Making Evaluation Work

Outlines how evaluation has been integrated into grantmaking practices, since the foundation embarked upon a new approach to the field of youth development in 2000

The Performance of University Spin-Offs: The Impact of Entrepreneurial Capabilities and Social Networks of Founding Teams during Start-Ups

Objectives: University spin-offs have increasingly received attention from academia, governments, and policymakers because they not only generate new innovations, productivity, and jobs the regional economies but also significantly improve university productivity and creativity (Hayter, 2013, Urbano and Guerrero, 2013). However, a lack of understanding of the contribution made by a founding team to a spin-off’s performance still remains within current studies. Employing a resource-based view theory and social networks approach, this paper addresses this gap by exploring university spin-offs in Spain. Prior work: University spin-off studies have concentrated on analysing entrepreneurial business models (Ndonzuau et al., 2002, Vohora et al., 2004b, Bower, 2003, Mets, 2010) to understand how the commercialization of research is undertaken to create a university spin-off. University spin-offs were also been analysed from the perspective of a university’s capabilities (Powers and McDougall, 2005), or capabilities and social networks of an established spin-off instead of the founding teams (Walter et al., 2006). Moreover, Vohora et al. (2004a) and Shane (2004) have suggested founders need to build capable teams, which must have entrepreneurial capabilities and qualitative social networks, to create effective university spin-offs. Both entrepreneurial capability and social network theory have been studied in prior entrepreneurship research, but have received less attention within the context of the university spin-offs (Gonzalez-Pernia et al., 2013). Approach: Utilising an internet-based survey, this paper explores entrepreneurial capabilities and social networks of founding teams in Spanish university spin-offs using quantitative data analysis. Basing upon resource-based view theory of Barney (1991) to study entrepreneurial capabilities of the founding teams, the research employ entrepreneurial technology, strategy, human capital, organizational viability, and commercial resources (see Vohora et al., 2004a). To study social networks of a founding team, we employ the conceptual model of Hoang and Antoncic (2003) that divides networks into three components: structure, governance, and content. Results and implications: The results from an examination of the sample of 181 Spanish university spin-offs empirically demonstrate that by exploiting social networks a founding team can improve its entrepreneurial capabilities, which in turn enhance its spin-off’s performance. By employing the work of Vohora et al. (2004a) and Shane (2004), this paper constructs a model in which entrepreneurial capabilities play a mediate role between social networks and spin-off’s performance. Thus, the paper has implications for universities in training and policy development to support spin-off’s activity. Value: This study addresses some fundamental questions to contribute to the theory-based understanding of university spin-offs: How do entrepreneurial capabilities of founding teams influence the performance of university spin-offs? How do social networks of founding teams contribute to the process of the university spin-offs

How to find and share community owned solutions

The main aim of this handbook is to promote community owned solutions by proposing approaches that respond to current and future challenges to sustainability, natural resources management and biodiversity conservation. The handbook introduces key concepts and techniques which underpin a participatory and systems approach to community engagement. It helps a community build up practical skills for exploring, recording and disseminating their own community owned solutions

Alternative agricultural policy scenarios, sector modelling and indicators - A sustainability assessment

In this article, we assess ecological, economic and social sustainability impacts of four alternative agricultural policy scenarios relevant to the European perspective. The analysed scenarios are: Prolonged Agenda 2000, On-going CAP reform, Integrated rural and environmental policy, and Liberalised Agricultural Trade

By the numbers: Data and measurement in community economic development

In a speech to the Greenlining Institute, Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben S. Bernanke speaks to the need for developing and analyzing social and economic data at the local level to do the following: uncover new investment opportunities; provide transparency and promote good governance and sound public policies; and promote independent policy research.

