<p>The role of entrepreneurship and innovation in K&ndash;12 education continues to evolve. As more reform efforts come and go, it is clear that little has changed despite billions of dollars invested in these efforts. Education leaders are being asked to leverage entrepreneurial and innovative solutions to transform the K&ndash;12 education environment to meet the needs of a modern society and workplace. Consequently, there is an urgent need to expand the boundaries of possibilities for improving public education. Identifying the essential practices of executive education leaders is of particular importance to K&ndash;12 education which is under increasing pressure to provide better equity of resources, do more with less, close the student achievement gap, and prepare students for a future where most jobs have yet to be defined. To meet this challenge, executive education leaders must leverage and implement key entrepreneurial and innovation practices. The purpose of the study was to identify and understand the practices of executive level leaders in California County Offices of Education. The study was designed using the Delphi method approach of identification, shared evaluation, re-evaluation, and finally consensus among the executives to identify the essential entrepreneurial and innovation practices of education leaders. At the conclusion of the process, 15 executives identified 13 opportunity recognition, leadership, and staff practices they believe to be essential to support entrepreneurship and innovation in education. The 2 opportunity recognition skills were: (a) collaboration, (b) future-focus. The 8 leadership practices were: (a) articulate vision, (b) promote healthy organization culture, (c) flexibility, (d) life-long learning, (e) relationship building, (f) actively seek opportunities, (g) decisive. The 3 staff practices were: (a) trust, (b) flexibility, (c) drive. A key finding of the study was the identification of 3 overarching practices spanning opportunity recognition, leadership, and staff: (a) collaboration, (b) flexibility, and (c) future-focused. The essential practices identified in this study assist leaders in strengthening and transforming education organizations. By focusing on the identified essential practices, leaders are able to meet the challenges and complexity evident in today&rsquo;s K&ndash;12 education environment, and create organizations where entrepreneurship and innovation can thrive in support of student learning. </p>

<p><strong><em>Introduction</em></strong></p><p>Entrepreneurship and SME development play a crucial role in speeding up the economic development of transition economies. Although entrepreneurship exists in all environments it flourishes in the conditions where it is supported. Transition economies, as well as Georgia, are characterized by inefficient framework conditions that present barriers to productive entrepreneurship and SMEs to develop and benefit the economies in their full potential.</p><p> </p><p><strong><em>Purpose</em></strong></p><p>The Thesis aimed at answering the following research questions:</p><p> </p><p>1)      To what extent the framework conditions necessary for promoting productive entrepreneurship and SME development exist in Georgia?</p><p>2)      What are the perceived barriers to entrepreneurship and SME development in Georgia?</p><p>3)      In what ways is entrepreneurship and SME development encouraged and supported in Georgia?</p><p><strong><em>Method</em></strong></p><p>The thesis consists of theoretical data such as literature review, secondary data presented by previous studies, and primary data collected by conducting interviews with Georgian entrepreneurs and representatives of governmental bodies and NGOs engaged in improving a business climate in the country.</p><p> </p><p><strong><em>Conclusions</em></strong></p><p>The study revealed that basic framework conditions for developing entrepreneurship are present in Georgia. Although inefficiencies and institutional gaps give rise to a number of barriers to entrepreneurship and SME development. They are mostly presented by inefficient tax system and financial framework. Despite their efforts towards fostering favourable business environment, GoG, as well as NOGs could do a better job in improving an indirect support in terms of abolishing imperfections in the taxation system, as well as directly providing finance, training and effectual information flow to existing and potential businesses.</p>

Glassjar Limited produces cloud based software for tenants and landlords to manage their rental properties and finances. This project focused on implementing the Glassjar business plan in the lead up to the product’s launch at the end of the project period. The report summarises the planning processes involved in the project, reports the results and makes comparisons between the two.

This dissertation presents an integrated-empirical analysis of the relationship between Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) and the entrepreneurial activity in Mexico. The bulk of the literature has focused its attention on measuring FDI's effects on economic growth across countries using secondary data at the macro level, but it has neglected the analysis for Latin American countries, particularly; it has neglected the analysis of FDI's effects on the entrepreneurial activity; and the factors that foster or hinder the entrepreneurial activity in an open-market system, at the institutional level.In this work I present evidence that supports the hypothesis that FDI is positive and significant correlated with economic growth but only when economic growth is presented as a linear function of FDI. I also present evidence that contest the hypothesis that FDI is positive correlated with the creation of new firms, particularly for a setting in which the host country's economic structure is heavily characterized by micro and small low-tech-firms, as it is the case in Mexico. However, I also present evidence that supports the findings of previous studies regarding external and internal factors affecting individuals who are willing to take risks and to become entrepreneurs across regions. This integrated approach is based on the use of different methodological tools that helped me to explore the factors affecting the entrepreneurial activity in Mexico, both at different economic sectors, and at different regional levels.I argue that each potential entrepreneur faces different environmental constraints and personal limitations (external and internal factors) when is about to start a new venture, such differences are subject to personal traits, and to the institutional context in which the future entrepreneur interacts. I found that there are similar institutional constraints across Mexican states affecting the rate of new firms' creation; I also found that individuals - entrepreneurs - across Mexican States differ in their willingness to take risks depending upon their geographic location. I will also discuss how these differences and similarities across Mexican States raise important implications for public policy toward the development of a new entrepreneurial class in the country.

