Tianxu Chen, Mark Simon, John Kim and Brian Poploskie
A major source of failure for new ventures is the entrepreneurs℉ misunderstanding of the product-market fit. Recently, researchers have suggested that to get a better…
Abstract
A major source of failure for new ventures is the entrepreneurs℉ misunderstanding of the product-market fit. Recently, researchers have suggested that to get a better understanding of the product-market fit, entrepreneurs should “get out of the building” and interview many customers. This approach, while advantageous, is not without drawbacks. This article presents a conceptual model that incorporates the characteristics of “getting out of the building” to conduct customer interviews, and the biases that can arise to influence the entrepreneurs℉ misjudgment of the product-market fit. We provide recommendations to overcome these biases.
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– Describes the advantages that technology company Dinamiks gains from its apprenticeship program.
Abstract
Purpose
Describes the advantages that technology company Dinamiks gains from its apprenticeship program.
Design/methodology/approach
Gives the managing director’s viewpoint of the benefits of apprenticeships to a small company.
Findings
Reveals that apprentices have enabled Dinamiks to tap into the technology innovations and ways of working with technology that many young people take in their stride and to learn what of that needs to be included in its products.
Practical implications
Details how the company has benefited from the energy of youth, a different style of conversation and innovative individuals who have the ideas to move the product, and therefore the company, on.
Social implications
Explains that the program prepares apprentices to go out into the wider business world and be a valuable contributor in whatever field they ultimately choose.
Originality/value
Highlights the winning combination of apprentices, who bring new ideas and ways of working, with seasoned employees, with their business acumen gained through years of experience.
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Desislava Ivanova Yordanova and Matilda Ivanova Alexandrova‐Boshnakova
The research objective of the study is to investigate the gender effects on risk propensity, risk perception, and risk behaviour of entrepreneurs distinguishing between direct and…
Abstract
Purpose
The research objective of the study is to investigate the gender effects on risk propensity, risk perception, and risk behaviour of entrepreneurs distinguishing between direct and indirect gender effects. The study seeks to address the gap in the knowledge of the link between risk taking, risk propensity, and risk perception in the context of women and risk (Brindley).
Design/methodology/approach
Based on Sitkin and Pablo's model of risk behaviour and the literature on cognitive factors as determinants of risk perception, the paper provides hypotheses about the link between gender, risk perception, risk propensity, and risk behaviour. The proposed hypotheses are tested on a sample of 382 Bulgarian entrepreneurs.
Findings
Although female and male entrepreneurs have similar risk perceptions, female entrepreneurs are likely to have a lower risk propensity than male entrepreneurs. Risk propensity mediates completely the effect of gender on risk behaviour. The effect of gender on risk propensity is mediated partially by risk preference, outcome history, and age. Gender has an indirect effect on risk perception via overconfidence and risk propensity.
Research limitations/implications
The paper's ability to draw causal inferences is limited by the cross‐sectional nature of the study. The results may not be applicable to other countries and occupations.
Practical implications
The findings help to clarify the reasons for gender differences in risk behaviour and risk propensity of entrepreneurs and to design behavioural interventions.
Originality/value
This paper is an attempt to create a better understanding of the factors that account for gender differences in risk taking.
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The lengthy review of the Food Standards Committee of this, agreed by all public analysts and enforcement officers, as the most complicated and difficult of food groups subject to…
Abstract
The lengthy review of the Food Standards Committee of this, agreed by all public analysts and enforcement officers, as the most complicated and difficult of food groups subject to detailed legislative control, is at last complete and the Committee's findings set out in their Report. When in 1975 they were requested to investigate the workings of the legislation, the problems of control were already apparent and getting worse. The triology of Regulations of 1967 seemed comprehensive at the time, perhaps as we ventured to suggest a little too comprehensive for a rational system of control for arguments on meat contents of different products, descriptions and interpretation generally quickly appeared. The system, for all its detail, provided too many loopholes through which manufacturers drove the proverbial “carriage and pair”. As meat products have increased in range and the constantly rising price of meat, the “major ingredient”, the number of samples taken for analysis has risen and now usually constitutes about one‐quarter of the total for the year, with sausages, prepared meats (pies, pasties), and most recently, minced meat predominating. Just as serial sampling and analysis of sausages before the 1967 Regulations were pleaded in courts to establish usage in the matter of meat content, so with minced meat the same methods are being used to establish a maximum fat content usage. What concerns food law enforcement agencies is that despite the years that the standards imposed by the 1967 Regulations have been in force, the number of infringements show no sign of reduction. This should not really surprise us; there are even longer periods of failures to comply; eg., in the use of preservatives which have been controlled since 1925! What a number of public analysts have christened the “beefburger saga” took its rise post‐1967 and shows every indication of continuing into the distant future. Manufacturers appear to be trying numerous ploys to reduce the content below the Regulation 80% mainly by giving their products new names. Each year, public analysts report a flux of new names and ingenious defences; eg, “caterburgers” and similar concocted nomenclature, and the defence that because the name does not incorporate a meat, it is outside the statutory standard.
