Beyond Economic Profitability, Sustainable Financing through Crowdfunding

Esta investigación se ha llevado a cabo con el objetivo de determinar la relación entre el crowdfunding y la sostenibilidad. El crowdfunding es una herramienta de financiación que surge de la economía colaborativa, y emplea una plataforma online para poner en común inversores que ofrecen recursos económicos y emprendedores, empresas o individuos que demandan dichos recursos. Con el fin de analizar dicha relación se realiza una revisión de la literatura previa en el tema y se observa que a través de la innovación se crean proyectos sostenibles que son financiados a través de crowdfunding. Estos proyectos significan una solución sostenible que incide en el pensamiento fuera de la caja, y que en última instancia contribuye a una mejora de la productividad, innovación social y soluciones altamente creativas. Sin embargo no todas las innovaciones se trasladan a la sociedad en forma de creación de nuevas empresas. Pues existen unos filtros al conocimiento que impiden la comercialización de las ideas. Debido a que la dificultad de acceder a los recursos económicos se establece como una barrera a la comercialización de ideas, estudiamos si el crowdfunding tiene un efecto derrame de conocimiento a la sociedad, a través de la teoría “knowledge spillover theory of entrepreneurship”. Por ello en el segundo artículo de esta tesis doctoral investigamos si el crowdfunding de recompensa o reward-based crowdfunding, puede mitigar los filtros al conocimiento. En esta modalidad de crowdfunding, el inversor actúa con un doble rol ya que es proveedor de financiación y a su vez es consumidor del bien en el que está invirtiendo, al ser ésta su recompensa económica. Se concluye en el segundo artículo de la tesis doctoral que los inversores aportan valor a los proyectos a través de la inversión que se realiza, y también al proveer de conocimiento táctico a través de las ideas y el feedback que aportan a los emprendedores durante las campañas de crowdfunding de recompensa. En este punto nos planteamos si en otras modalidades de crowdfunding, la motivación de los inversores es el retorno económico que obtienen, o si la motivación intrínseca también índice en la decisión de éstos. Para estudiarlo, escogemos la modalidad de crowdlending o peer-to-peer lending, que en la literatura anterior se había considerado que la motivación de los inversores estaba ligada esencialmente a la recompensa económica. En este tercer artículo de la tesis analizamos la motivación de los inversores, intrínseca y extrínseca, en base al porcentaje de su patrimonio invertido. La motivación extrínseca se mide a través de la importancia otorgada a la compensación económica y al riesgo percibido. La motivación intrínseca se mide mediante la importancia otorgada a la responsabilidad social corporativa de los proyectos financiados. Los resultados indican que existen dos grupos de inversores que deciden invertir un bajo porcentaje de su patrimonio. Un primer grupo que se guía por la motivación extrínseca, y otro segundo grupo que valoran la responsabilidad social corporativa y por tanto la motivación intrínseca incide, pero en combinación con otras condiciones como son la edad o el riesgo percibido, ya que se emplea una metodología que permite estudiar las combinaciones de condiciones que conducen al bajo nivel de inversión. Por tanto se concluye que la motivación de los inversores es tanto intrínseca como extrínseca.The aim of this doctoral thesis is to explore and understand the relationship between crowdfunding and sustainability. Crowdfunding is a financing tool within the collaborative economy. It uses online platforms to bring together investors, who provide financial resources, and entrepreneurs, companies or individuals, who solicit these resources. To explore and understand this relationship, the literature on this subject is first reviewed. This review shows that, thanks to innovation, sustainable projects can be created and financed through crowdfunding. Based on out-of-the-box thinking, these projects offer sustainable solutions to society’s most serious problems. Ultimately, these highly creative solutions can help enhance productivity and social innovation. However, not all innovations are transferred to society in the form of start-ups, given that knowledge filters prevent the commercialisation of some ideas. The knowledge spillover theory of entrepreneurship is used to examine whether crowdfunding has a knowledge spillover effect on society. The second article investigates whether reward-based crowdfunding can mitigate knowledge spillovers. In reward-based crowdfunding, investors act as both providers of funding and consumers of the goods they invest in through economic rewards. The conclusion from the second article is that investors add value to projects not only through their investment but also through the tactical knowledge that they provide to entrepreneurs in the form of ideas and feedback during reward-based crowdfunding campaigns. This conclusion raises the question of whether the motivation of investors in other types of crowdfunding is primarily extrinsic (i.e., financial returns) or whether intrinsic motivation also plays a role in their decisions. The third article aims to answer this question by examining peer-to-peer lending. The literature generally implies that, in this form of lending, the motivation of investors is closely linked to the financial rewards they receive. This article examines the intrinsic and extrinsic motivations of investors based on the percentage of equity invested. Extrinsic motivation is measured by the importance attached to financial compensation and perceived risk, whereas intrinsic motivation is measured by the importance attached to the corporate social responsibility of the funded projects. The results indicate that there are two groups of investors who choose to invest a low percentage of their equity. Investors in the first group are driven by extrinsic motivation, whereas investors in the second group value corporate social responsibility. Therefore intrinsic motivation plays a role. However, this intrinsic motivation is combined with other conditions such as age and perceived risk. The method used in this study enables analysis of the combinations of conditions that lead to low levels of investment. The conclusion from this study is that investor motivation is both intrinsic and extrinsic

