What makes a graduate an agro-entrepreneur?

Realizing the importance of entrepreneurship to economic development, the Malaysian Ministry of Higher Education has launched the Higher Education Institute Entrepreneurship Development Policy in 2010. This because, based on the 2010 Graduate Tracer Study, there is a low involvement (5.5 percent) of graduates in entrepreneurship, compared to employment in other sectors.This warrants a study to explore the factors influencing a graduate to become agro-entrepreneur.This study aims to identify these factors and also the characteristics of what actually make an agro-based graduate entrepreneur. In-depth interviews are conducted with twelve graduate agro-based entrepreneurs.The entrepreneurs are also requested to rate the importance of various triggering factors which are identified by previous studies. The factor rating results reveals that relatively, the most important factors are interest, satisfaction of being an entrepreneur, a sense of contribution to the society, generic skills (leadership, problem-solving, creativity and innovation, analytical, time and group management), social networking and taking-up of entrepreneur courses (after completing undergraduate studies); whereas, formal entrepreneur education, either at the degree, diploma or certificate level, is the least important. Results of in-depth interviews reveal that the characteristics of a graduate agro-based entrepreneur include those such as the right attitude, open mindedness, willingness to learn and face challenges, diligence, and good social networking

E-entrepreneurship and open source software

As the first stage of a larger project, this paper presents experiences of two e-Entrepreneurs in the light of Open Source Software (OSS) being accepted globally. Unlike proprietary software (such as Windows), OSS comes with its internal details visible to its users. The significant implications of this unique style of software distribution for e-Entrepreneurs are examined. Recommendations arising from the interviews include the need to be technically competent; understanding the reasons behind adopting this strategy; and identifying and addressing customers\u27 requirements. Authors also found similarities between traits (such as being visionary; being responsive to market changes) which make an entrepreneur and e-Entrepreneurs successful.<br /

The Impact of COVID-19: Become New Entrepreneurs with Online Business

The number of unemployed increased dramatically due to COVID-19. This can happen because many companies instruct their employees to work from home and some companies forced to do temporary dismissal and/or lay off their employees to survive during a pandemic. After that, many of people decide to create online business and become entrepreneurs. Products sold can be obtained from other people (be reseller) or make it by themselves. These products will be sold online, both with shopping applications and social media. The purpose of this research is to introduce the advantages of being an entrepreneur with online business and to show how technology affects the business. Therefore, this research tries to analyze the benefits of being an entrepreneur compared to being an employee and to find out how new entrepreneurs manage and market their products by technology during this pandemic. The samples of this research are 10 new entrepreneurs who get temporary dismissal of workers and or lay off from their company and open the online business in Surabaya and Sidoarjo. The methodology of this research is a qualitative methodology by analyzing social media accounts or online shop accounts that entrepreneurs use for selling their products and also conducting online interviews with them to ensure their accuracy. The results of this research indicate that online businesses provide benefits and convenience for entrepreneurs to do business during this pandemic and also give a motivation for entrepreneurs to continue and improve their business if COVID-19 has been completed

The Role of Entrepreneur-Venture Fit in Online Home-based Entrepreneurship: A Systematic Literature Review

Home-based businesses and their founders represent an important, but under-researched facet of entrepreneurship. Far from being small, hobby-businesses with little economic impact, home-based business make significant contribution to national economies in terms of both turnover and employment. Online home-based businesses have been recognised as an important and distinct sector of the home-based business domain, offering unique opportunity for innovation and business diversity. The paper presents a systematic literature review of extant research on online home-based entrepreneurs and their businesses. The findings of the review are structured and discussed using the theoretical lens of entrepreneur-venture fit. Use of this lens allows the study to bring coherence to previously fragmented extant studies, providing a basis for future research in this domain. The study also develops a novel model of entrepreneur-venture fit in the specific case of online home-based businesses. This allows us to suggest five positive interactions between entrepreneurial and venture characteristics. It also allows us to suggest a number of previously unidentified negative interactions, which may result in entrepreneurs becoming ‘locked-in’ and suffering multiple sources of stress

Entrepreneurial workaround practices in severe institutional voids: Evidence from Kenya

