Today the world faces a lot of societal challenges in the economical, social and environmental spheres that needs to be overcome. Global warming, poverty and increasing economic inequality are only some of these challenges. The public debate has been focused on finding solutions to them and one of these has been addressed as social entrepreneurship. This phenomenon is about the era of the new type of entrepreneurs – social entrepreneurs – that recognize these challenges as opportunities that can be exploited in a both profitable and sustainable manner. Social entrepreneurship has in this way emerged as an interesting phenomenon and a new area in the entrepreneurship research.   This study examines the phenomenon of social entrepreneurship by scrutinizing the concept SIFE - Students In Free Enterprise. SIFE is a non-profit organization that claims to be actively engaged in working with social entrepreneurship. The general purpose of this study is to bring a deeper understanding of the social entrepreneurship phenomenon, by describing the particular purpose, the case of SIFE Umeå University as a social entrepreneurship model. Our study is a qualitative case study using semi-structured interviews. Six respondents have been interviewed from different levels of the organization - SIFE Umeå University - in order to reflect the entire organization. We have used a deductive approach by establishing a theoretical framework that guided the interviews and has been used in the analysis of the empirical data.   The main conclusions in this study show that SIFE Umeå University’s work with social entrepreneurship is mainly about socioeconomic and personal development. Another conclusion is that cooperation with partners from different sectors of the society is an important fundament in their work with social entrepreneurship. Furthermore, SIFE Umeå University can be considered as hybrid of a voluntary organization and social enterprise since it includes similarities of both organizational forms. Moreover, the study shows that entrepreneurial skills play an important role in SIFE Umeå University’s work with social entrepreneurship. Finally, we can from this study draw the conclusion that SIFE Umeå University’s work with social entrepreneurship can be divided in six steps: Target group, Job/life training, Commercial enterprises, Personal development, Socioeconomic development, Partnership Network.

Business has changed and developed fast and drastically through internationalization, which has drawn many scholars’ attentions. The dissertation will focus on the firm-specific advantages (FSAs) which allow firms to go to the international markets. The theoretical framework of this dissertation contains four proxies of the firm’s specific advantages, including entrepreneur, market knowledge, network, and technology. In this dissertation, this framework will guide us to collect and analyze the empirical data. The qualitative research strategy is employed in this dissertation. Utilizing the multiple case study, we choose two sample companies, both from Halmstad. The empirical data was gathered through semi-structured personal interviews. Data was also supplemented with secondary data, such as web pages and scientific articles. The finding of this dissertation is that market knowledge and experience is a crucial, firm-specific advantage, which facilitates firm’s international expansion. In addition, the entrepreneur and network variables also have an impact on the internationalization process in direct or indirect ways. However, the study does not find obvious evidence that technology does help firms go to the foreign markets a lot.

Business has changed and developed fast and drastically through internationalization, which has drawn many scholars’ attentions. The dissertation will focus on the firm-specific advantages (FSAs) which allow firms to go to the international markets. The theoretical framework of this dissertation contains four proxies of the firm’s specific advantages, including entrepreneur, market knowledge, network, and technology. In this dissertation, this framework will guide us to collect and analyze the empirical data. The qualitative research strategy is employed in this dissertation. Utilizing the multiple case study, we choose two sample companies, both from Halmstad. The empirical data was gathered through semi-structured personal interviews. Data was also supplemented with secondary data, such as web pages and scientific articles. The finding of this dissertation is that market knowledge and experience is a crucial, firm-specific advantage, which facilitates firm’s international expansion. In addition, the entrepreneur and network variables also have an impact on the internationalization process in direct or indirect ways. However, the study does not find obvious evidence that technology does help firms go to the foreign markets a lot.

The impetus for this study was my own curiosity about how seasoned entrepreneurial women were able to stay the course. As someone who has experienced the world of the employee and that of the entrepreneur, my goal was to better understand how, within their varied personal contexts, the lifelong learning experiences of seasoned entrepreneurial women were shaped by socio-cultural influences, significant individuals, gender, and learning challenges. Theories and research on lifelong and biographical learning, entrepreneurial learning, women's learning, and entrepreneurial women's learning helped to frame the study. Semi-structured, in-depth interviews and focus groups with eight women entrepreneurs between the ages of 40 and 60, with 16 to 30 years' experience in running their service-oriented enterprise were conducted. These women's stories illustrate how serendipitous their careers were, that is, they did not begin their working lives thinking they would become entrepreneurs, rather, it became the path that best supported their desires, independence and creativity. They were shaped by and sometimes resisted parents' messages about the role that education, work and marriage with children should play in women's lives. How they faced and learned from adversity and from the support of business mentors and friends were also significant. As they reflected back on their lives, they have a strong sense of mastery. Success for them did not focus on finances, rather, their autonomy, freedom, and control over the direction of their lives and the development of strong caring relationships with others, were key. Their learning was dynamic and experiential, it was both self directed and drew on others' knowledge. Women contemplating an entrepreneurial path may find this study of interest as they can learn how others, particularly family, shape their dreams, how they might meet challenges and learn from adversity, and overall, how central lifelong learning is to the development of their entrepreneurial careers. Educators and policymakers need to appreciate the serendipitous nature of entrepreneurship, how they can create entrepreneurial experiences for students, and expose the learners to not only essential skills required to run a business, but also to the stories regarding the self-development of successful entrepreneurs

