Esta dissertação apresenta a abordagem da importância da interação universidade empresa no ambiente acadêmico, com foco na descrição da construção da edificação do Escritório Verde da Universidade Tecnológica Federal do Paraná, campus de Curitiba, que foi viabilizado a partir de parcerias com empresas. Analisa as bases históricas das relações universidade-empresa no Brasil, e evidencia as vantagens e necessidades advindas de tal interação do meio acadêmico com o setor produtivo. Discute as motivações que despertaram nas empresas o interesse em investir nesta relação, ofertando produtos e serviços para a viabilização do projeto de construção do Escritório Verde. Demonstra a importância de tal projeto para a universidade, bem como analisa as bases de criação de uma empresa Junior multidisciplinar que terá como sede o Escritório Verde, a qual prestará consultoria verde. Complementando a análise descritiva de como se deu o processo de interação, o estudo verificou por meio de um questionário enviado às principais empresas parceiras quais as expectativas destas quanto a sua participação em um projeto acadêmico e o que elas esperam desta relação após a conclusão da edificação. Traz como resultado as análises destas parcerias, as quais demonstraram que desde que se tenha um ambiente propício com ganhos mútuos, as empresas mostram-se solidárias e agregam-se a projetos acadêmicos. Evidencia o desejo das mesmas em capacitar profissionais em suas tecnologias e serviços ainda na universidade, enxergando a mesma como formadora de mão de obra. Em termos de responsabilidade socioambiental, verificou-se que as empresas desejam vincular seu nome a projetos que remontam a tais iniciativas, tendo em vista que estes trabalham com produtos e serviços que possuem apelo ambiental. O Escritório Verde mostrou-se uma vitrine no ramo da sustentabilidade e conscientização para com o meio ambiente, sendo alvo de inúmeras reportagens em mídias diversas. / This dissertation presents the approach of the importance of university-industry interactions in the academic environment, focusing on the description of the construction of building the Green Office Federal Technological University of Parana, Curitiba campus, which was made possible through partnerships with companies. Analyzes the historical basis of university-business relations in Brazil, and highlights the advantages and requirements arising from this interaction of academia with the productive sector. Discusses the reasons that sparked the interest in the companies to invest in this relationship, offering products and services for the feasibility of the construction of the Green Office. Demonstrates the importance of such a project for the university, as well as examines the foundations of creating a multidisciplinary junior company will be based at the Green Office, which will advise green. To complement the descriptive analysis of how was the process of interaction, the study found through a questionnaire sent to key business partners such as the expectations for their participation in an academic project and they expect this relationship after completion of the building. Bring the analyzes as a result of these partnerships, which demonstrate that since it has an environment conducive to mutual gains, companies appear to be supportive and add to academic projects. It highlights the desire of those in training professionals in their technologies and services still in college, seeing it as a trainer of labor. In terms of social and environmental responsibility, it was found that companies want to link your name to projects that go back to such initiatives, given that they work with products and services that have environmental appeal. The Green Office proved to be a showcase in the field of sustainability and awareness for the environment, the target of numerous articles in various media.

數位時代來臨，過去在戶外見到的傳統招牌廣告、商店內張貼的紙本海報，或是速食店(Quick Service Restaurant)的菜單，現在都漸漸由數位看板取代。根據Global Industry Analysts的預測，2017年全球數位看板市場規模約為138億美元。宏碁自建雲部門於2012年起致力於發展雲端相關之產品，看好數位看板的高成長性，宏碁將數位看板與自身雲端系統結合，在德國成功銷售了8,000台數位看板解決方案。2017年，宏碁取得前線媒體的影像辨識感應器技術，並將其應用到宏碁智雲看板解決方案上，讓「眼球經濟」商業化，成為創新的商業模式。透過積極的入股和策略聯盟，宏碁不斷優化自身的銷售組合以及商業模式，希望將營運宏碁智雲看板的Acer Being Signage Gmbh德國子公司成為宏碁自建雲第一個上市的事業體。 本研究將探討宏碁智雲看板的商業模式，同時，給予其建議，使其能與競爭者差異化以達到目標所需之銷售量。 / Digital transformation age has come. Digital Signage replaced the traditional out-of-home media such as plastic advertising signs, posters in stores and paper menus in quick service restaurants. According to the estimation by Global Industry Analysts, Digital Signage Market value in 2017 is about 13.8 billion USD. Acer BYOC department focused on developing cloud-based related products. Considering the high potential of digital signage, Acer BYOC combined cloud technology with signage, and successfully sold 8,000 digital signage solution in Germany by its subsidiary Acer Being Signage GmbH. In 2017, Acer BYOC acquired the technique of Behavior Tracking System from Pilot TV and applied it on the digital signage solution. Acer commercialize “eye economy” into its business model for innovation. By altering and fine-tuning its product mix and business model, Acer hope that Acer Being Signage GmbH could be the first listing business unit in BYOC. This thesis will discuss about Acer ‘s current business model, as well as offering suggestions so that Acer can be differentiated from its competitors and increase the sales volume.

