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Going beyond the traditional approach of formal and informal institutions as antecedents of entrepreneurship (directly) and development (indirectly), this paper seeks to explore knowledge institutions as a necessary input for entrepreneurship and the development of societies.

Institutional economics lenses are utilized to observe other factors (e.g. the number of R&D staff and researchers from the public sector) that involve laws and socialization processes, which at the same time create knowledge useful for entrepreneurs and society. These ideas are tested through a sample of 281 observations from 17 autonomous communities and two autonomous cities in Spain. The information coming from the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM), Ministry of Economics, Industry, and Competitiveness, and INE (Instituto Nacional de Estadística), was analyzed through 3SLS, which is useful for a simultaneous equation strategy.

Knowledge institutions such as the number of R&D staff and researchers from the public sector are found positively associated with entrepreneurship, which is a factor directly and positively linked to economic development across Spanish regions.

The findings help the operationalization of other institutions considered in institutional economics theory and its application to entrepreneurship research. Moreover, the results bring new insights into the knowledge spillover theory of entrepreneurship in the public sector, in which the institutional analysis is implicit.

Research on financing for entrepreneurship has consolidated over the last decade. However, one question remains unanswered: how does the combination of external finance, such as equity and debt capital, and internal finance, such as working capital, affect the likelihood of grant funding over time? The purpose of this study is to analyse the relationship between different sources of financing and firms' ability to fundraise via innovation grants and to examine the role of female chief executive officer (CEO) in this relationship. Unlike equity and debt funding, innovation grants manifest a form of innovation acknowledgement and visibility, recognition of potential commercialization of inovation.

The authors use firm-level financial data for 3,034 high-growth firms observed in 2015, 2017 and 2019 across 35 emerging sectors in the United Kingdom (UK) to test the factors affecting the propensity of high-growth firms to secure an innovation grant as a main source of fundraising for innovation during the early stages of product commercialization.

The results do not confirm gender bias for innovation fundraising in new industries. This contrasts with prior research in the field which has demonstrated that access to finance is gender-biased. However, the role of CEO gender is important as it moderates the relationship between the sources of funding and the likelihood of accessing the grant funding.

This study does not analyse psychological or neurological factors that could determine the intrinsic qualities of male and female CEOs when making high-risk decisions under conditions of uncertainty related to innovation. Direct gender bias with regards to access to innovation grants could not be assumed. This study offers important policy implications and explains how firms in new industries can increase their likelihood of accessing a grant and how CEO gender can moderate the relationship between availability of internal and external funding and securing a new grant.

This study implicates and empirically demonstrates that gender bias does not apply in fundraising for innovation in new industries. As female CEOs represent various firms in different sectors, this may be an important signal for investors in new product development and innovation policies targeting gender bias and inclusion.

The authors draw on female entrepreneurship and feminist literature to demonstrate how various sources of financing and gender change the likelihood of grant funding in both the short and long run. This is the first empirical study which aims to explain how various internal and external sources of finance change the propensity of securing an innovation grant in new industries.

The Brittelstand are innovative, family-owned firms that offer national and international opportunities in the United Kingdom (UK). These fast-growing businesses are customer-oriented and proud of family ownership and embeddedness of the businesses within communities. While Brittelstand firms are as likely to deploy open innovation models as non-Brittelstand firms, these firms' engagement with customers in regional and national markets and the ability to benefit from this collaboration contrasts with these firms' willingness to engage in open innovation.

Using longitudinal data and regression analysis on 13,876 firms with 24,286 observations over 2004–2020, the authors develop and test a theoretical framework of open innovation in the Brittelstand. The authors' model explains the willingness and ability of the Brittelstand firms to engage in open innovation and benefit from it.

The authors' results show that Brittelstand firms are less willing than non-Brittelstand firms to collaborate with customers and universities, contrasting prior research on family firms, and distinguishing the innovation model of the Brittelstand from a family business model. The Brittelstand firms who are able to engage in collaboration with customers in domestic markets will outperform the firms' non-Brittelstand counterparts in innovation outputs.

In line with other studies, this study is associated with several limitations that open opportunities for further research that replicate and/or extends this study. First, this study is unbalanced panel data and the fact that some firms appear in the model only once from 2004–2020. The longitudinal study will allow to enforce causality of the relationship and examines the dynamics of open innovation in the Brittelstand. Second, the indicator on the extent and mechanisms of collaboration with customers could be better explained and measured, for example, using a scale indicator instead of a binary variable for knowledge collaboration across different types of partners and four geographical dimensions.