Date of final Seminar: June 8th, 2012 Title: Success factors of entrepreneurial small and medium sized enterprises in Gnosjö municipality Authors:    Johan Eriksson and Muyu Li Group Number: 2898 Supervisor: Michaël Le Duc Examiner: Ole Liljefors Research Question: What important factors affect the success of entrepreneurial SMEs in the Gnosjö municipality? Background: With the economic crisis and recession, the world has begun to take notice of SMEs (small and medium sized enterprises). With an unemployment rate of just 1% and about 1500 companies - most of them successful by almost any definition and with a population of 9500, if there is such a thing as an SME region in Sweden, the Gnosjö municipality is it. Purpose: The purpose of this thesis is to describe and analyze some of the factors that influence the success of companies with a special focus on entrepreneurial SMEs in the Gnosjö municipality. Method: The main method of this study is to use primary data in the form of interviews with local company owners or executives, with the interview questions being based on theories generated from the critical literature review. The authors are able to distinguish successful SMEs with an entrepreneurial focus among companies located in the Gnosjö municipality. By utilizing the method of semi-structured interviews, the authors gathered data from a sample of 20 top performing companies. With the theory generated from literature, the authors analyze the primary data, thus being able to find the answer to the research question. Conclusion: There is a relationship between general company success factors and factors driving success for companies in Gnosjö. However, compared to best-in-class, there is definite room for improvement, with regards to company operations as well as to the external factors that affect companies in Gnosjö. Keywords: Gnosjö, definition of entrepreneur, definition of success, success factors. / <p><strong>Acknowledgements</strong></p><p>The authors would like to thank our kind and dedicated supervisor Michaël Le Duc for his aid and assistance in the process of authoring this thesis.</p><p>The authors would also like to thank not only our thesis group colleagues who have provided us with valuable insights and good advice but also the participating companies in the Gnosjö municipality for their kind contributions to the interviews that form the basis of this thesis.</p><p>Finally, the authors would like to thank our beloved family members for their great support throughout the creation of this thesis.</p><p>Without all of you, this thesis could not have been done.</p><p>Thank you all very much!</p><p>Johan Eriksson and Muyu Li</p><p>June 20, 2012</p>

This thesis investigates the hypothesis that creative social entrepreneurs facilitate collaborative governance in the Saskatoon city-region by being the primary creators of social capital. Governance, both its quality and form, is essential in facilitating social, cultural, and economic development at the city-region level. Collaborative governance is a form of governance that enables a community to mobilize all of its assets (individuals, associations, and institutions) in all sectors of society (industry, government, and civil society) to address issues of need and to create new growth. The quality of governance at the city-region level is directly influenced by the level of social capital in the city-region. It is widely acknowledged that members of Richard Floridas creative class drive Promethean-like economic development. However, the creative class is not monolithic; members of the creative class can choose to be involved in society in many different ways. The benefits that members of the creative class can have on a society when they act socially have been largely ignored in the literature. Creative social entrepreneurs characterized by their creativity, horizontal hypermobility, preference for involvement in participatory activities, and desire for quasi-anonymity (weak ties)facilitate the governance of society by creating social capital (societal level social capital, associational level social capital, and individual level social capital). The thesis presents and analyses the output from a survey of 30 creative social entrepreneurs from government, business, civil society, and the university in the Saskatoon city-region. This survey was used to measure the level of creativity (professional and informal creativity) and entrepreneurial capacity of the participants, as well as map their social networks. Using social networks analysis (SNA) three measures of centrality (closeness centrality, betweens centrality, and eigenvector centrality) were used to examine the impact that creative social entrepreneurs play in social capital creation. The results from this analysis did not explicitly support the hypothesis that creative social entrepreneurs play a key role in social capital creation and the facilitation of governance at the city-region level. However, there was a positive correlation between professional creativity and all three measures of centrality. Not all innovators impact social capital creation. However, those professional innovators that do act socially are positioned in community networks to be the primary creators of social capital.