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This thesis focuses on an analysis of the survival and growth of new start-up firms in Vietnam covering the period 2000-2005. In particular, the thesis investigates three main dimensions: i) the effect of growth and other determinants on firm survival; ii) the survival of state, domestic private and foreign firms; iii) the determinants of the growth of firms, and job creation and destruction of firms in Vietnam. In addition, the findings of the thesis have implications for policy makers responsible for new firm development in Vietnam. The learning model of Jovanovic (1982) is used in this thesis to study the dynamics of firms in terms of their survival and growth. The empirical study of firm survival using hazard models, and of job flow analysis of firms in Vietnam is relatively new. Furthermore, a new and unique panel dataset is used in this thesis to analyse the survival and growth of firms in Vietnam. The main findings are as follows: The first important finding is that the effect of previous growth (both in terms of employment and assets) on firm survival is positive, and also that this relationship is nonlinear. The effect of growth on survival decreases as growth increases. Moreover, domestic private and foreign firms are more positively associated with the probability of survival compared to state firms. Firms with larger initial size are more likely to survive, and firms able to access funds at the time of start-up have a greater likelihood of surviving. The productivity of a firm in year t-1 has a positive relationship with the survival probability of a firm in year t. Firms with a higher return on assets in year t-1 are more likely to survive in year t. At the same time, leverage in year t-1 is negatively associated with the probability of survival in year t. Differences in the probability of survival of state, domestic private and foreign firms are identified in both non-parametric and semi-parametric approaches. State firms take more advantages of support and preferential treatment from the government to achieve the highest probability of survival in the non-parametric approach, but they experience the lowest probability of survival when the effects of factors such as growth, initial founding conditions, productivity, financial ratios and leverage are considered in the semi-parametric approach. This means that when considering the effects of the other factors, the advantages for state firms disappear. Hence, the basis of performance and survival of state firms is 2 mainly dependent on assistance from the government. Firm survival rate seems to be more sensitive to return on sales for state firms as opposed to domestic private and foreign firms. At the same time, a rise in the initial capital intensive has stronger positive effects on the survival chances of domestic private firms than foreign and state firms. The determinants of firm survival are not the same for state, domestic private and foreign firms, but the return on assets in year t-1 is a significant positive effect on survival in year t for all three types of firms. The result from the Oaxaca – Blinder decomposition extended for the nonlinear version shows that most of the difference in exit rates between state and non-state firms cannot be explained by the included covariates, but is almost explained by the effects of differences in coefficients of covariates. This may be due to the government discrimination against non-state firms. Growth in employment rates is faster in younger firms than older ones and small firms have a faster asset growth than their larger counterparts. These results are consistent with the learning model of Jovanovic (1982) and show that Gibrat’s Law fails to hold true. The determinants of firm growth are sensitive to definitions of growth (firm growth in this thesis is measured in terms of employment or assets). When separately analysing growth of younger and older firms, the determinants of the growth in younger firms are different to those for older firms, and factors affecting employment and asset growth are considerably different in both younger and older firms. Using the Davis and Haltiwanger method of job flow analysis it is found that job creation and loss, or reductions, are almost the same in the period 2000-2005, and that the restructuring of the market during this period was high due to the transition process in new developing country. There are negative relationships between firm size and job flow, and small firms play a more significant role in job creation and destruction, and exhibit higher levels of job turnover and the restructuring process than medium or large firms in Vietnam. This result is the similar to the explanation given by the model of Jovanovic (1982). Domestic private firms display the most flexibility in hiring and firing workers, and the highest job turnover in the Vietnamese labour market because they experience the highest rates of job flow compared to both state and foreign firms. Industrial sector firms play the most important role in employment flexibility, creation and the restructuring of the economy compared to firms in the service and agricultural sectors. Finally, the findings in each chapter recommend some policy implications to improve the growth and the probability of survival of firms in Vietnam.

