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Every hospital has a cafe; most of us will have used one to wait for, or recover from, some ordeal. Those who know the Oasis say that this is a hospital cafe with a difference: it doesn't feel like it is in a hospital. They speak of the welcoming, peaceful atmosphere, the high quality of its fare and ambience, and the way it generates enterprise and opportunity for people with past or present mental health problems. In this article we want to share how the cafe came about, what people say about it and what we think the future holds.

The authors present concepts developed at University of Naples Federico II (Italy), where the Challenge Based Learning methodology (CBL) is utilised in a programme aimed at software development for the Apple technology ecosystem. The collaborative and self-guided, inquiry-based learning method focusses on intrinsic motivation of learners, working on real world problems organised in projects (Challenges in CBL) with an experiential and progressive approach. As entrepreneurship is best promoted through practice, the programme is a guided immersion into reality that is entrepreneurial in nature, rather than a simulation of hypothetical projects, and requires learners to take ownership of entrepreneurial skills to complete the course. Academic research has shown that use of storytelling is beneficial to learning and can foster engaging and more formative experiences. Additionally, scholars have developed systems to design unscripted narratives within educational contexts using emergent narrative concepts. This conceptual chapter describes an educational experience design system that encourages unscripted, emergent narratives for experiential education. It categorises the components for designing an educational experience that allows the learning progression to be affectively driven by learners. By focussing on setting parameters and giving learners autonomy as co-authors, the model describes mechanisms that allow powerful, unscripted narratives to emerge based on intrinsic motivation. The Emergent Narrative System developed by the authors is a contribution to innovation in entrepreneurship teaching and intends to empower learners towards building entrepreneurial and twenty-first century skills complementary to software development education in a conducive and experiential learning environment.

This paper examines the integration of artificial intelligence (AI) within family businesses, focusing on how AI can enhance their competitiveness, resilience and sustainability. The study seeks to provide insights into AI’s application in family business contexts, addressing the unique strengths and challenges these businesses face.

A systematic literature review was conducted to synthesize existing research on the adoption and integration of AI in family businesses. The review involved a comprehensive analysis of relevant academic literature to identify key trends, opportunities, challenges and factors influencing AI adoption in family-owned enterprises.

The review highlights the significant potential of AI for family businesses, particularly in improving operations, decision-making and customer engagement. It identifies opportunities such as analysing customer data, enhancing brand building, streamlining operations and improving customer experiences through technologies like Generative AI, Machine Learning, AI Chatbots and NLP. However, challenges like resource constraints, inadequate infrastructure, low customization and AI knowledge gaps inhibit AI adoption in family firms. The study proposes an AI adoption roadmap tailored for family businesses and outlines future research directions based on emerging themes in AI use within these enterprises.

This paper addresses the underexplored area of AI integration in family businesses, contributing to the academic understanding of the intersection between AI and family-owned enterprises. The study offers a comprehensive synthesis of existing research, providing valuable insights and practical recommendations for enhancing the competitiveness and sustainability of family businesses through AI adoption.

Sport is a global product and service that many people around the world enjoy playing, watching and participating in. Whilst there has been an abundance of global media attention on sporting events such as the Olympics and World Football Cup, there seems to be a lack of integration between the sports marketing and international business disciplines both from a practical and also academic standpoint. This paper aims to discuss international sport marketing and why it is an important attribute of business‐to‐business marketing.

The aim of the paper is to provide practical implications and research avenues for those seeking to further investigate international sport marketing as a unique area of academic research. The introduction to the paper focuses on the importance of sport to the global economy and how entrepreneurship is ingrained in many sport businesses and organizations. Next, different areas of international business management that relate to entrepreneurial sport marketing ventures are discussed in terms of future research directions and practical implications. These include how entrepreneurial sport ventures affect internationalization, branding, corporate social responsibility, tourism, regional development, marketing and action sports.

The paper concludes by finding that there are numerous research avenues for future research on international sport marketing that combine different areas of marketing together with the sport marketing and international business literature. In addition, there is enormous potential for linking the sports marketing and international business literature through focusing on entrepreneurial sport ventures that occur worldwide.

The authors demonstrate the need to take an international perspective of sports marketing and business‐to‐business relationships.

The paper discusses how and why sport firms interact in the international marketplace and how future competition will benefit from more sport‐based business‐to‐business partnerships.

The paper examines the important area of international sports marketing and how businesses that are both profit and non‐profit orientated collaborate. The paper explores the concept of international sports marketing, and discusses the practical and future research implications of this exciting new field of marketing research.

In the current economic climate, the huge rise in the levels of debt incurred by professional football clubs challenges the need to improve their efficiency levels. Hence, analysis of their productivity is essential and represents an integral dimension to any realistic and efficient strategy. Any such strategy includes the identification and analysis of the inputs and outputs that underpin club sustainability. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the relationship between the team performance of professional European football clubs and the stability of their financial efficiency.

The sample spans 15 professional football clubs that won the league titles in the leading football leagues (the English, German, Spanish, Italian and French leagues) in the period between 2009 and 2014. The analysis made recourse to the data envelopment analysis method.