Sustainable financing through crowdfunding

The phenomenon of crowdfunding has been widely studied, while the sustainability of crowdfunded ventures is attracting growing interest from academia and society. In light of this interest, we conducted bibliometric analysis to study the relationship between crowdfunding and crowdfunded ventures’ sustainability orientation. We analyzed the number of publications, type of publications, and most productive countries, journals, and authors. We also analyzed the most cited articles and examined their approach to sustainability and crowdfunding. The results suggested that a sustainability orientation could bring about change in the current financial and environmental system

Digital Transformations and Value Creation in International Markets: editorial

The Special Issue: "Digital Transformations and Value Creation in International Markets" has the objective of gathering relevant papers that have made an important contribution in the academia and encourage an outstanding research in the area of digital transformations and subsequent value creation taking place at an international scope. The reviewers stand out the following papers for submission for publication in this special issue. An introduction of the mentioned articles is presented subsequently. Their research topic revolve around entrepreneurship, innovation and international venture capital mainly

The Implementation Of Ict In Education: A Systematic Literature Review

[EN] Innovation in education through the use of ICT plays a very important role on human evolution. The use of ICT innovation in education breaks up existing barriers and expands knowledge frontiers, opening the possibility of developing a more skilled labour force once students end their studies. For this to take place, the existence of ICT champions, defined as those who actively promote and foster the use of technology in institutions, and competent teacher training programs are essential so that information is transmitted efficiently to students. The objective of this research is to analyse existing publications related to ICT innovation in education to understand better the impact and benefits on society of the implementation of ICT in education, as well as getting to know the keys to implementing it successfully. The methodology applied is bibliometric analysis, this is a systematic literature review which consists of analysing a large number of papers and extracting relevant conclusions related to the topic. The Web of Science database was used to select the papers to be reviewed. The keywords: Education, Innovation and ICT were combined using the Boolean operator ¿AND¿ to conduct the search. Papers which we considered that best fitted the topic were selected from the Web of Science search result conducted previously.Martínez Climent, C.; Veciana-Belmonte, M.; Botella-Carrubi, D.; Sendra-García, FJ. (2021). The Implementation Of Ict In Education: A Systematic Literature Review. IATED Academy. 1-10. http://hdl.handle.net/10251/19065911

Ambidextrous Leadership, Social Entrepreneurial Orientation, and Operational Performance

In the knowledge era, new forms of organizing and managing firms emerge to adapt to new situations. One such new form of organizational management is ambidextrous leadership. Ambidextrous leadership combines opening leader behaviors, such as promoting creativity, and closing leader behaviors, such as accomplishing objectives and adhering to norms. Thus, the aim is to demonstrate that a social orientation is not at odds with measures of operational performance other than profitability. The purpose of this study is to examine how ambidextrous leadership is linked to social entrepreneurial orientation and how this in turn affects operational performance. This is done through a rigorous review of the literature

The evolution of the ventilatory ratio is a prognostic factor in mechanically ventilated COVID-19 ARDS patients

Background: Mortality due to COVID-19 is high, especially in patients requiring mechanical ventilation. The purpose of the study is to investigate associations between mortality and variables measured during the first three days of mechanical ventilation in patients with COVID-19 intubated at ICU admission. Methods: Multicenter, observational, cohort study includes consecutive patients with COVID-19 admitted to 44 Spanish ICUs between February 25 and July 31, 2020, who required intubation at ICU admission and mechanical ventilation for more than three days. We collected demographic and clinical data prior to admission; information about clinical evolution at days 1 and 3 of mechanical ventilation; and outcomes. Results: Of the 2,095 patients with COVID-19 admitted to the ICU, 1,118 (53.3%) were intubated at day 1 and remained under mechanical ventilation at day three. From days 1 to 3, PaO2/FiO2 increased from 115.6 [80.0-171.2] to 180.0 [135.4-227.9] mmHg and the ventilatory ratio from 1.73 [1.33-2.25] to 1.96 [1.61-2.40]. In-hospital mortality was 38.7%. A higher increase between ICU admission and day 3 in the ventilatory ratio (OR 1.04 [CI 1.01-1.07], p = 0.030) and creatinine levels (OR 1.05 [CI 1.01-1.09], p = 0.005) and a lower increase in platelet counts (OR 0.96 [CI 0.93-1.00], p = 0.037) were independently associated with a higher risk of death. No association between mortality and the PaO2/FiO2 variation was observed (OR 0.99 [CI 0.95 to 1.02], p = 0.47). Conclusions: Higher ventilatory ratio and its increase at day 3 is associated with mortality in patients with COVID-19 receiving mechanical ventilation at ICU admission. No association was found in the PaO2/FiO2 variation