<p> Maier Acosta, Ana Margarita, Ph.D., Purdue University, May 2016. A Multiculturalist and Sociotransformative Approach to Entrepreneurship Education in Honduras. Major Professor: JoAnn Phillion. This research seeks to take advantage of the converging points among multicultural education, sociotransformative constructivism and entrepreneurship education to propose new ways of teaching entrepreneurship through a multicultural approach in Honduras, based on the potential that entrepreneurship education has to impact society. Action research, because of its potential to connect theory and practice was used as the methodology for this project. This study had the purpose of exploring the efficacy and effects of incorporating multicultural education into entrepreneurship education through a sociotransformative constructivist theoretical framework at the graduate school in the leading private university at Honduras, UNITEC. Entrepreneurship&acute;s contextual nature, its desire to foster individualism and its potential to impact society provided the perfect platform for multicultural education through the incorporation of sociotransformative constructivism in the curriculum to act as an awareness raising device for both students and the teacher. A review of multicultural literature and business education literature, specifically entrepreneurship education literature, reveals adisconnect between the two fields. Even though in some literature the integration of multicultural education is implicit; it is not explicitly stated. The field of Entrepreneurship in Honduras had never been studied before through the lens of such a theory and this as a starting point from which future research should be done.</p>

Submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the Degree of Master in Technology: Marketing, Technikon Natal, 2000. / This research has aimed to explore the impact of clustering on the ability of small manufacturers in the clothing industry in Port Elizabeth to enhance their competitiveness. The research study was conducted in two stages, which included both qualitative and quantitative research methods. Firstly, an exploratory qualitative study using the Delphi method was employed to identify the key problems currently being experienced by small manufacturers in the clothing industry. Finally, the application of a structured questionnaire to small manufacturers in the clothing industry followed, exploring the awareness of and interest in clustering as a strategy for enhancing competitiveness. A key observation to emerge from the qualitative research is that significant differences were evident between the responses of academics, professionals in small business development and small business owners. An analysis of the problems experienced by small manufacturers in the clothing industry revealed that high labour costs and low I productivity were the frontrunners. The lack of knowledge was cited as the most important problem preventing the wide scale implementation of horizontal clustering. Another key observance to emerge from the quantitative study is the fact that very few significant differences are evident between the two groups viz. small business owners and experts. The research indicated that although in the minority, horizontal linkages exist between small clothing manufacturers in Port Elizabeth. The results indicated furthermore that the majority of small clothing manufacturers in Port Elizabeth are / M

Ordet entreprenörskap skrevs in i grundskolans läroplan 2011 och ingår idag i skolans uppdrag. Entreprenörskap är i ropet såväl internationellt som nationellt och begreppet har letat sig in i styrdokument via Europarådet och regeringskansliet. Syftet med denna studie är att undersöka verksamma lågstadielärares attityder till entreprenörskap i skolan för att få en uppfattning om det aktuella läget i den svenska grundskolan. Studiens frågeställningar fokuserar bland annat på hur viktigt lärare anser att entreprenörskapsarbete är i olika årskurser, om de vill arbeta med entreprenörskap samt hur de graderar elevens och näringslivets intresse gällande entreprenörskap i skolan.Det finns flertalet pågående projekt som syftar till att stimulera entreprenörskap i skolan såväl nationellt som internationellt genom organisationer som Komtek, Ung företagsamhet och Snilleblixtarna för att nämna några. Det forskas friskt på området entreprenörskap i skolan. Något som är relativt outforskat är däremot lärares attityder gentemot entreprenörskap i skolan. En del av den forskning som finns på området är gjord i Finland och Malaysia och visar i stort att lärare har en positiv inställning till entreprenörskap men upplever bristande kompetens inom området.För att kunna ställa attityder mot varandra och finna eventuella mönster valdes kvantitativ metod som grund för studien. Data samlades in via en webbenkät som skickades ut till lärare verksamma i årskurs 1-3 i ett eller flera av ämnena svenska, engelska, matematik, SO och NO.I linje med tidigare forskning visar resultaten i denna studie att lärares attityder till entreprenörskap överlag är positiv. Attityderna varierar dock och en stor del av respondenterna upplever begreppet vara värdeladdat. Resultatet visar att respondenterna övervägande anser att entreprenörskapets relevans i utbildning ökar i och med elevers stigande ålder. Detta trots att de allra flesta anser sig ha en bred definition av begreppet entreprenörskap enligt vilket entreprenörskap i skolan handlar om att utveckla grundläggande förmågor som kreativitet, innovationsförmåga och handlingskraft.

Modern literature has many research in the field of entrepreneurship, but most of them do not explain the characteristics of entrepreneurial activity in developing countries. Thus, this research uses  regression analysis of panel data for the cross-country analysis of factors influence the level of entrepreneurial activity in 52 developing countries. The paper provides empirical information about the individual characteristics, regulatory standards countries, as well as some macroeconomic indicators. Individual factors (gender, age), indicators of respondents’ self-evaluation and assessment of the environment, in which they are located have a significant impact on entrepreneurial activity in developing economies. In terms of macroeconomic indicators, it was concluded on the positive effects of GDP growth and the lack of impact of unemployment on the level of entrepreneurial activity.