Journal of Enterprising Culture

Design science methodology was used to develop and test a University-based Venture Gestation Program (UVGP), the model built after identifying key problems and reactions to them in student based gestation ventures. The model relied on a three-year longitudinal comparative case study of a successful and an unsuccessful student venture team. The teams came from the same university and were winners of business plan contests in 2012 and 2013. Although the teams were very similar to begin with, analyses revealed that different responses to three shared problems were key determinants of venture gestation success, and failure. Based on these observations, three design principles, termed tenure, competence compatibility and entrepreneurial bricolage, were adapted to derive a solution model, the Venture Gestation Model (VGM), with the aim of improving chances of venture success. To develop the model, the study drew on dynamic capability theory, and subsequently yielded the UVGP which provided concrete tools (prescriptions) toward gestation venture success. As a means of testing the designed solution, an evaluation of the program was conducted by observing the gestation venture of the 2014 winner of the annual contest. Findings show that gestation success depends more on the effectiveness of the program in increasing awareness of internal problems than on reactions to external changes. However, the prescription on competency development requires revision to overcome inadequacy issues.

The literature indicates that small and medium scale firms are quite different with respect to their utilization of business practices. Thus, the study endeavours to address the relationships between the market and entrepreneurial orientation, and organizational performance. The study derived two hypotheses in relation to the relationship between market orientation and entrepreneurial orientation, and organisational performance in the attempt to examine how both the orientations contribute to the organizational performance of small and medium entrepreneurs in garment industry at Southern province, Sri Lanka. The sample of the study consisted of 175 respondents representing small and medium scale entrepreneurs in the Southern Province Sri Lanka. A structured questionnaire was administered to the sample respondents to collect data. The data were analyzed with Partial Least Squares path modeling (PLS) to test the hypotheses of the study. The results indicated that the hypotheses were statistically significant and all effects were in the expected direction.

Innovation in entrepreneurial firms is influenced by team creative processes. This study investigates how perceptions of team creativity lead to the generation, promotion and implementation of new ideas and opportunities for the enterprise, increasing the firm’s innovation performance. The results of the study of respondents across industries disclose how teams develop ideas and solutions, and turn them into new opportunities for the organization. Creativity and innovation have been widely studied, yet few studies have focused on entrepreneurial team creative practices in pursuit of new ideas for business development. This study contributes to our understanding of the team behaviors that lead to the formation of new and useful ideas that are promoted and implemented to bring benefits to the team, organization, and marketplace.

This paper discusses the power of the creative sector to revive today’s cities by broadening the discussion of the creative sector to include all the tools, assets, and processes of urban creativity. While scholars commonly tie the creative class to specific neighborhoods, especially “silo-ing” creative producers into being the solution for decaying and decrepit neighborhoods and areas, this paper presumes that urban cities already have the depth of diversity to support urban creativity if the dominant planning logic is shifted to proximity of resource from a specific location development.