Volume 8, Issue 4 -

Despite the emergence of startup accelerators as venture development organizations (VDOs) to high-growth firms, research has yet to identify where these accelerators fit into the venture development ecosystem. By clarifying and reviewing three different subsystems in the entrepreneurial ecosystem, our paper proposes that as an extension of the current incubation mechanism, accelerators contribute to the entrepreneurial ecosystem by transforming entrepreneurs and their ventures at early stages. Drawing upon the Pipeline model (Lichtenstein, G. A., and T. S. Lyons. 2006. “Managing the community's pipeline of entrepreneurs and enterprises: A new way of thinking about business assets.” Economic Development Quarterly 20 (4): 377–386.), we first plot where the accelerator model fits in the broader entrepreneurship ecosystem, and then demonstrate how different types of accelerators help participating entrepreneurs and their ventures progress along the venture development pipeline. Our theoretical approach contributes to both the entrepreneurship ecosystem and the accelerator literature and provides a practical map for both policymakers and early-stage entrepreneurs to manage and utilize their entrepreneurship ecosystem more effectively.

This paper reports the results of investigating differences in measures of disparate treatment, or discrimination, in the small firm credit market that are related to loan size. Because small loans tend to be less profitable to originate than large loans, the competitive nature of the product markets for large and small loans may be quite different. Becker suggests that more competition will reduce the level of discrimination in a market. And some market-based evidence of Becker’s competition effect has been reported in the literature on discrimination in the small firm credit market. We add to this literature by considering the impact of differing levels of competition across products (i.e. small versus large loans). The results for our small loan subsample exhibit strong evidence of disparate treatment, or discrimination, against African-American entrepreneurs. However, the results for the large loan subsample are statistically different. In particular, for the large loan subsample there is no significant evidence of discrimination, or disparate treatment, against African-American entrepreneurs applying for business loans. This strongly suggests that the current evidence of discrimination in the small firm credit market needs to be reconsidered for public policy application purposes.

Innovation either in products or processes requires innovation capability. Such ability, as a result, facilitates firms to succeed and gain competitive advantage in the industry by improving their efficiency of creating and marketing products and/or services. In this context, current research examines how risk-taking and proactivity dimensions of entrepreneurial orientation influence types of process innovative capabilities; and to what extent this relationship is strengthened/weakened by social capital. Authors collected data from chemical manufacturing firms of Pakistan, and carefully analyzed it with multiple regression technique. The findings revealed that proactivity and risk-taking facilitate incremental and radical process innovation. The moderation of social capital further strengthened the impact proactivity had on radical process innovation. However, moderation of social capital did not strengthen the impact risk-taking had on incremental and radical process innovation. Surprisingly, social capital demonstrated significantly positive impact on radical process innovation. The paper also discusses the theoretical and managerial implications.

Considering the importance that entrepreneurship takes in the economies of most countries, the aim of this study was to compare two different geographical areas, studying the characteristics and variables of entrepreneurship that act as driving forces in the creation of new businesses. So, two locations from the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) database were identified and categorized, namely Latin America (LA) and Western Europe (WE). Nine dimensions were selected, in order to test and clarify distinguishing patterns in these two locations in terms of entrepreneurial propensity. We used a quantitative methodology to analyze and verify 13 variables, using statistical techniques, in particular the tests of Kolmogorov-Smirnov, Mann-Whitney Test, T-test and ANOVA. The results indicate that during the year of 2015 the population demonstrated bolder entrepreneurial characteristics in LA than in WE, however, statistically analyzing a set of variables indicated by the model, the WE countries show a higher mean value than in LA. As a comparative study, we propose that the findings can be used as a starting point in formulating new government policies, in particular in these geographical areas, contributing to the development of the entrepreneurship field.