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The purpose of this paper is to review literature on home-country institutional factors influencing the internationalization of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) from emerging markets. Based on the analysis, the authors propose a research agenda to guide future studies in this field.

This paper follows a systematic procedure to review 58 selected articles on how institutional contexts in emerging economies impact SME internationalization, covering studies from 1999 to 2023. This period was chosen to capture recent research following the post-1990 market liberalization in most emerging economies, which has shaped new opportunities and challenges for SMEs expanding abroad.

This literature review shows that SMEs’ internationalization knowledge in emerging markets is strongly shaped by home-country institutional conditions. Key mechanisms include imprinting by home institutions and learning from domestic institutional sources, both critical yet underexplored areas in SME development. These processes offer substantial opportunities for future research into how institutional contexts influence SMEs’ global growth.

This research builds on previous studies that have emphasized firm-level and external factors such as host market appeal, consumer needs and resource availability driving SMEs’ internationalization. Focusing on home institutional factors, the authors provide a comprehensive review of academic studies and propose a future research agenda on the external institutional influences shaping emerging market SMEs’ global expansion.

This paper explores Lean Six Sigma principles and the DMAIC (define, measure, analyze, improve, control) methodology to propose a new Lean Six Sigma 4.0 (LSS 4.0) framework for employee occupational exams and address the real-world issue of high-variability exams that may arise.

This study uses mixed methods, combining qualitative and quantitative data collection. A detailed case study assesses the impact of LSS interventions on the exam management process and tests the applicability of the proposed LSS 4.0 framework for employee occupational exams.

The results reveal that changing the health service supplier in the explored organization caused a substantial raise in occupational exams, leading to increased costs. By using syntactic interoperability, lean, six sigma and DMAIC approaches, improvements were identified, addressing process deviations and information requirements. Implementing corrective actions improved the exam process, reducing the number of exams and associated expenses.

It is important to acknowledge certain limitations, such as the specific context of the case study and the exclusion of certain exam categories.

The practical implications of this research are substantial, providing organizations with valuable managerial insights into improving efficiency, reducing costs and ensuring regulatory compliance while managing occupational exams.

This study fills a research gap by applying LSS 4.0 to occupational exam management, offering a practical framework for organizations. It contributes to the existing knowledge base by addressing a relatively novel context and providing a detailed roadmap for process optimization.

The purpose of this paper is to review cases of artificial reefs built through additive manufacturing (AM) technologies and analyse their ecological goals, fabrication process, materials, structural design features and implementation location to determine predominant parameters, environmental impacts, advantages, and limitations.

The review analysed 16 cases of artificial reefs from both temperate and tropical regions. These were categorised based on the AM process used, the mortar material used (crucial for biological applications), the structural design features and the location of implementation. These parameters are assessed to determine how effectively the designs meet the stipulated ecological goals, how AM technologies demonstrate their potential in comparison to conventional methods and the preference locations of these implementations.

The overview revealed that the dominant artificial reef implementation occurs in the Mediterranean and Atlantic Seas, both accounting for 24%. The remaining cases were in the Australian Sea (20%), the South Asia Sea (12%), the Persian Gulf and the Pacific Ocean, both with 8%, and the Indian Sea with 4% of all the cases studied. It was concluded that fused filament fabrication, binder jetting and material extrusion represent the main AM processes used to build artificial reefs. Cementitious materials, ceramics, polymers and geopolymer formulations were used, incorporating aggregates from mineral residues, biological wastes and pozzolan materials, to reduce environmental impacts, promote the circular economy and be more beneficial for marine ecosystems. The evaluation ranking assessed how well their design and materials align with their ecological goals, demonstrating that five cases were ranked with high effectiveness, ten projects with moderate effectiveness and one case with low effectiveness.

AM represents an innovative method for marine restoration and management. It offers a rapid prototyping technique for design validation and enables the creation of highly complex shapes for habitat diversification while incorporating a diverse range of materials to benefit environmental and marine species’ habitats.

