61,684 research outputs found

    Toward a process theory of entrepreneurship: revisiting opportunity identification and entrepreneurial actions

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    This dissertation studies the early development of new ventures and small business and the entrepreneurship process from initial ideas to viable ventures. I unpack the micro-foundations of entrepreneurial actions and new ventures’ investor communications through quality signals to finance their growth path. This dissertation includes two qualitative papers and one quantitative study. The qualitative papers employ an inductive multiple-case approach and include seven medical equipment manufacturers (new ventures) in a nascent market context (the mobile health industry) across six U.S. states and a secondary data analysis to understand the emergence of opportunities and the early development of new ventures. The quantitative research chapter includes 770 IPOs in the manufacturing industries in the U.S. and investigates the legitimation strategies of young ventures to gain resources from targeted resource-holders.Open Acces

    Impact Investing: a primer for family offices

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    The goal of this report is to help family offices ask the right questions as they contemplate their path into impact investing. It is important to recognize that impact investing may not suit all investors. There will be family offices which conclude impact investing is not appropriate at this stage for them. While we are passionate about the potential of impact investing, we acknowledge the best future for the sector is where each investor can make informed choices about their own best interest. Each investor and investment institution needs to evaluate if impact investing fits with its needs, interests and unique context. It is with that in mind that we offer this report as a resource and tool that family offices can use to begin the conversations internally, to craft and design their own engagement strategy on impact investing with family members, advisers and potential investees, as well as to ensure that not only is their wealth growing in value, but also that their wealth can reflect their values

    The Value Added Approach of Entrepreneurial Philanthropy

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    Entrepreneurs add value to society beyond the wealth creation process and the creation of new products and services, through their engagement in philanthropy. The increasing prominence of high net worth entrepreneurs engaging in philanthropy, whose focus is typically on global social problems, is worthy of scholarly attention. Accurate reflections of the current practice of entrepreneurial philanthropy are required, in order for researchers to develop knowledge and understand the phenomenon of entrepreneurial philanthropy. Entrepreneurial philanthropy has emerged from practices of entrepreneurship, and the methods and practices associated with venture capital investment. Any analysis of entrepreneurial philanthropy requires careful consideration of the extent to which the practices and behaviours common to entrepreneurship can easily transfer over to the field of philanthropy

    Steering Capital: Optimizing Financial Support for Innovation in Public Education

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    Examines efforts to align capital to education innovation and calls for clarity and agreement on problems, goals, and metrics; an effective R&D system; an evidence-based culture of continuous improvement; and transparent, comparable, and useful data

    Virtuous Circles: New Expressions of Collective Philanthropy in Asia

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    This is the third paper of the Entrepeneurial Social Finance in Asia series, and it addresses the Giving Circles, its importance and their context in Asia." The theme of entrepreneurial philanthropy focused largely on the practices of venture philanthropy and impact investing organisations -- institutionalised funds that offer a blend of finance and advisory services to social entrepreneurs in support of their ambitions to strengthen their organisations and grow social impact. We were intrigued by a variant of venture philanthropy whereby individuals pooled their resources and together selected a small number of non-profit organisations to support with grants and advice.Our earlier study profiled several such giving circles in India, Hong Kong and Tokyo but we felt that such an innovation in collective philanthropy will grow in scale and importance in the coming decade to become a key part of the philanthropy landscape in Asia and thus warranted further study. In the next chapter we will look at how research evidence from North America supports a dual objective for the giving circle methodology -- to provide resources for non-profits; and to educate and motivate donors. Giving circles can provide a learning experience for people who want to better understand philanthropy, such as how to create social value by donating their money and skills in a socialised context.When philanthropy is described as a journey that individuals embark upon throughout life, it is not simply about giving more money over time. Giving should be made more intelligently and strategically; it can involve leveraging non-financial resources; and it understands and measures the impact created. Collaborating with others on the philanthropy journey holds the potential to make giving a more impactful and personally fulfilling experience. Giving circles make it easier for individuals to enter into larger scale and more sophisticated philanthropy and share the risks and rewards with others.

    Rising star monitor: providing insight into remuneration and founding team composition of young, high-potential Belgian ventures

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    This report provides a snapshot of the trends and challenges involved in young, high-potential ventures in Belgium. Our insights are based on data gathered from 170 young, high-potential Belgian ventures with 370 founders in a wide cross-section of industries. For a more detailed understanding, we have –where relevant– split up our results for high- versus low-growth ambition ventures (HGV versus LGV). Indeed, even though all sampled ventures show some indication of having high growth potential, only around one third of our respondents also indicated having a high growth ambition in terms of their aspired future company size. This group corresponds to what is now often referred to as scale-ups. Hence, potential does not necessarily equal ambition. In this Monitor, we pay special attention to the topics of founding team composition, their equity split and remuneration.2 As such, it is the first study to provide insight into questions such as how many founders young, high-potential Belgian ventures have, where co-founders are found, how founding teams split their equity and what equity stake they retain. We also provide detailed information on founders’ cash remuneration (e.g., as related to company size and industry)

