The International Journal of Entrepreneurship and Innovation

Little is currently known about the cognitive processes entrepreneurs engage in as they develop and implement strategies. A computer simulation was used to investigate this question. Repeated measures regression analysis indicated that participants using a learning goal were able to keep their simulated firms running longer than those using a performance outcome goal. Strategy mediated the relationship between task-specific self-efficacy and performance. Conversely, task-specific self-efficacy mediated the relationship between strategy use and performance. General self-efficacy added explanatory power to firm survival, even after controlling for the effects of specific self-efficacy. Limitations and implications for future research are discussed.

This paper establishes the growing perception of the importance of the social enterprise sector in the UK, and notes that it is currently government policy to encourage growth. However, social enterprises, in common with many small businesses, find growth difficult, and this could impact negatively on their sustainability. The author goes on to explore the reasons for that difficulty, and concludes by suggesting how best to support social enterprise. It is suggested that orthodox growth stimulated by further marketization of this sector could be to its detriment. The paper aims to contribute to knowledge of the social enterprise sector and to the evidence base required by the policy-making community.

Entrepreneurship is increasingly relevant to economic output and job creation in both developed and developing countries. It is especially important for the UK, so as to reverse a century of relative economic decline. This paper discusses the UK government's policy on entrepreneurship, and the objectives it has set for higher education institutions. It then goes on to present the initiatives taken by the University of Greenwich to develop an enterprise culture, both within and with the wider community. The paper focuses on the role played by the University's Centre for Entrepreneurship in helping it to contribute towards the UK's economic development and competitiveness. The conclusions reached indicate that higher education institutions need to behave entrepreneurially at both the staff and student levels in order to build an enterprise culture. Staff need to be bold in taking initiatives to seek out processes that can help shift the established paradigm and to introduce new content to achieve breakthroughs in the culture. This is also required to engage students and to help build their personal intangible assets as much as to facilitate them in starting up new enterprises.

Using Tanzania as a case study, this paper explores the value of factoring as a finance option for small enterprises in emerging economies. Based on identified challenges, the paper develops a policy framework that could facilitate the growth of the factoring industry in Tanzania. Within the boundaries of the developed framework, the paper concludes that there is a need for the Tanzanian government to create a favourable legal and regulatory environment, foster economic growth, support the formation of factoring associations, strengthen credit information infrastructure, and create an overall favourable tax structure that is supportive of the factoring industry. Furthermore, the paper argues that the ongoing global growth in factoring provides a unique opportunity for fostering the growth of factoring finance in emerging economies through cross-border factoring.

This paper is concerned with the attempts of the Small and Medium Enterprise Development Bank of Thailand (SME Bank) to move towards becoming a technology bank to support the generation of new businesses and innovations. Being the bank for technology-based businesses to increase the nation's innovation capacity is the great challenge for SME Bank, as it needs to garner integrated financial and entrepreneurial support as well as a network of alliances. The paper proposes a model based on venture capital management for changing the innovative environment to create a technology economy. These innovative initiatives at SME Bank would be useful for economies in other developing countries to launch programmes supporting the diffusion and commercialization of innovations.

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