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The strategic entrepreneurship (SE) literature exists at the intersection of the strategy and entrepreneurship literatures and has grown rapidly over the past two decades. This study aims to document the proliferation of research papers and identifies the major thematic clusters of topics and other summary information for the SE research domain.

This is a systematic bibliometric review of 586 articles published over the period 2009–2019 in 143 journals. The inductive quantitative assessment of these articles uses meta-data driven techniques that prioritize reproducibility and rigor in the process of literature analysis.

This study identifies six main themes in the strategic literature, namely, Sustainable Competitive Advantage; Knowledge Management; Ecosystems; Strategy; Entrepreneurialism; and Organization and Management. It also reports data on a variety of issues including research techniques, country of data, co-author count and trends and differences between journals based on their journal impact factors and calls for more research in key areas.

An innovative original analytical tool was developed to facilitate the analysis of research papers in this growing field. This online tool allows multiple tags to be attached to each paper by multiple authors working simultaneously to identify keywords and other aspects that were subsequently used to identify six main thematic areas within the SE literature. This paper highlights emerging research trends and identifies gaps in the literature that provide opportunities for further research in this field.

The UK Government-funded National Health Service (NHS) is experiencing significant pressures because of the complexity of challenges to, and demands of, health-care provision. This situation has driven government policy level support for transformational change initiatives, such as value-based health care (VBHC), through closer alignment and collaboration across the health-care system-life science sector nexus. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the necessary antecedents to collaboration in VBHC through a critical exploration of the existing literature, with a view to establishing the foundations for further development of policy, practice and theory in this field.

A literature review was conducted via searches on Scopus and Google Scholar between 2009 and 2019 for peer-reviewed articles containing keywords and phrases “Value-based healthcare industry” and “healthcare industry collaboration”. Refinement of the results led to the identification of “guiding conditions” (GCs) for collaboration in VBHC.

Five literature-derived GCs were identified as necessary for the successful implementation of initiatives such as VBHC through system-sector collaboration. These are: a multi-disciplinarity; use of appropriate technological infrastructure; capturing meaningful metrics; understanding the total cycle-of-care; and financial flexibility. This paper outlines research opportunities to empirically test the relevance of the five GCs with regard to improving system-sector collaboration on VBHC.

This paper has developed a practical and constructive framework that has the potential to inform both policy and further theoretical development on collaboration in VBHC.

The purpose of this study is to evaluate children’s perceptions and attitudes towards sponsorship transition, specifically the change from Nike to PUMA as kit sponsors for Manchester City Football Club (MCFC) in July 2019.

A sample of 368 children, between 7 and 16 years of age were recruited for the study. Using electronic diaries, 1,577 diary entries were captured between February 2019 and March 2020.

Data reveals that children conceptualise sponsorship as a social exchange, with sponsoring brands seen as human entities and interaction with them reflecting the dynamism of social and familial relationships. Consequently, children in this study demanded prosocial and interpersonal behaviours from sponsors and sponsee during the transition period.

The research has an immediate and direct application for brand managers and the sponsee when considering terminating long-term sponsorship. Both the departing and incoming sponsors can maximise their relationships with these younger fans through an orchestrated departure, arrival and dedicated handover.

The findings enable marketing brand managers to effectively evaluate sponsor transition to maximise opportunities to maintain, and indeed start, brand relationships with younger fans.

This is the first study that has examined sponsorship children’s responses to sponsorship transition.

The purpose of this research is to understand what motivates 7–11-year-old children to participate in online brand communities (OBCs). Prior research has concentrated on prescriptive product categories (games and gaming), predominantly adolescent groups and the social aspects of community engagement and actual behaviour within communities, rather than the motivations to participate with the OBC. This has ultimately limited what has been gleaned, both theoretically and managerially, from this important segment.

An interpretive, longitudinal position is adopted, using a sample of 261 children (113 male and 148 female) from across the UK, using event-based diaries over a 12-month period, generating 2,224 entries.

Data indicate that children are motivated to participate in a brand community for four reasons: to support and ameliorate pre-purchase anxieties, resolve interpersonal conflicts, exact social dominance in terms of product ownership and perceptions of product knowledge and to actively engage in digitalised pester power. The study also reveals that certain motivational aspects such as conflict resolution and exacting dominance, are gender-specific.

Knowledge of children’s motivation to engage with OBCs is important for marketers and brand managers alike as the data reveal markedly different stimuli when compared to known adult behaviours in the field. Given the nature of the study, scope exists for significant future research.

The study reveals behaviours that will assist brand managers in further understanding the complex and untraditional relationships that children have with brands and OBCs.

This study makes a novel examination of a hitherto little-explored segment of consumers. In doing so, it uncovers the theoretical and practical characteristics of child consumers that contemporary, adult-focussed literature does not recognise. The paper makes an additional contribution to theory by positing four new behavioural categories relating to community engagement – dependers, defusers, demanders and dominators – and four new motivational factors which are fundamentally different from adult taxonomies – social hegemony, parental persuasion, dilemma solving and conflict resolution.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the social and personal drivers of co-creation in children.

A sample of 463 children aged between 7 and 13 years were recruited. Using electronic event-based diaries, 2,631 entries were captured during an 18-month period.

Data from 861 entries identified a series of anomalous external social and personal factors that drove children to engage in co-creation. These were for maintaining external relationships, dealing with addiction to the co-creation process and dealing with personal loneliness.