    Mixed Signals: Why investors may misjudge first time high technology founders

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    This paper seeks to explain an unexpected result of a previous quantitative study which suggested sub-optimal evaluation by investors of the human capital of first time high tech venture founders. A literature review revealed two possible reasons for this finding: biases/heuristics and signaling. Six investors across three countries (one venture capitalist and one business angel each from the US, UK and Israel) with experience in investing in early stage high technology ventures were interviewed using an identical semi-structured interview protocol. This research design is appropriate for research that seeks to reflect back unexpected findings of previous quantitative research on the subjects of research. Interviewees were first asked to state their own investment criteria, and then presented with the results of the quantitative study and asked for their views. Previous research suggesting a gap between in-use and espoused criteria, and extensive use of gut feeling in decision-making, was supported. Interviewees focused on harvest potential and de-emphasised measures of founder technology capability that predicted early survival and growth in the earlier study. The paper concludes by suggesting how investors might improve funding decisions in high tech ventures led by first-time entrepreneurs, noting the study's limitations and making recommendations for further research

    Competition in financial services

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    In the financial services sector, the failure of a single institution can have a compounding effect on the sector, and on national and global economies. In particular, there is systemic risk from inter-institution lending, and this effect is more complex in Australia due to the small number of major players. In retail banking in Australia, following a similar practice in most developed countries, if an unsecured creditor is a retail depositor, their deposit is insured by the government. That is, if a retail bank fails, the Federal Government will make the depositors whole. The regulatory system, particularly the prudential regulatory system, is designed to protect depositors’ and borrowers’ interests, and this protects the interest of the government. The effect is that regulatory policy on banking has prioritised stability in consideration of the sovereign risk associated with the risk of retail bank failure. However, this approach also creates a policy dilemma. The dilemma concerns the extent to which the retail banking sector can attain the benefits of the vigorous rivalry from effective and efficient competition, without unduly risking stability and the potential of a devastating call on the public purse. Specifically, in the context of effective and efficient competition, there is limited competitiveness in retail banking in Australia. This is reflected in the static state of market share between the four major banks, and very slow and marginal improvements gains even by strong second tier competitors. Furthermore, the retail banking sector’s capacity for product and service innovation is limited. Although the absence of vigorous rivalry is conducive to stability within the retail banking sector, it is likely to detract from the welfare of retail banking consumers. Furthermore, the level of innovation may not be as high as is feasible and barriers, including prudential regulatory barriers to entry or expansion, mean that the extent of rivalry is unlikely to change without some form of promotion of competition. The paper consequently makes a four-point recommendation for the removal of the ‘four pillars’ policy:  The four major banks are protected by an implicit government guarantee that impacts market operation with little observable benefit to consumers, and may be a source of consumer disutility.  The four pillars policy has prompted increased vertical integration within the sector, particularly in the area of mortgage products.  There are sufficient merger protections provided by Part IV of the Competition and Consumer Act 2010 (Cth).  Competition and contestability arise when there are reasonably low barriers to entry and exit from the sector. It is not clear that low barriers to entry exist in Australia, and evidence to support this view comes from the failure of international banks to gain a significant toehold in the retail banking sector in Australia. One deterrent to entry is the regulatory focus on the four pillars. The authors recognise that this position is at odds with the view of the Financial System Inquiry. However, the rationale in the report of the Inquiry was to prevent mergers, and the current competition law achieves this objective. The paper recommends two specific policies to promote competition in retail banking without the structural intervention that would otherwise be required to improve the intensity of competition in the retail banking sector:  Introduce bank account number portability. This would use ‘know your customer’ and central database systems in a similar form to those that have been used for mobile number portability in Australia for the last decade and a half.  Introduce customer access to data held by banks to allow third parties to compare bank offerings across all banks.  Significantly, these two recommendations are consistent with the productivity proposals issued by the UK Government in July 2015. The research paper also examines crowd equity funding as a disruptive force in the banking sector, and recommends that crowd equity funding be permitted with the following safeguards:  ASIC should take an active role in monitoring crowd equity funding and be willing to sue in case of fraudulent action.  Any intermediary online platform should have a financial services licence with limited duty of care.  There should be a cap for business raisings through crowd equity funding of $2 million in a 12-month period.  Crowd equity funding is a social phenomenon. Through its use of social media, it has attracted people who have previously never been interested in investing in companies. Instead of being feared, this interest should be nurtured through the promotion of investors’ financial education

    Growing Pains: Getting past the complexities of scaling social impact

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    In communities across the UK, organisations develop new ideas to improve the lives of those around them. And yet despite growing demand for charity services, concerted attempts to take proven approaches to scale are few and far between, and successful examples are rarer still. This paper aims to bring about a change in tack by proposing a way of assessing the viability of scaling in different contexts
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