Born to be green: new insights into the economics and management of green entrepreneurship

While the number of green start-ups has steadily increased around the world in response to the environmental problems demanding immediate solutions, there are several unresolved questions on the behaviour and performance of such ventures. The papers in this special issue shed light on these issues by underscoring the role of several factors, such as industry life cycles, knowledge spillovers, institutions, and availability of external finance, in shaping decision-making and firm behaviour in green start-ups. This paper highlights the state-of-the art developments in the literature, discusses the key contributions of the papers put together in this special issue and presents a future research agenda for scholars interested in green entrepreneurship

Which Green Matters for Whom? Greening and Firm Performance across Age and Size Distribution of Firms.

A growing body of literature links firm performance with sustainability efforts.We contribute to this literature by developing a novel framework for contextualising greening through the lens of tangibility and visibility of greening activities and examine the impact of different types of greening on firm performance along the age and size distribution of firms. The empirical results based on a large-scale database suggest that rewards to different types of greening differ across age and size distributions

Mechanical evidence that Australopithecus sediba was limited in its ability to eat hard foods

Australopithecus sediba has been hypothesized to be a close relative of the genus Homo. Here we show that MH1, the type specimen of A. sediba, was not optimized to produce high molar bite force and appears to have been limited in its ability to consume foods that were mechanically challenging to eat. Dental microwear data have previously been interpreted as indicating that A. sediba consumed hard foods, so our findings illustrate that mechanical data are essential if one aims to reconstruct a relatively complete picture of feeding adaptations in extinct hominins. An implication of our study is that the key to understanding the origin of Homo lies in understanding how environmental changes disrupted gracile australopith niches. Resulting selection pressures led to changes in diet and dietary adaption that set the stage for the emergence of our genus

The Feeding Biomechanics and Dietary Ecology of Paranthropus boisei

The African Plio‐Pleistocene hominins known as australopiths evolved derived craniodental features frequently interpreted as adaptations for feeding on either hard, or compliant/tough foods. Among australopiths, Paranthropus boisei is the most robust form, exhibiting traits traditionally hypothesized to produce high bite forces efficiently and strengthen the face against feeding stresses. However, recent mechanical analyses imply that P. boisei may not have been an efficient producer of bite force and that robust morphology in primates is not necessarily strong. Here we use an engineering method, finite element analysis, to show that the facial skeleton of P. boisei is structurally strong, exhibits a strain pattern different from that in chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) and Australopithecus africanus, and efficiently produces high bite force. It has been suggested that P. boisei consumed a diet of compliant/tough foods like grass blades and sedge pith. However, the blunt occlusal topography of this and other species suggests that australopiths are adapted to consume hard foods, perhaps including grass and sedge seeds. A consideration of evolutionary trends in morphology relating to feeding mechanics suggests that food processing behaviors in gracile australopiths evidently were disrupted by environmental change, perhaps contributing to the eventual evolution of Homo and Paranthropus This is the peer reviewed version of the following article: Smith, A. L., Benazzi, S. , Ledogar, J. A., Tamvada, K. , Pryor Smith, L. C., Weber, G. W., Spencer, M. A., Lucas, P. W., Michael, S. , Shekeban, A. , Al‐Fadhalah, K. , Almusallam, A. S., Dechow, P. C., Grosse, I. R., Ross, C. F., Madden, R. H., Richmond, B. G., Wright, B. W., Wang, Q. , Byron, C. , Slice, D. E., Wood, S. , Dzialo, C. , Berthaume, M. A., van, Casteren, A. and Strait, D. S. (2015), The Feeding Biomechanics and Dietary Ecology of Paranthropus boisei, which has been published in final form at https://doi.org/10.1002/ar.23073. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with Wiley Terms and Conditions for Use of Self-Archived Version

My first employee: an empirical investigation

The challenge for solo entrepreneurs to add their first employee is arguably the single biggest growth event facing any growing firm. To understand how this event affects performance, and the antecedents of hiring, we analyse Danish matched employer-employee data. Those who hire enjoy superior sales outcomes in subsequent years, while the dispersion in profits increases. Furthermore, those that hire enjoy faster sales growth in the previous year, suggesting that sales growth precedes the first hire. Finally, we show that founders with a stronger profile in terms of education and previous income are more likely to increase profits, while the characteristics of the employee are less important. The latter finding is important from a job creation perspective, in light of the suggested sorting of more marginalized employees into new and established firms