Agriculture’s contribution to rural viability: An approach to estimate regional economic impacts of agricultural policy in Swiss case study regions

This paper develops a thorough yet easily implementable approach to measuring agriculture’s contribution to rural viability. The approach is based on input-output modelling. It adopts a number of concepts from input-output modelling such as determining the explicit geographical origin of input requirements and the geographical destination of farm household expenditures without formerly developing an input-output table. The approach is applied to four case studies in the Swiss mountain regions and tested for three scenarios. Our results clarify the role that agriculture still plays in the context of rural viability. They demonstrate that agriculture’s contribution to rural viability differs considerably between the case study regions and that future developments lead to a marked decline in this contribution. Rural development strategies have to take these specific regional characteristics and development perspectives into account. Keywords: This paper develops a thorough yet easily implementable approach to measuring agriculture’s contribution to rural viability. The approach is based on input-output modelling. It adopts a number of concepts from input-output modelling such as determining the explicit geographical origin of input requirements and the geographical destination of farm household expenditures without formerly developing an input-output table. The approach is applied to four case studies in the Swiss mountain regions and tested for three scenarios. Our results clarify the role that agriculture still plays in the context of rural viability. They demonstrate that agriculture’s contribution to rural viability differs considerably between the case study regions and that future developments lead to a marked decline in this contribution. Rural development strategies have to take these specific regional characteristics and development perspectives into account.rural viability, employment, added value, agricultural production, input requirements, farm household expenditures, agricultural and rural policy, Agricultural and Food Policy, Community/Rural/Urban Development,

Species prioritization for monitoring and management in regional multiple species conservation plans.

Successful conservation plans are not solely achieved by acquiring optimally designed reserves. Ongoing monitoring and management of the biodiversity in those reserves is an equally important, but often neglected or poorly executed, part of the conservation process. In this paper we address one of the first and most important steps in designing a monitoring program - deciding what to monitor. We present a strategy for prioritizing species for monitoring and management in multispecies conservation plans. We use existing assessments of threatened status, and the degree and spatial and temporal extent of known threats to link the prioritization of species to the overarching goals and objectives of the conservation plan. We consider both broad and localized spatial scales to capture the regional conservation context and the practicalities of local management and monitoring constraints. Spatial scales that are commensurate with available data are selected. We demonstrate the utility of this strategy through application to a set of 85 plants and animals in an established multispecies conservation plan in San Diego County, California, USA. We use the prioritization to identify the most prominent risk factors and the habitats associated with the most threats to species. The protocol highlighted priorities that had not previously been identified and were not necessarily intuitive without systematic application of the criteria; many high-priority species have received no monitoring attention to date, and lower-priority species have. We recommend that in the absence of clear focal species, monitoring threats in highly impacted habitats may be a way to circumvent the need to monitor all the targeted species

Online korean skincare decision support system

Despite the explosive growth of electronic commerce and the rapidly increasing number of consumers who use interactive media for pre-purchase information search and online shopping, very little is known about how consumers make purchase decisions in such settings. One desirable form of interactivity from a consumer perspective is the implementation of sophisticated tools to assist shoppers in their purchase decisions by customizing the electronic shopping environment to their individual preferences

Effects of Roads and Traffic on Wildlife Populations and Landscape Function Road Ecology is Moving toward Larger Scales

Road ecology has developed into a significant branch of ecology with steady growth in the number of refereed journal articles, books, conferences, symposia, and “best practice” guidelines being produced each year. The main objective of this special issue of Ecology and Society is to highlight the need for studies that document the population, community, and ecosystem-level effects of roads and traffic by publishing studies that document these effects. It became apparent when compiling this special issue that there is a paucity of studies that explicitly examined higher order effects of roads and traffic. No papers on landscape function or ecosystem-level effects were submitted, despite being highlighted as a priority for publication. The 17 papers in this issue, from Australia, Canada, the Netherlands, and USA, all deal to some extent with either population or community-level effects of roads and traffic. Nevertheless, many higher order effects remain unquantified, and must become the focus of future studies because the complexity and interactions among the effects of roads and traffic are large and potentially unexpected. An analysis of these complex interrelations requires systematic research, and it is necessary to further establish collaborative links between ecologists and transportation agencies. Many road agencies have “environmental sustainability” as one of their goals and the only way to achieve such goals is for them to support and foster long-term and credible scientific research. The current situation, with numerous small-scale projects being undertaken independently of each other, cannot provide the information required to quantify and mitigate the negative effects of roads and traffic on higher levels. The future of road ecology research will be best enhanced when multiple road projects in different states or countries are combined and studied as part of integrated, well-replicated research projects