Value Creation, Innovation, and Entrepreneurship

The literature has traditionally focused on the relationship between innovation and entrepreneurial activity, adopting mainly two perspectives when addressing entrepreneurship: empirical studies focusing on the behaviour of companies, and studies that consider entrepreneurship as a factor promoting the achievement of economic policy objectives. Following Schumpeter, innovation is a key source of value creation, generating growth in companies and the economy as a whole. But it is also important to remember the feedback effects generated in this process. This chapter analyses the relationship among three variables: entrepreneurship, innovation, and value creation, as well as the subsequent feedback effects. The theoretical aspects are considered and an empirical analysis is developed for the case of some European countries.

Innovation in the Measurement of Tourism Competitiveness

The Travel & Tourism Competitiveness Index (TTCI), developed by the World Economic Forum (WEF), is a composite indicator that integrates a total of 90 simple variables organized into 14 pillars or key dimensions of the tourism destination competitiveness. The main problem presented by this index comes from the aggregation of variables expressed in different measures, the duplicity of information, and their non-weighting in the synthetic index. This chapter proposes a new methodology for the construction of the TTCI that solves the previous problems and allows, in addition, identifying which are the pillars or dimensions that determine the differences in tourism competitiveness between the countries. The results have allowed authors to more precisely classify 136 countries according to their level of tourism competitiveness in 2017. To improve the tourism competitiveness of the countries, it is necessary to carry out policies that act on these pillars and others identified in this chapter.

The Influence of Government Support Interventions on the Growth of African Foreign-Owned SMMEs in South Africa

Foreign-owned SMMEs contribute positively to national economic growth. Foreign-owned SMMEs are sources of direct foreign investment and create employment opportunities for local citizens. Although the South African government has instituted several interventions to promote SMMEs growth, very little research has investigated the impact of such interventions on the growth of foreign-owned SMMEs. This study is an attempt to address this gap by investigating government-related support interventions that have an influence on the growth of African foreign-owned SMMEs. Using quantitative research methods and a sample of 60 African foreign SMMEs owners conveniently sampled from the Pietermaritzburg city, findings reveal that training support from the government is the only single intervention that significantly influences the growth of African foreign-owned SMMEs. Thus, this chapter proposes a regression model that depicts how receiving training support from the government influences the growth of African foreign-owned SMMEs in the South African context.

Social Entrepreneurship and Sustainable Development

There is no doubt about the relevant role of social entrepreneurs as social transformers and there seems to be broad consensus on the factors that characterize it, such as: a sustainable social orientation, the intensive use of innovation, and the aim of creating social value. This chapter offers an updated vision of social entrepreneurship around the world, showing the main advances made in recent years and analyzing the main challenges and opportunities for the near future. It includes a reflection on the concept of social entrepreneurship, since today there's not a single definition of that term, and a review of the evidence on good practices in this field, which could serve as a model for future initiatives.

Value Propositions for Companies in Their Payment Ads in Networks

The maturity of social networks as part of the daily life of consumers has caused both large companies and all enterprises to try to take advantage of the potential they have to reach their audiences and clienteles with relatively low advertising budgets. However, many of them still do not assimilate the functioning of these new media and use them as a simple promotional tool. The reduction of the organic scope, the stagnation of Facebook, the crisis of credibility, and the evolution of the networks themselves towards smaller communities, as happened at the beginning, complete a panorama that hinders the objective of maximizing profits and ensuring a ROI in line . How should this challenge be faced when the internet is displacing television as the main advertising investment support worldwide? Personalization and content marketing, customer service, and preference for quality and engagement are the main answers.

Open Innovation as a Business Entrepreneurship Strategy

The relationship established through online channels between customers and organizations defines a new and challenging scenario. Within a digital environment and through innovation strategies based on joint participation, it is possible to interact with the customer in a more personalized way with more differentiating actions. To identify the relevance of current online business management actions, this chapter proposes an approximation to the term open innovation. Authors posit the growing relevance for organizations of the application of innovation strategies through external inputs, the interaction between various agents and crowdsourcing actions. They discuss the new role of the consumers as co-creating agents of value in the new ecosystems of entrepreneurship.

Innovation and Knowledge in Academia

It has recently become very popular among academics to study the process of knowledge transfer within their own organization, with the aim of improving their innovation and performance on a general scope. Knowledge can be divided into two main groups: “explicit” and “tacit” knowledge. The main interest lies in tacit knowledge, since it is one that includes the specific “know-how” of an organization. The cooperation between the different units of an organization promotes the transfer of knowledge between the different organizational areas and positions the departments in an ideal situation to promote innovation. To understand the evolution of the scientific production in terms of innovation and knowledge up until now, the authors conducted a bibliometric analysis of research on this topic collected on the Web of Science. The results show a growing interest in the relationship of both topics due to the fact that the number of publications is an upward trend.

Untangling the Innovativeness-Performance Puzzle

This chapter investigates the relationships between innovativeness and firm performance from a multidimensional viewpoint. As previous studies have shown controversial results on the performance implications for innovative capacity, the promising venue for the innovation research study is to address the question of under which conditions innovativeness leads to improved financial performance. To this end, the results of this study demonstrate some major findings. First, non-technical innovativeness exerts positive influence over technical innovativeness. Second, novelty of technical innovation activities causes a diminishing effect on financial performance due to the ambiguity of value-creation. Third, technical innovativeness enhances financial performance when the relationship between technical innovativeness and financial performance is mediated by market effectiveness and production efficiency. Overall, this chapter clarifies the conflicting results on the innovativeness-financial performance link and hence contributes to the innovation literature.

Innovation, Value Creation, and Entrepreneurship by Opportunity

Technological progress is one of the main generators of increases in the production economy, involving the introduction of new products which, in turn, allows companies that carry out innovative actions to survive in the market. According to Schumpeter, innovation is an important source of value creation, improving growth in companies and economy. Thus, entrepreneurs introducing innovations in the market to take advantage of new business opportunities increase value creation, understood as the actions implemented to increase the value of goods and services created by enterprises. Likewise, the exploitation of these new opportunities that arises thanks to technological change are also largely conditioned by entrepreneurs' human capital, availability of financial resources, investment in research and development activities, expectations, and efficient business regulations.

Creating Value Through Entrepreneurship Based on the Economic Cycle

This chapter examines in-depth the behavior of necessity- and opportunity-driven entrepreneurship. First, it considers their relevance to total entrepreneurial activity. The chapter determines which social and economic factors affect the two types of entrepreneurship, as well as their relative importance for a sample of 32 previously selected countries during a period of expansion (2001-2008) and of crisis and recovery (2009-2016). The analyzed factors include monetary and fiscal policy instruments (economic factors) and representative variables of governance and human capital (social ones). The findings show that both necessity- and opportunity-driven entrepreneurship largely explain the behavior of total entrepreneurial activity. They moreover show that the explanatory factors of both kinds of entrepreneurship differ depending on the business cycle phase considered. These findings will be key to proposing efficient economic policy measures to promote entrepreneurial activity and, thus, economic growth in economies around the world.