Orientadora: Profa. Dra. Luciana Pereira / Dissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Federal do ABC, Programa de Pós-Graduação em Engenharia e Gestão da Inovação, 2017. / Avanços constantes da tecnologia para o fortalecimento da manufatura digital obrigam empresas a procurarem novos meios para se manterem eficientes e competitivas. Nesse contexto, não há apenas a busca por novas tecnologias, mas também por novas formas de combiná-las e criar novas propostas de geração de valor em suas cadeias produtivas e, consequentemente, impactar positivamente os modelos de negócios utilizados pelas empresas que usufruem dessas combinações. Assim, este trabalho visa analisar como a aplicação combinada da manufatura aditiva e do design biônico pode gerar uma nova oportunidade de negócio, dada a sua capacidade de gerar valor numa cadeia produtiva. Para tanto, foi estudado o Projeto da Aeronave Biônica, utilizando como ferramenta metodológica o modelo de negócios Canvas, buscando avaliar a proposição de valor obtido pela combinação do design biônico e da manufatura aditiva. Essa análise permitiu a identificação das principais características originadas dessa combinação, as quais serviram de base para a construção de uma estrutura que ilustra como as grandes etapas desse novo modelo de negócio estão inter-relacionadas. / Continuous technological advancements towards driving the strengthening of digital manufacturing have forced companies to seek new ways to remain efficient and competitive. In this context, there is not only the search for new technologies, but also for new ways of combining them and creating new value generation proposals in their productive chains and, consequently, positively impact the business models used by companies that use these combinations. Thus, this work aims to analyze how the combined application of additive manufacturing and bionic design can be a new business opportunity, given its capacity to impact the way value creation happens in a production chain. In order to do so, the Bionic Aircraft Project was studied, using as a methodological tool the Business Model Canvas, seeking to evaluate the value proposition brought by the combination of these two technologies. This analysis allowed the identification of the main characteristics originated from this combination, which served as the basis for the construction of a framework that illustrates how the major stages of this new business model are interrelated.

Submitted in fulfillment oof part of the requirements for the Masters ooff Business Administration, Durban University of Technology, Durban, South Africa, 2017. / Small businesses form the backbone of any nation’s economy, especially where unemployment is extremely high. South Africa is one of the many countries that struggle with low economic growth resulting in low employment. This study investigates the relationship between entrepreneurial orientation, business performance and competitive advantage. South Africa’s small business sector is under pressure as evidence exists that the failure rate is well above 70 percent, and to an extent, up to 90 percent depending on various conditions. This study was conducted in Durban, South Africa. The study sought to answer the two questions namely: a) Is there a significant relationship between entrepreneurial orientation and business performance? and b) Is there a mediating role of competitive advantage in the relationship between entrepreneurial orientation and business performance? These questions were targeted to small business owners or managers in Durban, South Africa. Therefore, 177 participants responded, and both questions were tested and yielded positive results. Data were collected by means of a questionnaire consisting of 24 items. Indeed, the finding was that there is a positive and significant relationship between entrepreneurial orientation and business performance, and that competitive advantage does mediate the relationship between business performance and entrepreneurial orientation. Finally, many studies examined in this study support the findings of this research pointing out that a strong positive relationship exists between business performance and entrepreneurial orientation. Similarly, there seems to be an agreement that there is some relationship between competitive advantage, entrepreneurial orientation and business performance. However, the literature reviewed did not clarify if competitive advantage does actually mediate the relationship between entrepreneurial orientation and business performance whilst this study found that mediation does exist between the entrepreneurial orientation and business performance link. Hence, small businesses need to learn more about this relationship so to take advantage of possible synergies that may arise from it. Further, both the government of South Africa and the private sector should keep supporting small businesses by making use of research studies like this one and many more which are based on theory and practice. / M