First, Brittelstand firms who are less likely to employ open innovation models nationally and with customers. However, those Brittelstand firms who decide to collaborate with customers nationally are more likely to increase the innovation sales compared to those firms that do not engage in such collaborations? This is an interesting and unexpected finding, which means that low willingness of cross-country and cross-regional collaboration for Brittelstand firms is not optimal and engagement in collaboration with customers in domestic markets is beneficial for innovation. Managers and policymakers may use this finding to design and re-design open innovation strategies managers and policymakers with customers within and across regions in the UK. Second, managers may benefit from the integrated view on the two drivers of firm innovation – collaboration with customers and the local embeddedness of such collaboration.

The authors' results show that Brittelstand firms outperform the firms' non-Brittelstand counterparts by adopting an open model of innovation with customers in domestic markets. This means that the most dynamic and fast growing Brittelstand firms are those who collaborate with customers for new ideas and innovation.

This study describes the phenomenon of the Brittelstand and investigates the link between open knowledge sourcing across different geographical proximities and partners and innovation outputs. First, the authors contribute to open innovation and resource-based view (RBV) literature in family firms by theorizing and empirically testing the open innovation model for the Brittelstand firms. The authors also debate that the Brittelstand firms should overcome this inertia of willingness to collaborate across heterogeneous external partners and convert regional/national embeddedness of the firms with customers into strengths for greater product innovation. Second, the authors contribute to family business literature by explaining how and why the Brittelstand firms can achieve greater innovation outputs. In doing so, the authors draw on the concept of familiness and local embeddedness.

This study aims to theoretically discuss and empirically investigate to what extent the interplay between the domains of knowledge complexity (managerial, strategic and operational) facilitates firm performance and the role of organizational resilience in this relationship.

This paper uses primary data collected from 102 European small and medium-sized firms (SMEs) in Belgium, Bulgaria, Denmark, Spain and the UK during 2012–2015 and 2010–2020. This study corrects for potential data disclosure and technology adoption bias in two survey ways.

First, compared to other acumens of knowledge complexity, managerial and operational acumens contribute most the most to a firm’s performance (sales and productivity). Firm resilience positively moderates managerial skills and negatively moderates inter-organizational collaborations. Taking SMEs and their inter-organizational relationships, skills and resilience in focus, considering that they are transitive organizations whose business model is based on innovation and productivity to outcompete larger counterparts it is found that resilience and agility in SMEs are important to leverage the effect of knowledge complexity on firm performance.

One of the limitations of this study is that SMEs are expected to face more problems in achieving organizational ambidexterity with all three acumens, as they have restricted managerial expertise, less structured procedures and fewer resources than larger firms. In addition to regression analysis which is limited in answering “how” and “why” knowledge complexity is managed within and outside a firm, future research will consider a mixed-method approach of both interviews with high growth SMEs and online surveys. To unveil the role that firm resilience in SMEs and in the volatile environment, future research may focus specifically on firms that lack resources, skills and time, however, continue innovating, commercializing new knowledge and create new jobs.

One of the most important mechanisms which facilitate the managerial acumen was found to be information technology (IT) investment and management decision-making, exploitation of new information and communication technology trends and markets, innovating business models and driving change management, innovating new mobility and digital technologies, as well as use inter-disciplinary staff and knowledge to influence external stakeholders. The most relevant elements of the operational acumen of knowledge for performance in SMEs are various mechanisms and forms of inter-organizational collaboration such as collaboration on business and IT applications and infrastructure, administration and operations with data and information exchange, collaboration on data availability, accumulation and exchange.

The findings call for innovation policy to account for the need for interactions between various elements of strategic, managerial and operational acumens of knowledge complexity in SMEs. Prime support should be focused on facilitating inter-organizational collaboration and providing “soft support” in the time of agility and adversity. This paper founds that lack of budget, skills and resources would significantly affect a firm’s resilience, potentially “locking in” within an organization.

First, it emphasizes that the returns from inter-organizational collaboration as part of the operational acumen of knowledge complexity depend upon the firm’s ability to manage infrastructure, mobility and data. The relationship is negatively moderated by firm resilience, which means that the most resilient firms may focus on the exploitation of internal resources and substitute it for inter-organizational collaboration. Second, this study demonstrates that SMEs’ growth and productivity strategy should be management skills and competencies driven, rather than strategy-driven, with strategy facilitating managerial decision-making on business and IT.

In contrast to the predictions from the family business and the small- and medium-sized enterprise internationalization literatures, Hidden Champions are world-market leaders exhibiting a high share of exports. The purpose of this study is to analyze their strategy of internationalization of Hidden Champions in Germany and find that the international success and strong, sustained performance emanates from their product type, enabling to successfully pursue a niche strategy for differentiated premium products.

The authors first conceptually explore how Hidden Champions pursue strategic internationalization, and then analyze a sample of N = 2,690 Hidden Champions to examine why Germany has been able to generate the highest per capita share of Hidden Champions in the world.