The purpose of this paper is to examine why there were different representations and research applications of Burns and Stalker's The Management of Innovation.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine why there were different representations and research applications of Burns and Stalker's The Management of Innovation.
Design/methodology/approach
The approach primarily takes the form of an examination of academic journals, in particular The Administrative Science Quarterly between 1960 and 1980. Theoretical works, in particular by Bourdieu, were also used.
Findings
Contrary to accepted knowledge, the journals were eclectic in their approaches and did not require authors to adopt positivist approaches.
Research limitations/implications
A fuller answer to the question posed would require interviews with journal editors and university policy makers from the 1960s‐1980s. This has not been possible so far. Although some answers have been provided, questions still remain as to why certain representations of this book were dominant.
Practical implications
There are implications as to what counts as knowledge in academe, and how this knowledge should be treated, given that it may only partially represent the theory above and also other theories. This has implications for what is taught in universities and what is adopted by consultants as bona fide knowledge.
Originality/value
To the author's knowledge such questions using this type of research have not been examined in the detail pursued here.
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Safety precautions in the use of raw materials, in manufacturing and processing, marketing and enforcement of food and drug law on purity and quality may appear nowadays to be…
Abstract
Safety precautions in the use of raw materials, in manufacturing and processing, marketing and enforcement of food and drug law on purity and quality may appear nowadays to be largely a matter of routine, with manufacturers as much involved and interested in maintaining a more or less settled equilibrium as the enforcement agencies. Occasionally the peace is shattered, eg, a search and recovery operation of canned goods of doubtful bacterial purity or containing excess metal contamination, seen very much as an isolated incident; or the recent very large enforcement enterprise in the marketing of horseflesh (and other substitutions) for beef. The nationwide sale and distribution of meat on such a vast scale, only possible by reason of marketing methods — frozen blocks of boneless meat, which even after thawing out is not easily distinguishable from the genuine even in the eye of the expert; this is in effect only a fraud always around in the long ago years built up into a massive illicit trade.
It tends to be called the corner shop, mainly because it occupied a corner building for extra window space, but also due to the impetus given to the name by television series…
Abstract
It tends to be called the corner shop, mainly because it occupied a corner building for extra window space, but also due to the impetus given to the name by television series seeking to portray life as it used to be. The village grew from the land, a permanent stopping place for the wandering tribes of early Britain, the Saxons, Welsh, Angles; it furnished the needs of those forming it and eventually a village store or shop was one of those needs. Where the needs have remained unchanged, the village is much as it has always been, a historical portrait. The town grew out of the village, sometimes a conglomerate of several adjacent villages. In the days before cheap transport, the corner shop, in euphoric business terms, would be described as “a little gold mine”, able to hold its own against the first introduction of multiple chain stores, but after 1914 everything changed. Edwardian England was blasted out of existence by the holocaust of 1914–18, destroyed beyond all hope of recovery. The patterns of retail trading changed and have been continuously changing ever since. A highly developed system of cheap bus transport took village housewives and also those in the outlying parts of town into busy central shopping streets. The jaunt of the week for the village wife who saw little during the working days; the corner shop remained mainly for things they had “run out of”. Every village had its “uppety” madames however who affected disdain of the corner shop and its proprietors, preferring to swish their skirts in more fashionable emporia, basking in the obsequious reception by the proprietor and his equally servile staff.
Litigation is part of the American policymaking playbook as diverse groups routinely turn to courts to pursue their agendas. All of this litigation raises questions about its…
Abstract
Litigation is part of the American policymaking playbook as diverse groups routinely turn to courts to pursue their agendas. All of this litigation raises questions about its consequences. This essay examines the literature on the political risks of litigation. It argues that this literature identifies four potential risks – crowd out, path dependence, backlash, and individualization – but offers less insight into the likelihood of these risks in practice. It ends by offering suggestions about how to advance our understanding of when litigation casts a negative political shadow in the current age of judicialization.