The study reveals new, unconventional and gender-specific behaviours that might assist marketers in understanding children’s complex relationships with co-creation and brands.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study of its kind to examine children’s social and personal drives to engage in co-creation.

This chapter discusses the use of an extended stage model for the evaluation of the adoption of e-business in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Empirical studies of e-business adoption are rare in Middle Eastern and developing countries and the chapter provides valuable insight into this region, by presenting an account of the use of the extended stage model to explore the level of e-business adoption among Yemeni SMEs.

In making this examination, the challenges and opportunities that accompany e-business adoption are revealed. The internal drivers and barriers, such as finance and skills, are recognised along with the external factors that include infrastructure and legislation. It also provides valuable insight into the macro-level sociopolitical determinants of e-business adoption that have not previously been appreciated; the study was undertaken during the Yemen Civil War in 2016.

Current adoption models imply that organisations adopt technologies in a linear fashion, gradually increasing complexity and capability. This study makes an important contribution by recognising that there are multiple points at which SMEs may ‘enter’ the technology-adoption ladder.

In America they do not tell Englishmen the story of George Washington and his exceptional devotion to the truth. The reason for that is, I think, because they are too busy telling us yarns illustrative of their conviction that we are entirely devoid of any sense of humour, the favourite, of course, being the one about “we eat what we can and can what we can't.” But even if we are dense and slow‐witted and have no Washington story, we are not without our Washingtons. Myself, I have discovered one and in the most unexpected of situations—in the milk trade, in fact, It was not with a little hatchet he said he had done it, of course; it was with his little bucket. And having prefaced his statements, as did the illustrious original, with the ringing declaration “I cannot tell a lie,” he explained just how the water found its way into the milk. It was because, taking his little bucket and filling it with water, he went round all the milk pails and he swilled them out and then added all the rinsings to the churn containing the milk, all ready for distribution. It was not that he wanted to adulterate the milk; it was that he wanted to make sure that no single drop of milk given by the cows was lost. Not for a moment did it occur to him that the rinsings consisted mainly of water and that the bulk of the milk would be diluted to such an extent that in the churn containing 7½ gallons about a gallon was water. How there could be so much, my lacteal Washington could not understand, as for rinsing purposes he was convinced he used no more than a pint. No one in court or in the witness box could tell him, or his judges either for that matter, and so it finished up with him being called upon to pay a fine of £10 with costs £2 18s. And all because he used his little bucket as he ought not to have used it. I forget what G. Washington's father did to him for demolishing the cherry tree with his little hatchet. The next time I am in America, interrupting somebody's funny story about the uselessness of expecting an Englishman to see anything funny in a funny story, I must ask about this.

Places have deep-seated meaning and serve to shape our social grouping and practices. Sporting stadia are a highly influential aspect of many people’s lives that drive the inexorable journey towards team affiliation, immersive experiences, intense loyalty and the creation of an enduring, local identity. This paper aims to explore how the nature of a sporting place has been shaped to change the practice of football as a sport, as a business and as entertainment. This paper uncovers how Forest Green Rovers (FGR) differentiates itself from the historical and socio-economic roots of football and uses numerous novel sustainability initiatives to re-imagine a new type of football place, club and fandom.

Over a two-year period, the authors used multiple data collection methods, engaging in participant observation, interviews and focus groups, at FGR and related events. A thematic data analysis was conducted to pinpoint and extract key areas surrounding the unique structures, practices and reinforced behaviours that have developed in FGR.

The findings show that FGR’s place operates as a central location through which stakeholders, ideas, resources and practices have been disrupted and re-imagined around the principles of sustainability. This fundamental shift in FGR’s place, changing its composition, character and reach, means that FGR can be conceptualised as a novel place synonymous with new global social movements.

This study presents unique insights into the world’s first socially and environmentally conscious football club. This study examines the construction and operation of the place that facilitates its actions which go beyond what has been seen and maybe expected from commercial sporting institutions.

This chapter explores social enterprises as an alternative and addition to traditional entrepreneurial ecosystems (EEs). It reviews the substantial social enterprise literature in order to identify the myriad of competing tensions constraining development and success of social EEs in areas of significant poverty and economic deprivation. Following this, the findings of several contemporary and novel studies are discussed. These collectively evidence ways social enterprises are overcoming the seemingly immutable constraints they operate under. In particular, the Social Enterprise Places initiative has been highly effective in supporting the development of flourishing social EEs in many locations in the UK. However, the growth of social enterprises, both in number and economic importance, presents further challenges that social enterprise owners and managers will have to contend with. Consequently, these organisations and their allied ecosystems require continued structural, financial and skills support.

The Technium initiative started in 2001 with an initial Business and Innovation Centre established in the Swansea docklands area. Early success of this first Technium building led to the concept being rapidly proliferated into a pan-Wales network of primarily sector-focussed centres. Although the Welsh Government withdrew its support for the Technium network initiative in 2010, the individual centres continued under a range of ownerships and the historic initiative of continued interest, particularly with respect to regional policy.

A vibrant policy and practice debate subsequently emerged together with strident media comment. Lack of coherence between Technium Centres and weaknesses in monitoring systems meant this debate has been poorly informed. This case study helps address the evidence deficit within this debate by revisiting the initial Technium Swansea initiative and its subsequent development.

The case study provides an insight into what can realistically be expected of such initiatives in the short, medium and long terms, with realistic time-horizons for ‘success’ and the role of learning for knowledge-based development in similar initiatives and regions.