The following study is about business angels financing small business start-ups. It explores the aspect of starting up an entrepreneurial venture in which the entrepreneur seeks to secure start-up finance from lenders, raising the various issues that are known to characterise this engagement between the entrepreneur and the lender. Using the phenomenological paradigm, the study seeks to determine the awareness of small scale financing by entrepreneurs in South Africa, to determine the most commonly used source of start-up business funding in South Africa, to assess the extent to which business angel financing could be used to finance businesses in South Africa and to determine the factors impacting the use of business angel financing in South Africa. From these objectives, the study will also seek to determine the extent to which business angel networks could facilitate the financing of business start-ups. Small businesses invariably come up in different policy spheres as the main avenues to social and economic construction across national and regional lines. The importance of a successful business start up to a growing economy should not be underestimated. In line with this is the particular factor of gaining access to start up capital, which continues to emerge as a leading contributor to the success or failure of business start ups. Studies continue to verify that the most common challenge faced by most emerging entrepreneurs is start-up capital, either in the lack of this capital, the unfavourable conditions surrounding its availability, the lack of assets to serve as collateral for its use or the ambiguous flow of crucial information between lenders and providers of finance in the funding relationship (Abor and Biekpe, 2006: 69;Hernandez-Trillo, Pagan and Paxton, 2005: 435, ISPESE, 2005: 7, CDE, 2004: 5; Musengi 2003: 11). Roger Sorheim (2005: 179) refers to business angels as private individuals who offer risk capital to unlisted companies that are struggling to obtain start up capital to finance their business ideas. Business angels are further defined as high net-worth bearers of substantial private capital who predominantly invest in the early stage of high risk high potential return business ventures with a positive further growth potential. Business angel finance is typically a ‘once-off’ early stage form of small firm financing compared to the more frequent later stage venture capitalist funding. Studies show that business angels represent an underutilised wealth creation mechanism when it comes to small firm start-ups as most business angels contribute expertise in addition to finance to the start-ups they get involved in. This brings valuable business insight to the commercialisation of a good business idea. The business angel network exposes a range of potentially viable business prospects to willing investors by facilitating the flow of information about entrepreneurs and their businesses, thereby eliminating ambiguity, information asymmetry and transaction costs (Aernoudt and Erikson, 2002: 178; Van Osnabrugge and Robinson, 2000:374; Macht, 2006:1; Ehlrich, De Noble, Moore and Weaver, 1994:70; Sorheim, 2005:179). To achieve a holistic approach to a phenomenon which appears to be relatively new in South African business circles, the study will follow a qualitative approach in which two categories of populations will be used, one of small business operators and the other of business angels in South Africa. In the study, 20 small business operators and five business angels in Grahamstown will be approached using the convenience and snowballing sampling methods respectively. Face-to-face semi-structured interviews will be used as a data collection method and content analysis will be used as a data analysis tool (Collis and Hussey, 2003:156, Driver, Wood, Segal and Herrington, 2001:32, National Small Business Act ). There has been very limited research on business angels in the South African context, therefore the study would significantly contribute in entrepreneurship, government and small business development circles as it brings about attention to what the researcher predicts is an underutilised business start-up financing option.