The results demonstrate that of the 15 clubs analysed, only 10 proved efficient. Football is now an industry that moves major quantities of financial capital and holds the attentions of large groups of fans worldwide. However, despite this attractiveness, the financial crisis and recession, ongoing since 2008, increasingly requires the better management of such resources. To this end, clubs should improve their control over the financial resources available given the positive relationship prevailing between the sporting performance of clubs and their levels of financial efficiency.

Analysis of the efficiency levels of the inputs and outputs encapsulating performance related financial variables may aid in improving the standards of planning and sustainable management at professional sport clubs.

Mature age or older entrepreneurship is an understudied but important area of research due to the ageing population and changing demographics in society. The purpose of this study is to review the literature about older entrepreneurship to understand the gaps and areas that need more attention.

A systematic literature review was undertaken and then the content was analyzed according to main themes. The key issues currently discussed about older entrepreneurship are stated, which leads to a number of future research suggestions.

The findings involve the need to take more care in how to define and conceptualize older entrepreneurship and to undertake more studies that have an older sample in general entrepreneurship research.

The systematic literature review highlights the gaps in the literature about older entrepreneurs that need to be addressed in future research.

The paper provides some suggestions about how older people can be more involved in entrepreneurship.

This study contributes to the emerging literature about older entrepreneurship by providing an overview and directions for the future.

The aim of this chapter is to provide an overview of the student mental health crisis in Higher Education (HE), and how resilience and grit, two important positive psychological constructs, can be beneficial for university students’ success and wellbeing. As part of a discussion around some of the current approaches to intervening in wellbeing in universities, the chapter provides evidence for the use of PPIs for wellbeing in university students, alongside some of the challenges of implementing these in HE. It also provides an overview of the Thriving Students Framework and presents a case for a multicomponent approach to monitoring and improving educational success. In particular, a wellbeing framework that, alongside resilience, also recognises the importance of strengths, persistence in the face of difficulty, a growth mindset, self-control and mental wellbeing; Academic Tenacity. The implications of utilising this framework for educational attainment in university students are discussed. The Bolton Uni-Stride Scale (BUSS), a single short measure of academic tenacity that combines the attributes enabling measurement and intervention to support university students to thrive, is also presented for educators to use.

The purpose of this paper is to identify and describe the key driving forces in international sponsorship during the years preceding the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing.

A “means‐objectives model” is applied, thereby linking sponsorship to brand equity factors and to strategic aims. Co‐branding, revenue streams and new customers are identified as means factors. The objective factors are presented in three dimensions: product, corporation and region. The analysis is based on 492 advertisements, articles and press releases collected from Chinese newspapers and Chinese official web pages covering the period 2001‐2007.

Analysis sees seven dominant means‐objectives combinations in sponsorship leading to different pattern of sponsor advertising strategies depending on the lead time to the Olympic Games. First, sponsors mainly focus on co‐branding marketing efforts. In the second stage, global Olympic sponsors link co‐branding with corporation image, Chinese brands are focusing on product/corporation image and new customers. In the third stage global Olympic sponsors focus more on local markets and customers in advertising. Chinese brands tend to keep an activation strategy based on revenue and product. Only a few local sponsors place emphasis on leveraging their sponsorship investment toward creating an international image.

Data collection is limited to a period of altogether three months in 2006 and 2007, focusing on Chinese print media available in Beijing and Shanghai universities' libraries. Given the size of the Chinese media market the data therefore consist only of a random selection of advertisements. Further, the sample does not cover different marketing channels, like TV, radio etc., which might also be part of the sponsor's advertising strategy.

In addition to providing further understanding of Olympic sponsor advertising behavior and sponsorship in an emerging market context, this paper provides insights into how the strategic aims related to sponsorship depended on the level of internationalization of the firm.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effects of emotional valence and intensity on sport sponsorship attitudinal outcomes, across two culturally different samples from Australia and France.

Based on a multidisciplinary literature review of the emotional phenomenon, research hypotheses are proposed and empirically tested against two samples exposed to two comparable major sport events in Australia and France.

Data reveal that Australian and French spectators' emotional responses differ in terms of valence, but not in terms of intensity. This initial difference, in turn, impacts the effect of emotional responses on sponsorship attitudinal outcomes. The more positive are sport‐related emotions, the stronger their impact on the sponsorship persuasion process. The proposed mediating effect of attitude towards the event is partially supported.

The results are limited by the small sample size and the inherent bias of the verbal measurement of the emotional phenomenon.

Despite omnipresence in sports events, emotions and their influence on sponsorship outcomes have not been clarified yet, once simply disregarded by many scholars. This paper provides evidence that emotions can contribute to the formation of attitudes towards sponsors, in some cases mediated by attitude towards the event. In addition, in line with the global reach of sports and sports sponsorship a comparison of results between samples from Australia and France creates a valuable contribution of this paper to marketing theory and practice.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the complexity of – and conflicts inherent in – managing sports leagues at both the league and franchise level.

The paper draws on changes to the National Basketball Association's (NBA) amateur entry draft, which has attempted to balance the need to preserve league parity and reduce the incentive for teams to deliberately lose games in order to improve draft position.

The discussion reveals the conflict between league and team goals. In addition, using Oliver's strategic decisions as a framework, the findings also illustrate how sport league commissioners have to balance pressures from both the internal and external environments.

This paper expands our understanding of how leagues manage institutional pressures, and how these pressures impact the team, leagues, and the decision makers involved.