both indirectly in aggregate-level data analysis and directly in micro-level data. The results suggest a modest, but heretofore neglected influence of social capital on entrepreneurship levels and suggest a reason why existing research on self-employment has tended to produce inconclusive and inconsistent results.
Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) provide Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) with opportunities that are today in most cases largely unexploited. This paper aims at verifying and explaining this gap with a particular focus on the area of Product Innovation (PI). Patterns in the adoption and use of new ICTs are explored and explained by drawing evidence from analysis of a multiple-case study on 47 SMEs in Northern and Central Italy. Complexity, at both product and system levels, emerges as a key factor driving firms' choices. The directions of these effects, however, are not always straightforward and cannot be merely extrapolated from existing studies on large companies. Implications of this study are relevant for both SMEs managers and ICT developers and vendors who can derive suggestions concerning, respectively, selection and development of ICT technologies that can better suit SMEs specific characteristics.
This paper represents part of an ongoing research project into 'systems innovation management', which strives to develop organizational processes that encourage systemic and continuous innovation. The primary focus of this paper is to present a conceptual model of the systems innovation process, together with an integrated implementation methodology to facilitate its realization. A synopsis of 'macro' causes for failure of organizational initiatives to innovate their systems is also presented. The structured approach presented in this paper has been developed to reflect the reality of modern systems innovation processes and to assist organizations in their attempts to manage them effectively. Thus, by improving the overall management of an organization's innovation process, there is an increased likelihood that the success rate of output from the process will also be improved.
In this article we examine the connections between learning and innovation. We do so in a particular and distinctive way - not by hypothesizing causal linkages through statistical associations arising from a survey, but through detailed attention to the insights, understandings and perceived meaningful connections we observed in the discourse of participants in a highly innovative company. This company had robust and externally validated empirical measures of innovativeness and participants shared a sense of this. When we invited the managers, supervisors and operatives to give us narratives about innovations in the company, analysis of the interview transcripts showed an unusual degree of congruence between the understandings and sense-making of the various informants: both managers and employees alike seemed to perceive strong connections between the company's track record of innovative performance and its ingrained learning and development practices. Moreover, these connections were seen to extend backwards and forwards in time, and to extend to development in the local environment.
This paper addresses technological entrepreneurship by University graduates, in Portugal and Italy. The paper builds on previous research indicating that graduate technological entrepreneurs show a number of strengths and weaknesses in the process of setting up a new technology-based company. Such strengths and weaknesses are associated with their age and limited credibility, with the particular set of competencies and skills they are likely possess, with the resources they can access and the relationships they are able to establish. The empirical research carried out by in this paper investigates the influence of factors related to the graduate entrepreneurs' background, the availability of resources and the network of relationships on the early stages of firm formation. In particular, the impact on the ease of firm creation both of the 'formal assistance' provided to graduate entrepreneurs by dedicated institutions and the 'informal support' provided by the network of interpersonal relationships of the ...
Research investigating the competitive advantage of small firms has consistently emphasized the importance of marketing, strategic positioning and entrepreneurship as key factors in business survival and growth. The ability to identify and operate in a particular market niche enables the firm to exploit a range of specializations and offers protection from larger competitors. Yet despite the widespread acceptance of the importance of the marketing concept for the small firms survival and growth process, the precise marketing activities and competencies that contribute most strongly to business performance have still to be identified. This paper reports the results of a study which sought to explore the relationship between the marketing and entrepreneurial orientation of small firms. The study employed an activity-based perspective whereby demonstrable marketing competencies were related to the orientation evident in the firms and their ultimate performance. The analysis demonstrated that certain competencies were more strongly associated with a marketing orientation while others were associated with an entrepreneurial orientation. These results were linked to the performance of the firm. The discussion of these results contributes to our understanding of how marketing and entrepreneurship are linked to the competencies of the firm and its eventual performance. Keywords: Marketing ActivitiesMarketing OrientationEnterpreneurial OrientationPerformanceGreece
The underlying hypothesis behind the evidence presented here - some of it drawn from earlier literature and some of it previously unpublished - is that franchise system survival patterns largely mirror those of conventional small businesses, with high attrition rates in the formative years, rather than being a sure-fire recipe for success with low system failure rates. After all, the majority of new franchise systems are in fact themselves small businesses, obliged to construct a front-end infrastructure of managerial support some years ahead of achieving full financial break-even point. In effect, given the demands placed upon an infant franchise system to finance and manage the processes of franchisee recruitment and all that entails, plus induction and field support for franchisees, the new franchise company is, in effect, developing the management and administrative structures normally associated with a medium-sized business, without the income levels normally associated with this scale of business. For a small business intent on developing into a credible franchise operation, the strains normally associated with small business growth are, in fact, likely to be magnified and concentrated, rather than reduced.