This thesis comprises three essays that analyze financial and non-financial aspects of firm and industry dynamics. The first essay investigates the evolution of a cohort of entrants during their first ten years of life. The study looks at the distributions of sales, assets, employment and debtasset ratio for these firms over time and compares how these distributions change relative to distributions for incumbent firms. Entrants are smaller in terms of employees, assets and sales, but have a higher debt-asset ratio when compared with incumbents. These differences lessen over time because entrants have higher growth rates and smaller entrant firms have higher failure rates than compared to larger entrants. The second essay investigates whether long-term growth of a firm is independent of initial financial structure. I look at a panel of Canadian retail and manufacturing firms born in 1985. The analysis involves a two-part testing process. The first part tests whether firm growth exhibits initial size dependence. The growth process for retail firms exhibits initial size dependence, while the growth process for manufacturing firms does not. The second part looks at whether growth of ten-year old manufacturing firms is independent of initial debt-asset ratio. The result rejects independence with the finding that age ten conditional size of a manufacturing firm has a non-monotonic relationship with initial debt-asset ratio. The final essay examines whether Gibrat's law holds for groups of Canadian firms operating in manufacturing and retail sectors. Gibrat's law holds when firm growth and variability of growth are independent of firm size and firm growth is independent across time. Firm growth and variability of growth depend on size for each set of firms, which leads to violations of Gibrat's law. The source of these two violations is not survival bias, since the violations occur with the inclusion or exclusion of failing firms. A further violation is that negative growth persistence exists. Finally, I look at possible failure because of age effects. I examine a group of new firms with a common age and find the violations continue to occur for this group. / Arts, Faculty of / Vancouver School of Economics / Graduate

This thesis was written as part of a process to secure funds to develop a Vocational Education Entrepreneurship Workshop for African American students attending the Provisional Accelerated Learning Center (PAL), a local community based organization which assist high risk individuals to gain vocational education and Graduation Equivalen Diploma (GED)

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A prestudy by the author of the assistance available to small business owners in South Africa revealed that although much assistance is available, many small businesses still fail. The question that arose was whether small business owners are receiving the proper assistance in respect of the right functional areas of the business, for the appropriate duration, at the right stage of the business life cycle and by the right people. Taking all these issues into account, the main purpose of this study was to determine what types of business interventions have the greatest impact on the success of entrepreneurs and small and medium enterprise owners. The literature study includes the history of small business development in South Africa and the interventions that have taken place in this and other countries. It also provides a definition of a successful small business and the generic business needs of small business owners. The sample used in this study was drawn from the members of the Confederation of Employers of South Africa (Cofesa). The research findings of this study are reliable for the SME owners who are members of Cofesa. The Cofesa group is not representative with regards to demographics, location, economic sectors or qualifications of South African SMEs. The following are some of the findings of the study of successful small business owners: * They generally make use of assistance in the areas of finance, marketing and human resources. * Most of them make use of assistance on a continuous basis during all the stages of the business life cycle, suggesting the way forward for aspirant business owners who should start making use of assistance even before starting their businesses. * Consultants or business specialists are mainly used for assistance. * More than two-thirds of the business owners thought that their businesses were more successful after they had received assistance. * The assistance was neither the cause of failure nor was it the main cause of their success. Assistance is a contributing factor to success but not the main reason for it. The success of a SME will depend mainly on other factors such as type of product, product quality and marketing. Assistance, however, proves vital and should first be provided for the areas as identified by the respondents in this study (mainly finance, marketing and human resources). / Business Management / D. Com.

In the 21st century change is inevitable and management accounting has not been immune to the changing business environment. The morphogenic change, has been brought about because of three distinctly identifiable drivers of change namely rapidly advancing communications and information technology, the onslaught of globalisation and an increased emphasis on the knowledge worker in organisations. Questions have been raised by business leaders about management accountants ability to keep pace with the challenges, as well as higher education's ability to provide graduate management accountants with the required skills for the new business environment. A triangulation method was used to conduct an investigation into the perception of the skills required and acquired by South African management accountants to meet the challenges of the changing business environment. As the fundamental nature of the study implied performance measurement, a balanced scorecard was employed to report on and measure if academia is delivering what practice wants. The study found that tertiary management accounting education has been slow to adopt the changes of the business environment and that a gap does indeed exist between what practice want and educators teach. Information obtained from the customer, learning and growth, internal business process and financial perspectives of the balanced scorecard was used to develop a framework for curriculum design. Academics involved in curriculum design should take note of the recommendations listed in this research in order to ensure that qualifications remain relevant to an ever-changing business environment. / Financial Accounting / D.Comm.