Journal of Developmental Entrepreneurship

To capture the talents of the next generations in new venture creation and to maintain the levels of entrepreneurship in our society, a vibrant "pipeline" of potential entrepreneurs is required. Previous research has shown this pipeline may still be weak, especially for women entrepreneurs. This paper explores the relationships between gender, entrepreneurial education, and entrepreneurial self-efficacy on entrepreneurial intentions and behaviors using the data from different sample groups in three different stages of education and career development: middle and high school students, MBA students, and early career adults. The results of our analyses underscore the importance of entrepreneurial self-efficacy as a key component in understanding entrepreneurship interest and actual career choice. The positive influence of entrepreneurship education on self-efficacy proved stronger for women than for men. Implications for entrepreneurship educators as well as study limitations and areas for future research are discussed.

This article reviews some results of a policy research project addressing agro-food SME trade promotion in Southeast Asian and Western African developing economies. The project was conducted by a group of scientific institutions based in Hanoi (Vietnam), Ouagadougou (Burkina Faso) and Geneva (Switzerland). The article documents the capacity of Southeast Asian and Western African agro-food SMEs to access domestic, regional and possibly global markets, as well as the role of international cooperation (public and private) to promote agro-food SME trade within and outside Southeast Asia, and Western Africa respectively. The article also calls for interested OECD and non-OECD partners to contribute to two types of South-South trade emerging innovations in the field of SME agro-business matching, namely, the promotion of existing and new business linkages between Southeast Asian and Western African agro-food SMEs (trade, finance and appropriate technology transfer), and the promotion of public-private partnerships to facilitate such agro-food SME business linkages between far distant Southeast Asia and Western Africa.

Greece has experienced rapid growth in immigrant and refugee populations since 1990. Although most are immigrants from Albania and throughout the Balkan region, some immigrant and refugee groups arriving in Greece also come from the former Soviet Union, Southeast Asia and Africa. Some of these newcomers have started small businesses in their quest to become economically self-sufficient, serve the consumer needs of fellow newcomers, and integrate into community life. The purpose of this research is two-fold: to review the extant literature on social and economic factors influencing immigrant entrepreneurship in Greece, and to determine characteristics and business profiles of Albanian immigrant-owned small businesses within the municipality of Attiki — the location of Athens, Greece's capital city and largest urban center.

Differences between male and female entrepreneurs provide compelling reasons to study the latter separately. Especially in rural areas, research shows that women are a remarkable and unexplored source of the labor force. Nevertheless, few researchers have examined rural women and the issues pertaining to their entrepreneurship separately. The contribution of this study to the debate of women entrepreneurship is the closer examination of women in Greek rural areas. This research aims to examine factors that must be considered independently with recognition to the variances of rural areas with different geomorphologic and economic profiles. The characteristics of women entrepreneurship in Greek rural areas and the women's motives for the undertaking of the entrepreneurial activity are used to identify a typology of women entrepreneurs in the Greek countryside.

This paper highlights the presence of a hidden enterprise culture in the Indian informal economy (versus a necessity driven view) and draws a developmental framework to harness micro-enterprise owners. Policy research has typically taken a welfare approach toward studying the informal sector in the developing countries. Therefore, the agenda has been to create a favorable environment for survival instead of cultivating entrepreneurship and facilitating their growth. Conversely, this paper explores a strategic orientation for the informal sector. The proposed framework balances entrepreneurial spirit of the individuals, market dynamics of the economy, and socio-economic imperatives of a developing nation. Implications for research and policy are also drawn.

Entrepreneurial development in India relies on generational mentoring, family business skill set, and exploration of technological progress. The know-how of skills, learned and refined over generations, leads to sustained development that is then converted into technology. Inheritance is one aspect that plays a major role in skill development. The transformation of skill into a technological component paves the way for the successful entrepreneurship. The spark initiated through inherited skill sets and ignited through the addition of technology results in useful entrepreneurial value. The basic societal needs remain the same while the trends take a changed form with the advent in technology. This requires the conversion of the time-honored skills through adaptation of the technological exponent in the changing societal trends. This paper offers an optimization model with maximization of entrepreneurial value as the objective and business output as the constraint. Skill and technology are taken as the variables. The model uses the primer value theorem as the computational tool, which solves the model in the indeterminate domain to suggest different strategies. The concept is demonstrated through three case examples.