Entrepreneurship Innovation And Business Clusters

In Entrepreneurship, Innovation and Business Clusters, Panos Piperopoulos provides a comprehensive introduction to what entrepreneurship is all about, how and why entrepreneurs innovate and how innovation systems operate. Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) constitute the backbone of most economies, so the author examines their characteristics and the crucial role played by the owners and entrepreneurs who innovate to ensure the survival and continued growth of their firms. He also includes the particular phenomena that arise where the entrepreneurs are either female or from ethnic groups, or where the context is that of a developing region or country. The importance of co-operative strategic alliances and networks between firms is discussed, along with how these strengthen SMEs' competitiveness. The concept of open innovation has been proposed as a new paradigm for the management of innovation and the author presents a hypothetical model for enhancing the competitiveness and performance of SMEs by properly utilizing employees' creative potential, emotional intelligence, tacit knowledge and innovative ideas. The contemporary model of business clusters, involving partnerships with competitors, agents, universities, research centres and local, regional and national governments is discussed. The ways, means and methods through which SMEs' competitiveness and innovation can be enhanced within business clusters is illustrated by cases that identify four types of SMEs, that behave differently and play different roles in the networks and clusters of which they form a part, but all of whose performance and competitiveness is a function of their position and role in the wider scheme of things.

øIn the geography of the global economy, there are known Šhot spots� where new technologies germinate at an astounding rate and pools of capital, expertise and talent foster the development of new industries and new ways of doing business. These cluste

Entrepreneurship, Innovation and Regional Development is unique in that it addresses the central factors in economic development – entrepreneurship, innovation and organizational learning – as regional phenomena. This definitive text focuses on different types of organizations to illustrate the value of entrepreneurship and innovation both for businesses and for regional development. Establishing a firm link between entrepreneurship, innovation and economic regeneration, the book also examines the factors contributing to their success. Replete with international case studies, empirical evidence of concepts and practical examples, this is an ideal text to support postgraduate teaching and research related to entrepreneurship, innovation management and regional economic development.

Entrepreneurship and innovation are two of the most pervasive concepts of our times, yet there are still gaps in our understanding of the interactions between entrepreneurship and innovation, particularly in developing countries. This book is an attempt to fill this gap. It focuses on the entrepreneurship-innovation-development nexus, drawing heavily on empirical evidence from developing countries. Cross-country and individual country experiences cover nations as diverse as Ethiopia, India, Turkey, Vietnam, and also examine lessons from advanced economies such as Finland. Three sets of questions are addressed. What is the impact of entrepreneurship and innovation on growth and development? What determines the innovative performance of entrepreneurs in developing countries? What role does the institutional environment play in shaping the extent and impact of innovative activities? A key message is that entrepreneurial innovation, whether through small firms, large national firms, or multinational firms, is often vibrant in developing countries, but does not always realise its full potential. This is due to institutional constraints, the absence of the appropriate mix of different types of small and large and domestic and foreign firms, and insufficiently developed firm capabilities. The contributions provide a better understanding of the determinants and impacts of innovation in developing countries and the policies and institutions that support or hinder innovation.

Leading international scholars provide a timely reconsideration of how and why entrepreneurship matters for economic development, particularly in emerging and developing economies. The book critically dissects the evolving relationship between entrepreneurs and the state.

A profile in socio-technical terms of ways that innovation is manifested in American, European, and Asian knowledge-based innovation networks and knowledge clusters. Twelve conceptual and empirical studies are presented that contribute to a better understanding of the role of knowledge in technological entrepreneurship.

About the book The contents of most of the chapters included in this volume were originally presented and discussed during the academic workshop ‘High-tech Valleys and Research Triangles in the East of the Netherlands and elsewhere’, held on 30 November and 1 December 2005 at the Wageningen International Congress Centre (WICC) in the Netherlands. At that time we had an informal agreement with Rob Bogers, series editor of the Wageningen UR Frontis book series that, if the quality and quantity of the talks and papers at the seminar would be sufficient and if there was willingness among the (potential) authors, an edited book volume based upon the results of the workshop would be a possibility. After the workshop, when we had a critical mass of ten chapters and a dedicated group of committed authors, the book project was given the green light. As editors we realized that there were still a couple of topics and themes missing, and when we had found colleagues for these four additional chapters that needed to be written, our Frontis book was on the roll! Although most of the time it was great fun, the whole process of writing, reviewing, rewriting, editing and proofreading took a lot of time; much more time than we originally had foreseen. We would like to thank all authors of the fourteen chapters of this book for their excellent contributions.

This book aims to bind together latest theories on creation of innovative clusters and operating modalities, empirical analysis, and several new formal models describing cluster formation and dynamics. Another objective of the book is the analysis of the role of the innovative activities on the economic performances of the firm during the crisis, focusing the attention on the complementarities existing among the innovative dimensions, hypothesizing a positive role of integrated innovative strategies in increasing the firm resilience to the challenges brought by the economic crisis. The part of empirical analysis contains a comprehensive survey of different international legislation sources useful for deep studies of influential factors and peculiarities. In this book international statistical reports on economic activity and business cases of successful application of clusters model are described for Western Europe and BRIC. This book also presents authors findings in the domain of mathematical and simulation modeling of the major elements of cluster and innovation management.