The organizational digital transformation (ODT) in companies presents small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) – who remain at the beginning of this transformation – with the challenge of offering digital services based on sensor technologies. Against this backdrop, the present paper identifies ways SMEs can enable digital servitization through sensor technology and defines the possible scope of the organizational transformation process.

Around 21 semi-structured interviews were conducted with experts from different hierarchical levels across the German manufacturing SME ecosystem. Using the Gioia methodology, fields of action were identified by focusing on influencing factors and opportunities for developing these digital services to offer them successfully in the future.

The complexity of existing sensor offerings must be mastered, and employees' (data) understanding of the technology has increased. Knowledge gaps, which mainly relate to technical and organizational capabilities, must be overcome. The potential of sensor technology was considered on an individual, technical and organizational level. To enable the successful implementation of service offerings based on sensor technology, all relevant stakeholders in the ecosystem must network to facilitate shared value creation. This requires standardized technical and procedural adaptations and is an essential prerequisite for data mining.

Based on this study, current problem areas were analyzed, and potentials that create opportunities for offering digital sensor services to manufacturing SMEs were identified. The identified influencing factors form a conceptual framework that supports SMEs' future development of such services in a structured manner.

Humans now enjoy a better life because of Artificial Intelligence (AI). AI has a significant impact on the creation of smart cities. Modern applications based on big data, Internet of Things (IoT) systems, and deep learning require extensive use of complex computational solutions. Thus, the following problems arise: (1) what are smart cities? (2) what is AI? (3) How is AI used in smart cities? To respond to this problem, the following objective was set: to map how AI is used in smart cities. For this purpose, a qualitative methodology based on a narrative analysis of the literature was used. It is concluded that AI and smart cities are complementary technologies that can assist cities in tackling difficult issues including public safety, transportation, energy management, environmental monitoring, and predictive maintenance. This chapter’s findings, while broadly applicable, offer valuable insights into the Gulf region’s unique context, where rapid urbanization and technological adoption intersect with cultural and environmental considerations. The integration of AI in smart cities presents a promising avenue for the Gulf region to address its specific challenges and leverage its economic and infrastructural strengths, thereby contributing to the broader goals of innovation, development, prosperity, and well-being as envisioned in the region’s Vision 2040 initiatives.

Family startups are essential to a nation’s development because they foster creativity, economic expansion, and job creation. They introduce novel concepts, game-changing technologies, and innovative business approaches to the market. Family startups also help a country be more competitive abroad by luring capital, encouraging entrepreneurship, and diversifying the economy beyond its core industries. Additionally, family startups operate as agents of social change by addressing societal problems and providing answers that benefit communities. Therefore, fostering a thriving start-up ecosystem is crucial for a nation’s long-term sustainable development and prosperity. Against this background, this book chapter examines the potential and difficulties that family startups in Oman’s developing entrepreneurial environment confront. The chapter explores the challenges faced by entrepreneurs as well as the opportunities for growth and innovation in this dynamic market to illuminate the distinctive dynamics of the Omani start-up scene.

The primary objective of this study is to consolidate the fragmented body of scholarly literature pertaining to developing entrepreneurial ecosystems, with the intent of determining prospective avenues of inquiry.

The analysis included a longitudinal distribution by category of journals with most recommendations, articles with most citations and the total number of recommendations. In addition, the authors presented a thorough explanation of the recommendations grouped by categories.

This study generated a framework that provides a comprehensive understanding of research on recommendations for the development of entrepreneurial ecosystems. The framework identified 74 recommendations in the fields of policy, support, culture, human capital, market and finance. The results indicated that the domain of recommendations for the entrepreneurial ecosystem is still in its infancy.

This study contributes to research on entrepreneurial ecosystems by focusing on recommendations for their development. The resulting framework can be used by policymakers to develop entrepreneurial ecosystems and by researchers in future studies.

