Crowdfunding For Sustainable Entrepreneurship And Innovation

Business systems undergo a number of transitions as the needs and demands of society change. With heightened connectivity driven by the development of the Internet, new opportunities for venture development and creation have become available to business owners and entrepreneurs. Crowdfunding for Sustainable Entrepreneurship and Innovation is a pivotal reference source for the latest scholarly research and business practices on the opportunities and benefits gained from the use of crowdfunding in modern society, discussing its socio-economic impact, in addition to its business implications. Featuring current trends and future directions for crowdfunding initiatives, this book is ideally designed for students, researchers, practitioners, entrepreneurs, and policy makers. New financing models such as crowdfunding are democratizing access to credit, offering individuals and communities the opportunity to support, co-create, contribute and invest in public and private initiatives. This book relates to innovation in its essence to anticipate future needs and in creating new business models without losing revenue. There are tremendous unexplored opportunities in crowdsourcing and crowdfunding; two sides of the same coin that can lead to a revolution of current social and economic models. The reading of this book will provide insight on the changes taking place in crowdfunding, and offer strategic opportunities and advantages.

With today’s current problems, including forced migrations, inadequate education and healthcare systems, environmental threats, economic crises, poverty, etc., it has become evident that systemic social change is needed. Unfortunately, creating, maintaining, and fostering sustainable social value is not easy. In this respect, social entrepreneurs can act as change agents with their social missions. Yet, the role of social entrepreneurship in creating sustainable social value is still in an embryonic state. Creating Social Value Through Social Entrepreneurship contains expert research that links social entrepreneurship and social value in order to further understand the role of social entrepreneurship in creating social value and to highlight the importance of social entrepreneurs in emerging economies. While covering topics that include crowdfunding, social enterprise, social entrepreneurship ecosystems, and the triggers and challenges of social entrepreneurship, this book seeks to extend the social entrepreneurship contribution to social impact. The book is of value to entrepreneurs, managers, academicians, researchers, and students in various fields that include economics, management, and entrepreneurship.

This is the first book of its kind to systematically integrate crowdfunding in the entrepreneurial finance research field and extend the current debate to show how crowdfunding can be leveraged as a strategic tool to grow new ventures. Utilising original empirical evidence of companies that have raised funds via crowdfunding, it discusses the value-added services that the crowd provides to entrepreneurs, as well as how and under which conditions crowdfunding helps company development by facilitating subsequent access to critical financial and non-financial resources from external stakeholders. The first part introduces the most popular models and tactics for a successful crowdfunding campaign and illustrates the characteristics of the crowdfunding phenomenon and its evolution across the world during the last decade. The second part of the book, demonstrating how crowdfunding can be a starting point to seed financing, illustrates and discusses how entrepreneurs can use crowdfunding as a strategic tool for accessing subsequent resources from external stakeholders – showing the benefits, beyond capital, that entrepreneurs can gain from the crowd, as well as potential risks. Crowdfunding for Entrepreneurs is particularly useful for academics, advanced undergraduate and postgraduate students in entrepreneurship and innovation, entrepreneurial finance, strategic management, as well as professionals interested in how crowdfunding can be utilised as a strategic tool to create competitive advantage.

Nadine Scholz shows that crowdfunding potentially shortens the development cycle of new products, thus enabling an earlier market entry. Hence, crowdfunding serves as a multifaceted early-stage support instrument for innovation implementation facilitated by the crowd's resources. It not only provides upfront cash for product development and production, more importantly it enables a firm to show traction through the validation of the market demand that is based on the crowd's function as information multiplicator generating public exposure and feedback.

An increase in the restrictions on the availability of funding for new and growing businesses in the aftermath of the global financial crisis has been accompanied by the emergence and growth of crowdfunding as an alternative method of raising capital. Crowdfunding contributes towards the disintermediation of the finance market as funders and promoters are brought together directly, democratising both fundraising by businesses and investment by individuals. This book extends entrepreneurial finance research to the study of crowdfunding. Contributions review the history, status and future of crowdfunding, analyse the patterns of fundraising, assess the potential of crowdfunding for the financing of social ventures in particular, and discuss the regulatory implications of recent developments. What is clear from this collection is that the crowdfunding space is still evolving, institutional forms are still developing as models are refined, new institutional collaborations (e.g. between equity platforms and business angel networks) are emerging, and new challenges, particularly regulatory challenges, are being encountered. While crowdfunding is not a universal solution for SME finance in a post-crisis financial landscape, it remains too early to determine whether crowdfunding represents a large-scale transformation of the early stage risk capital market or a minor addition to it. This book was originally published as a special issue of Venture Capital.

Humane Entrepreneurship and Innovation provides a framework for entrepreneurs, students, and researchers to develop sustainable innovations that benefit society as a whole. This inclusive approach encourages entrepreneurs to consider the needs of all stakeholders, including employees, customers, and the environment.

This book contains practical experiences, knowledge, and insights in the evolution, formulation, and implementation of strategies and models for flexibility, innovation, and sustainable business. The book discussed the increasing significance of a flexible approach by businesses as much as possible in every area of their work—from employment policies to supply chain management (SCM). It further links this flexible approach to a sustainability strategy, which is necessary to be competitive today and in the future. This business approach is necessary to create long-term value by considering how a given organization operates in the ecological, social, and economic environment. This is linked to the next theme of the book—innovation—which is fundamental for a business to improve its processes, develop new and improved products and services for the market, increase its efficiency, and, most importantly, get better profitability. The book also delves into another buzz word in business—analytics. Companies have widely embraced the use of analytics to streamline operations and improve processes. The book explores all these critical emerging areas through the chapters in its five sections and is invaluable for management students and researchers, practicing business managers, consultants, professional institutions, and government and corporate organizations.

Economic and societal systems continually evolve as the needs and demands of society change. With the development of new technologies, research, and discoveries, various opportunities emerge for venture development and developing economies. Crowdfunding and Sustainable Urban Development in Emerging Economies provides innovative research on current issues in the rise of new platforms for digital activities, a collaborative economy, crowdsourcing, crowdfunding, and other activities that are shaping developing countries. Highlighting a range of pertinent topics, such as infrastructure finance, tertiary educational institutions, and urban sustainability, this book is an important resource for academicians, practitioners, researchers, and students.