Entrepreneurs in developing economies try to cope with weak or absent formal institutions – often referred to as ‘institutional voids’ – by relying extensively on intermediary organizations such as business incubators and development organizations or informal institutions such as political, kinship, or family relationships. However, in many African countries, intermediary support is limited and informal institutions are also unreliable, adding risks and costs to doing business and increasing the severity of institutional voids in the surrounding ecosystem. We investigate the practices followed by 47 commercial entrepreneurs in Kenya to ‘work around’ these severe institutional voids to achieve their goals of business creation and growth. We find that severe institutional voids stimulate the hybridization of goals to include social value creation, create a need for a more strategic orchestration of business relationships, and motivate entrepreneurs to proactively cross-brace the institutional infrastructure around them. We contribute by unveiling the important role of entrepreneurs as microinstitutional agents in developing economies and by detailing how commercial and social goals become intertwined in the context of African entrepreneurship

Rethinking green entrepreneurship - fluid narratives of the green economy

Green entrepreneurs have been seen as key drivers for a transition to a green economy. However, there has been limited in-depth qualitative empirical research with green entrepreneurs to date, focusing instead on typologies categorising certain ‘types’ of green entrepreneur. Moreover, the literature rarely situates such individual activities within broader concepts such as the green economy. In contrast, we suggest that current discourses of the green economy are important in contextualising the ways that green entrepreneurs make sense of themselves and their businesses. Green entrepreneurs are thus negotiating varying tensions between their business activities, environmental philosophies, and wider contexts at the intersection between the green economy and the mainstream economy. Drawing on evidence from 55 interviews, we explore the narratives employed by green entrepreneurs to situate themselves within/outwith the wider green economy – the recursive framing of mainstream and niche ‘green’ activities provides a sense of the tensions and politics at play in the development of the green economy. We thus offer a new and more dynamic view of the evolving nature of ‘being’ and ‘becoming’ a green entrepreneur, rather than relying on the fixed categories espoused in previous typologies. We conclude that it is important that policy makers recognise the complex and contentious nature of green entrepreneurship, and that it is essential to view the green economy as a diverse constellation of myriad actors rather than corporate reinventions of business as usual

Reflexivity and the institutional entrepreneur: a historical exploration

This article sets the idea of the `institutional entrepreneur' in the context of the `autonomous reflexive' as developed in the work of Margaret Archer. It argues that the latter notion provides a helpful approach to the issue of agency that has bedevilled the new institutionalist project. A detailed account, using the lens supplied by the notion of the autonomous reflexive, is given of the formation of Sir Andrew Barclay Walker, a pioneer of directly managed public houses. The article suggests that Walker used taken-for-granted practice, transferred from elsewhere, to develop his managerial systems. The importance of aspects of Walker's Scottish background, such as education and church governance, is stressed. The account of agency supplied by Archer is seen to be a conception of agency that can inform the debate over the nature of institutional entrepreneurship

Does innovation matter for economic development? An empirical study of small and medium-sized enterprises in the city of Kumba – Cameroon

In recent years, the development priorities of African countries have focused on private sector development to build a strong market economy that gives a more dynamic role to indigenous entrepreneurs and their innovative small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). This paper investigates the potential for indigenous SMEs in Cameroon to successfully emerge as agents of economic development through innovation. The analysis includes the personal characteristics that make up an indigenous entrepreneur as well as the contemporary environments in which SMEs operate. Building on Schumpeter’s notion that entrepreneurship contributes to economic development through the interplay of new firm creation, innovation and competition, questionnaires and interviews were conducted with indigenous entrepreneurs of selected SMEs in the city of Kumba, one of the most important concentrations of economic activity in the English-Speaking region of Cameroon. The results reveal that while economic profit is a priority for most entrepreneurs, SMEs exists mainly to alleviate poverty through income generating activities and contribute to economic development by providing employment and income for the poor. The SMEs studied focused on adapting, imitating and modifying existing innovations rather than pursuing genuine Schumpeterian innovation. This suggests that innovation is not a priority for the SME sector and therefore policies aimed at catching up with modern technology should be the central focus in providing assistance for indigenous entrepreneurs and these are suggested in this paper