The challenge of innovation and technological change to traditional methods in economics and other social sciences has been a fertile research programme with a broad and diverse collection of theories and empirical research projects, including evolutionary economics and studies of national, regional and sectoral aspects of national systems of innovation. This paper presents a brief review of the evolution of ideas of the economics of technological change in the broad area of industrial structure, innovation dynamics and economic performance. Our emphasis is on contributions which might have policy relevance when it comes to the design and implementation of innovation-related policy. This review provides the general context for the discussion of some of the research findings of the European Commission Targeted Socio-Economic Research (TSER) Programme in the area of national systems of innovation. Finally, the paper explores a number of directions for further work in the area of innovation-related policy oriented research.
Abstract Many studies have shown how supply systems in innovative industries have became crucial for large firms to be competitive. Nevertheless, most of these studies refer to supply systems that were developed over a long period of economic growth. It is not yet evident how an economic slow down could modify supplier-customer relationships. This aspect is even more important if the fact that a number of large firms that developed integrated supply systems find themselves facing declining markets today is considered. The aim of this paper is to ascertain if the supply systems continue to evolve towards more complete form of collaboration between firms or if, on the contrary, the customer reinstates the activities given to the supplier during periods of crisis. The impact of economic crisis on supply systems has been studied by examining the results of a field survey concerning the supply systems of two companies in high-tech industries. It emerges that in a period of profound crisis the customer passes i...
(2001). The Role of Two Agglomeration Economies in the Production of Innovation: A Comparison between Localization Economies and Urbanization Economies. Enterprise and Innovation Management Studies: Vol. 2, No. 2, pp. 103-117.
This paper develops a critique of linear, short-term and transaction-based approaches to universities’ roles in innovation systems that separate the production of knowledge within universities from the decision to commercialize that knowledge. In particular, it examines the concept of ‘commercialization’ activities within universities as somehow separate from the product of knowledge to be commercialized. Through a specific case-study of collaborative research between the university and the private sector, the research goes on to examine a long-term academic-industrial relationship that evolved over time and produced benefits not necessarily obvious at the start.
An application of the theory of planned behavior is developed to analyze factors influencing entrepreneurial intent among students of technology and sciences. To our knowledge, this is the first study to test the robustness of the intentapproach using international comparisons. The samples are from Finland, Sweden, USA, and South-East Asia. The robustness checks produce remarkably uniform results. Entrepreneurial conviction emerges as the most important determinant of entrepreneurial intent. These findings suggest that the emergence of spin-offs from universities can be indirectly influenced by influencing entrepreneurial conviction through the manipulation of university environment and the image of entrepreneurship.
Two of the most common features of venture capital are staged capital infusion and active monitoring. These mechanisms are used to mitigate agency conflicts among entrepreneurs and venture capitalists, especially in innovative start-up firms. The aim of this work is to develop a theoretical model of the agency relationship between the venture capitalist (VC) and the entrepreneur (E), which takes into account both the value added by the VC in the post-investment phase and the incentives for the VC to allocate his scarce time between improving current ventures and evaluating new investment opportunities. The model shows the existence for the VC of an optimal level of attention to dedicate to his portfolio's ventures, measured by the length and the number of financial rounds. The VC's optimal choice does not match the E's expectations, whose objective function depends both on the firm's equity stake he retains, and on the value of private benefits extracted from the venture. The results are coherent with the empirical evidence offered by the literature, which relates the duration and size of venture capital investments to several factors (asset tangibility, market-to-book ratios, market conditions, expected agency costs).