This study aims to examine the relationship between the chemical composition of juices obtained from fruits of autochthonous wild pomegranate (Punica granatum L.) grown in Montenegro and their cytotoxic effects on cancer cells.

To explore the potential value of wild pomegranate fruits, in vitro biological assays were carried out with juices whose composition was analyzed in detail for sugars, organic acids, vitamin C and phenolic compounds. The effect of juices on survival was determined in human lung A549, cervical HeLa and breast MCF-7 carcinoma cells by MTT assay. As a control, the cytotoxicity against normal fetal lung fibroblasts (MRC-5) was monitored.

Among cancer cell lines, considering the IC50 related to total phenolics, the lowest value – 13 µg/mL was found for the A549. The strongest effect on lung cells was assumed due to the favorable contribution of ellagitannins to total phenolics in juice as well as the given combination of anthocyanins and their synergistic action. For HeLa cells, the lowest IC50 value was obtained at 88 µg/mL, and the cytotoxicity could be matched with the effects of anthocyanins and catechin. For MCF-7 cells, the lowest IC50 was 504 µg/mL, and the elevated levels of vitamin C and ellagic acid derivatives should have a noticeable effect on these cells.

This study provides an important contribution to the knowledge on the effect of phytochemicals from wild pomegranate juice on lung, cervical and breast cancer cells, in vitro. The present observations suggest that the juice of wild pomegranate has the potential in the fight against cancer.

This study aims to investigate the impact of brain drain on government AI readiness in EU member countries, considering the distinctive governance characteristics, macroeconomic conditions and varying levels of ICT specialists.

The research employs a dynamic panel data model using the System Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) to analyze the relationship between brain drain and government AI readiness from 2018 to 2022. The study incorporates various control variables such as GDP per capita growth, government expenditure growth, employed ICT specialists and several governance indicators.

The results indicate that brain drain negatively affects government AI readiness. Additionally, the presence of ICT specialists, robust governance structures and positive macroeconomic indicators such as GDP per capita growth and government expenditure growth positively influence AI readiness.

Major limitations include the focus on a specific region of countries and the relatively short period analyzed. Future research could extend the analysis with more comprehensive datasets and consider additional variables that might influence AI readiness, such as the integration of AI with emerging quantum computing technologies and the impact of governance reforms and international collaborations on AI readiness.

The theoretical value of this study lies in providing a nuanced understanding of how brain drain impacts government AI readiness, emphasizing the critical roles of skilled human capital, effective governance and macroeconomic factors in enhancing AI capabilities, thereby filling a significant gap in the existing literature.

This research fills a significant gap in the existing literature by providing a comprehensive analysis of the interaction between brain drain and government AI readiness. It uses control variables such as ICT specialists, governance structures and macroeconomic factors within the context of the European Union. It offers novel insights for policymakers to enhance AI readiness through targeted interventions addressing brain drain and fostering a supportive environment for AI innovation.

The primary objective of this paper is to determine the factors that affect the entrepreneurship propensity of students undergoing compulsory entrepreneurship education courses at various universities.

A research instrument was developed and implemented on a sample of 380 students who were offered compulsory entrepreneurship education courses at six major universities in the Jammu and Kashmir region of India. The study employed multiple cross-sectional designs with a simple random sampling technique to gather data. The collected data was subjected to descriptive statistics and structural equation modeling using SMART-PLS (Version 4).

The findings reveal that conceptualization, opportunity identification and implementation are the three antecedents of entrepreneurship propensity. The results indicate that the conceptualization factor is one of the most important predictors of entrepreneurship propensity, followed by opportunity identification, whereas implementation through education has the weakest influence on students' entrepreneurship propensity.

This research provides important insights to universities for designing and developing entrepreneurship courses that can foster the start-up culture. The results will be helpful for policymakers to devise various programs to boost entrepreneurship.

The study integrated the theories of planned behavior and human capital to evaluate the effectiveness of entrepreneurship courses at the university level. The three factors, namely, conceptual factors, actualization factors and implementation factors of entrepreneurship propensity are under-researched.