Cette recherche s'intéresse aux personnes appelées « entrepreneurs technologiques ». Elle cherche à comprendre comment ces « entrepreneurs » construisent le réseau de contacts qui les mène au succès dans la mise en marché du produit qu'ils ont développé : nouveau médicament, traitement ou appareil ayant des applications en santé humaine. Ce projet s'inscrit dans le cadre d'un questionnement plus vaste, visant à comprendre le processus entrepreneurial dans le secteur de la biotechnologie au Québec. Il cherche à expliquer (théoriser) comment se construit et évolue le projet entrepreneurial et le capital social qui le facilite (connaissances, moyens physiques et réseaux) pour atteindre le succès lorsque les entrepreneurs conçoivent, produisent et approuvent (préalable à sa commercialisation) un nouveau médicament ou traitement. Ce travail se place dans un paradigme interprétatif selon lequel la réalité est construite par ces entrepreneurs technologiques qui fournissent leur point de vue. La méthode qui permet de comprendre étant qualitative, l'exploration se fait tout au long de 16 entretiens analysés à l'aide d'un processus de théorisation ancrée tel qu'il a été proposé par Strauss et Corbin (1990) et modernisé par Clarke (2005) et Charmaz (2006). La question centrale de recherche est « Comment les entrepreneurs construisent-ils leur capital social entrepreneurial? » Afin d'élaborer la réponse, trois niveaux d'analyse sont étudiés à partir de trois sous-questions : a) « Que font les entrepreneurs technologiques pour amener une recherche scientifique sur le marché? » ; b) « Quel est le rôle de l'artéfact qui circule entre le laboratoire et le marché? » ; et c) « Comment évolue le processus de formation du contexte entrepreneurial lors du passage du stade d'artéfact scientifique à celui de produit commercial? ». Ce travail apporte des contributions diverses à la recherche en entrepreneuriat. Le propos central étant de comprendre le processus entrepreneurial intégralement, une approche à trois niveaux sera dégagée graduellement et par niveaux d'analyse. Premièrement, cette recherche dégage la compréhension d'une dimension des compétences des entrepreneurs technologiques c'est-à-dire, la notion de traduction du marché comme compétence nécessaire à l'avancement du processus. Deuxièmement, l'artéfact ou objet limite entre deux mondes sociaux, la biotechnologie et la pharmacie, sert de dispositif médiateur du conflit potentiel entre ces entrepreneurs. L'étude de quatre médicaments ou traitements propose trois rôles de fabrication de sens impliqués dans cette médiation soit, un rôle fonctionnel, un relationnel et un interactif. Les connaissances qui émergent de l'interaction (cycle d'assimilation, articulation et dissémination des connaissances) assurent sa mise en marché et l'engagement des divers acteurs impliqués. Troisièmement, cette recherche contribue à une meilleure compréhension du comportement entrepreneurial dans la construction du contexte nécessaire à la mise en marché d'une découverte, ayant pour base normée, la réciprocité convergente. Ce travail étudie et décompose la réciprocité convergente à partir de l'observation du processus de socialisation ou mimétisme et du processus de capitalisation ou mutation dans l'identification de l'opportunité et comme levier de ressources. Par l'étude des actions et des cognitions des entrepreneurs lors d'une trajectoire couverte par 16 entretiens dans la filière de la biopharmacie au Québec, cette thèse cherche à comprendre comment les entrepreneurs technologiques construisent leur réseau de contacts qui les mène au succès dans la mise en marché du produit qu'ils ont développé : nouveau médicament ou traitement ayant des applications en santé humaine. Les trois niveaux d'analyse qui répondent à cette question sont l'individu, l'artéfact et le contexte facilitateur, lesquels font émerger un cadre conceptuel de la recherche et aident à théoriser le processus entrepreneurial lors des étapes qui précèdent la mise en marché. ______________________________________________________________________________