This paper aims to highlight the importance of external relations and the qualitative elements of dialogue for the development of SMEs. This is achieved by using the metaphor of learning networks as a base for facilitating inter and intra organisational company development. The paper draws on a five-year field study, where the emergence and workings of inter-organisational networks were followed from a participant perspective with special emphasis being placed on the outcome for SMEs of participating in a learning network. The focus of these networks was on experience exchange and joint knowledge creation, as well as business relations. A significant outcome of this inter-organisational networking was the sharing of knowledge and visions on how to work on development combined with an emphasis on the role of external relations for internal company development, i.e. the possibilities of using networks as a development tool. These relations have also proved to be an effective medium for sharing experience and enhancing mutual trust among the participants. It has been particularly effective in sharing tacit knowledge and creating new management perspectives. Results from the study indicates that SMEs can use the learning network as an alternative form of organisation for development, where managers from different companies, together with researchers, form an ad hoc ''development group'' to compensate for internal lack of resources.
The 'growth' of Asian enterprises has been a much commented upon feature of the small business population. Asian entrepreneurs have been eulogized by the popular press keen to laud free enterprise heroes. More detached academic commentary has also sought to identify the key success factors for this entrepreneurial minority. Much less conspicuous has been the role that female Asian entrepreneurs and Asian women working in 'family' businesses play. This exploratory study focuses upon the often-neglected issue of the contribution of Asian women to both entrepreneurship and the management of family businesses. In order to illuminate the position of Asian women in business a series of interviews were undertaken with two particular groups: Asian women entrepreneurs in their own right; and Asian women working in family enterprises. Issues explored with Asian women entrepreneurs include their background, their influences, the factors that facilitated or inhibited their decision to become self-employed, their experiences of entrepreneurship and the particular issues that confront them as Asian women in business. Interviews with Asian women working in family enterprises explored their role and contribution to the management of the business. Amongst the issues covered are their 'official' and 'unofficial' position within the firm; the balance between domestic and business responsibilities and the influence, if any, of cultural factors in the nature of their presence within the enterprise. Keywords: Ethnic BusinessesFemale EntrepreneurshipSelf-EMPLOYMENTFamily Business
This paper concerns the building of organizational networks for the diffusion of innovation across national boundaries. In particular, it reports on an investigation of the Specific Project Action Line (SPAL); an exploratory initiative within the SPRINT programme which sought to improve the understanding and operation of the diffusion of innovation across national boundaries in Europe. The paper draws upon social network theory and evaluations of earlier networking initiatives within the SPRINT programme in order to inform the analysis of three SPAL projects. An important aspect of the study was the development of the network graphic as an analytical tool for the representation and comparison of project networks over time and between project. It is concluded that network diversity, network configuration, and the management of the networking process are all key and inter-related network themes that influence the diffusion of innovation across national boundaries. However, the cases highlight the problem of prescribing a single 'best' network structure for diffusion. It was found, for example, that the more 'distant'the innovation was from the market place, the more constrained the network needed to be, both in terms of size and diversity.
This paper looks at the policy implications of viewing innovation as a systemic phenomenon. The first section provides a brief overview of conceptual approaches used in the recent literature on innovation systems. The second part of the paper looks at learning and technological knowledge at the firm-level, and explores the ways in which different theoretical approaches affect our understanding of innovation processes. This discussion focuses on the contrast between 'systems' models of learning and the concepts of knowledge which underpin the current 'mainstream' rationale for public policy in this area. The third section discusses policy problems arising from this broad field of study, focusing on two issues: the rationale for policy intervention; and policy capabilities and 'knowledge bases'.
The objective of this study is to explore the usefulness of Dunning's (1977, 1988, 1993) eclectic paradigm of international production in explaining the pattern and extent of internationalization by small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). A study of Irish hotel groups suggests that the resource deficiencies that characterize SMEs impact on the internationalization choices made by management, affecting the what, where and how of their foreign value-added activities. The results of this study are contrasted with the findings of Dunning and Kundu's (1995) study of international hotel groups. The findings suggest that SMEs may lack ownership advantages that can readily be developed into sustainable competitive advantage in international markets. It is concluded that SMEs seeking success in international markets must develop both an ownership advantage that will transfer to international markets, and the organizational capacity necessary to support an internationalization strategy.