The study finds that on both a micro and macro level, the strong and sustained performance of Hidden Champions is driven by product type and quality strategies. Niche strategies for a knowledge-intensive, technological product enable the firm to lock-in customers. However, to safeguard the internalization of highly specific quasi-rents, Hidden Champions enter foreign markets through fully owned subsidiaries, retaining control and residual property rights. The second finding of this paper is that Germany has succeeded in deploying its high level of human capital into the Mittelstand through highly skilled workers.

Unfortunately, no micro-level panel data are available. Still macro-level data beginning in the nineteenth century provide strong empirical support for the hypothesized causality.

This is the first paper to link the strong and sustained export performance of Germany to the Hidden Champions by examining the origins of the German Mittelstand model, dating back to the social, political and economic developments of nineteenth century.

Through bibliometric analysis, the study intends to reveal the evolution of the trends in the Scopus database, the scope of research and the connection between technology and entrepreneurship.

This study uses a comprehensive science mapping approach, integrating network visualisation to map research groups, bibliometric analysis to measure publication trends and thematic analysis to identify overarching themes. This study uses a thorough technique to examine the complex interaction between technology and entrepreneurship from 2000 to 2023. The collection includes information from various sources, creating a corpus of 2,207 documents. These sources include 698 scholarly journals, books and other publications.

According to the report, the interest in technology and entrepreneurship is expanding. The three nations conducting the most study on this subject is the USA, the UK and Italy. Some of the top writers in this area include James A. Cunningham, Alison N. Link and David B. Audretsch.

The study found possibilities and problems associated with the interaction between technology and entrepreneurship. Additionally, the study found several research holes in this area. The study also noted some research gaps in this field, including those related to the sustainability of society and the environment, the effects of entrepreneurship on inequality and the difficulties faced by entrepreneurs in underdeveloped nations.

This study thoroughly overviews the business and technology sectors. It outlines some of the difficulties that must be overcome whilst identifying the main research trends in this field. Researchers, decision-makers and businesspeople interested in using technology for entrepreneurial endeavours can all benefit from the study’s findings.

This study’s dataset’s scope, which might not include all pertinent publications, is one of its limitations. Nevertheless, the results add to a thorough picture of the state of the profession and recent developments. This study’s insights are valuable for researchers, policymakers and entrepreneurs interested in leveraging technology for entrepreneurial pursuits.

The research points to a number of directions that need more inquiry, such as in-depth studies into the social and environmental implications of technology-driven entrepreneurship and methods to combat inequality.

The purpose of this article is to determine the views of Professor David Audretsch.

The article takes the form of an interview.

Professor David Audretsch shares his thoughts and advice on an “entrepreneurial society” where there is a rethinking of fundamental economic and business ideas, where innovation and entrepreneurship emerge as the driving forces of competitiveness and growth, but institutions and public policies facilitating innovation and entrepreneurship play a key role.

The aricle provides valuable insights from one of the world's most frequently cited economists.

The prevailing theories of entrepreneurship have typically revolved around the ability of individuals to recognize opportunities and act on them by starting new ventures. This has generated a literature asking why entrepreneurial behavior varies across individuals with different characteristics, while implicitly holding the external context in which the individual finds oneself to be constant. Thus, where the opportunities come from, or the source of entrepreneurial opportunities, are also implicitly taken as given. By contrast, we provide a theory identifying at least one source of entrepreneurial opportunity – new knowledge and ideas that are not fully commercialized by the organization actually investing in the creation of that knowledge. The knowledge spillover theory of entrepreneurship holds individual characteristics as given, but lets the context vary. In particular, high knowledge contexts are found to generate more entrepreneurial opportunities, where the entrepreneur serves as a conduit for knowledge spillovers. By contrast, impoverished knowledge contexts are found to generate fewer entrepreneurial opportunities. By serving as a conduit for knowledge spillovers, entrepreneurship is the missing link between investments in new knowledge and economic growth. Thus, the knowledge spillover theory of entrepreneurship provides not just an explanation of why entrepreneurship has become more prevalent as the factor of knowledge has emerged as a crucial source for comparative advantage, but also why entrepreneurship plays a vital role in generating economic growth. Entrepreneurship is an important mechanism permeating the knowledge filter to facilitate the spillover of knowledge, and ultimately generating economic growth.

Why should entrepreneurship matter for economic growth, employment creation and international competitiveness? The entrepreneurship literature has traditionally suggested that entrepreneurship matters to individuals and firms, but rarely for economic growth.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a link between entrepreneurial activity on the one hand, and industry evolution and economic growth on the other. The role that entrepreneurship plays in innovative activity is explained. The link between entrepreneurship and industry evolution through the spillover of knowledge in generating entrepreneurial activity is analyzed. This implies that the relationship between entrepreneurship and growth is identified. In particular, this paper finds that entrepreneurship generates a positive pulse in the evolution of industries in such a way that fosters economic growth.