Seed technology ventures require external sources of debt and equity funding, once they have exhausted founders personal resources, to achieve their potential economic impact. The primary source of equity finance for seed ventures is from Business Angels who invest their own money in the company and frequently provide additional sources of assistance to the entrepreneur. Once seed ventures have completed their business plans, however informally, they pitch their opportunity to potential investors, However, less than three per cent of these pitches to Business Angels are successful. It is suggested that a major reason for this low success rates is a lack of understanding by pitching entrepreneurs of how Business Angels make their investment decisions. Investigating how Business Angels make their investment decisions will identify some of the causes of this high failure rate. In turn this will help to suggest ways for entrepreneurs to increase their likelihood of successful interactions with investors. Real-time techniques that involve observing successive interactions between five Business Angels and 150 pitching entrepreneurs are used to gather data on the investment decision-making process. The technique of observational interaction has been used in psychological research to observe interpersonal relationships and their development within the context of a complex process. This complex process can best be understood by breaking down the process into stages. In this research the initial interaction between entrepreneur and Business Angel is investigated. It is found that initially the Business Angels use a filtering technique to expeditiously reject most opportunities. This allows, allow them to concentrate their limited resources on further investigation of a few promising opportunities that appear to offer the highest potential return. The unique data set used in this research is taken from a reality TV show – CBC Dragons’ Den – where entrepreneurs participate in order to receive real investment from five wealthy individuals known as “Dragons”. Using the video material gathered during the recording of the show it is possible to observe how the five Dragons initially filter out most opportunities, before looking at more positive factors when determining their interest in investing in the few opportunities remaining. This filtering process involves a non-compensatory technique - Elimination-By-Aspects, where the presence of a single one of eight potential fatal flaws is sufficient reason for rejection. While this may not be the most accurate technique, it is the most cost effective approach to decision-making for the investors. To increase accuracy at later stages, the investors adopt a more compensatory decision-making approaches. Improved understanding of the staged nature of the process, and how Business Angels identify fatal flaws at the initial stage of the interaction, provides valuable insights to both investors and entrepreneurs. Armed with this knowledge they can take steps to eliminate such flaws and improve the overall efficiency of the decision making process. This in turn will lead to an increase in successful outcomes of such interactions and consequently the number of seed ventures that are successful in raising third-party funding from Business Angels.

Much research has shown that Born Global firms are an important component of the global economy today. The Born Global firms bring innovations and welfare to the nations that they establish themselves in as well as make the world a more integrated place. Since these firms are important, they also face many difficulties on the global market, and in general the survival rate of these firms is considered lower, in comparison to the firms that use the more traditional way of internationalize. Therefore the motivations behind these firms can be useful to bring more welfare and development to the world market, as well as an understanding of the main factors behind the fast internationalization process. This thesis is based on the work of Andersson and Wictor (2003), model of the four influence factors governing Born Global firms; the globalization, the entrepreneur, the industry and the network. This thesis incorporates two other aspects of motivation, the resource perspective and the governmental, and has viewed four cases from four different industries in a qualitative case study.     This thesis demonstrates that there are two motivational factors which are above the others, The Entrepreneur(s) as well as the Industry and Market factors. Besides these two, three other sub - themes, the strategic alliances, the resource orientation as well as the knowledge as a resource of the entrepreneur, were found to be of importance. This thesis examines the main motivating factors of fast internationalization, as well as establishing the roles of the influence.

Seed technology ventures require external sources of debt and equity funding, once they have exhausted founders personal resources, to achieve their potential economic impact. The primary source of equity finance for seed ventures is from Business Angels who invest their own money in the company and frequently provide additional sources of assistance to the entrepreneur. Once seed ventures have completed their business plans, however informally, they pitch their opportunity to potential investors, However, less than three per cent of these pitches to Business Angels are successful. It is suggested that a major reason for this low success rates is a lack of understanding by pitching entrepreneurs of how Business Angels make their investment decisions. Investigating how Business Angels make their investment decisions will identify some of the causes of this high failure rate. In turn this will help to suggest ways for entrepreneurs to increase their likelihood of successful interactions with investors. Real-time techniques that involve observing successive interactions between five Business Angels and 150 pitching entrepreneurs are used to gather data on the investment decision-making process. The technique of observational interaction has been used in psychological research to observe interpersonal relationships and their development within the context of a complex process. This complex process can best be understood by breaking down the process into stages. In this research the initial interaction between entrepreneur and Business Angel is investigated. It is found that initially the Business Angels use a filtering technique to expeditiously reject most opportunities. This allows, allow them to concentrate their limited resources on further investigation of a few promising opportunities that appear to offer the highest potential return. The unique data set used in this research is taken from a reality TV show – CBC Dragons’ Den – where entrepreneurs participate in order to receive real investment from five wealthy individuals known as “Dragons”. Using the video material gathered during the recording of the show it is possible to observe how the five Dragons initially filter out most opportunities, before looking at more positive factors when determining their interest in investing in the few opportunities remaining. This filtering process involves a non-compensatory technique - Elimination-By-Aspects, where the presence of a single one of eight potential fatal flaws is sufficient reason for rejection. While this may not be the most accurate technique, it is the most cost effective approach to decision-making for the investors. To increase accuracy at later stages, the investors adopt a more compensatory decision-making approaches. Improved understanding of the staged nature of the process, and how Business Angels identify fatal flaws at the initial stage of the interaction, provides valuable insights to both investors and entrepreneurs. Armed with this knowledge they can take steps to eliminate such flaws and improve the overall efficiency of the decision making process. This in turn will lead to an increase in successful outcomes of such interactions and consequently the number of seed ventures that are successful in raising third-party funding from Business Angels.