The successful adaptation and creation of sustainable entrepreneurial ventures significantly influences the ability to create more environmentally and socially integrated economic systems. ...Sustainable business models are a critical component towards this goal. However, the development of sustainable business models is a complex process that requires a supportive entrepreneurial ecosystem. Integrating literature on sustainable business models, network theory, and entrepreneurial ecosystems, we analyze the influence of organizational-level (venture types and venture tenure) and individual-level factors (types of network actors and their demographic characteristics) that influence the social network connectivity of ventures with sustainable and conventional business models. To this purpose, we modeled two municipal entrepreneurial ecosystems in the Southeast United States through a complex network of stakeholders (e.g. entrepreneurs, investors, institutional leaders) and analyzed the resulting social connectivity measures. Our results indicate that sustainable entrepreneurs were underrepresented when compared to conventional entrepreneurs, but that their networks were more densely connected. We also found that different social clusters emerged, based on type of venture and business model, venture tenure, type of network actor (e.g. entrepreneur or investor), or demographic characteristic. With this study, we contribute to the literature on entrepreneurial ecosystems and sustainable business models.
•A model is developed to measure social connectivity between entrepreneurs with sustainable and conventional business models.•The distribution of sustainable and conventional ventures in different social clusters is analyzed.•The role and position of traditionally underrepresented groups is analyzed.
Cyclodextrins, since their discovery in the late 19th century, were mainly regarded as excipients. Nevertheless, developments in cyclodextrin research have shown that some of these hosts can capture ...and include biomolecules, highlighting fatty acids and cholesterol, which implies that they are not inert and that their action may be used in specific medicinal purposes. The present review, centered on literature reports from the year 2000 until the present day, presents a comprehensive description of the known biological activities of cyclodextrins and their implications for medicinal applications. The paper is divided into two main sections, one devoted to the properties and applications of cyclodextrins as active pharmaceutical ingredients in a variety of pathologies, from infectious ailments to cardiovascular dysfunctions and metabolic diseases. The second section is dedicated to the use of cyclodextrins in a range of biomedical technologies.
While the ability to function in multidisciplinary entrepreneurship teams is becoming increasingly important for engineers, research on this topic is still scarce. To address this gap, we propose a ...framework describing team competencies for engineering entrepreneurship students that builds on the literature on teams, entrepreneurship, and engineering. Our framework is comprised of three components with 12 team-level competencies. First, discipline-driven competencies: technology literacy, adapted innovation capacity, and stakeholder empathy. Second, task-contingent competencies, which include team entrepreneurial efficacy, capability to build diverse networks, ability to communicate and persuade nonengineering audiences, leveraging team resources, team value creation and capturing ability, and team resilience. And finally, third, team-contingent competencies, including shared mental models, team conflict management, and team reflexivity. With this conceptual model, we define key competencies that can help inform the development of relevant pedagogical content and exercises for team-based entrepreneurship programs. We conclude the article with a discussion of implications for practice and future research.
This study investigates the effects of venture typology, race, ethnicity, and past venture experience on the social capital distribution of women entrepreneurs in entrepreneurial ecosystems. Social ...network data from two municipal ecosystems in Florida, USA (Gainesville and Jacksonville), suggest that network connectivity and the distribution of social capital are significantly different for men and women entrepreneurs. This difference is contingent on the venture type. Male entrepreneurs show higher comparative scores of bridging social capital in aggressive- and managed-growth venture networks, while women entrepreneurs surpass their male counter-parts’ bridging capital scores in lifestyle and survival venture networks. Lastly, experienced women entrepreneurs that self-identified as white showed a higher degree of network connectivity and bridging social capital in the entrepreneurial ecosystem than less experienced non-white female entrepreneurs. Implications for entrepreneurship practice and new research paths are discussed.
While social entrepreneurship (SE) as a field of study has progressed some distance over the past four decades, it is plagued by many unanswered, yet fundamental, questions. The SE literature is ...filled with an abundance of disputes, controversies, and alternative perspectives. Although this can suggest a healthy and robust discipline, it can also raise questions regarding the legitimacy and relevancy of the field, and uncertainty regarding where it is headed. In this research, we provide a systematic overview of major unresolved issues characterizing the contemporary study of SE in the form of thirteen divides. These divides cover such issues as social value creation, social innovation, nature of the process, agents, entrepreneurial orientation, scalability, venture creation, revenue sources, organizational outcomes, efficacy, and the appropriate disciplinary home. Rather than taking sides on each divide, we discuss how these diverse perspectives can be accommodated based on the process perspective. We present an inclusive approach to SE that provides a common platform for advancing the field while allowing for diverse streams of research.
This study examines the role of culture in the interplay between female participation in entrepreneurial teams, team processes, and outcomes using stereotype activation, social categorization, and ...identity theories. Our analysis of 64 entrepreneurial teams including members from 20 countries reveals that team reflexivity mediates the relationship between the proportion of women in a team and a team’s access to resources. This effect is further enhanced when team members are from countries with a more favorable national perception of women’s entrepreneurship. Our findings further demonstrate how the proportion of women in a team and cultural perceptions towards women’s entrepreneurship can impact the quality of team processes and, consequently, a team’s access to resources. We conclude by discussing the implications of our results on women entrepreneurship, new venture teams, and culture research.
The marine environment harbors a number of macro and micro organisms that have developed unique metabolic abilities to ensure their survival in diverse and hostile habitats, resulting in the ...biosynthesis of an array of secondary metabolites with specific activities. Several of these metabolites are high-value commercial products for the pharmaceutical and cosmeceutical industries. The aim of this review is to outline the paths of marine natural products discovery and development, with a special focus on the compounds that successfully reached the market and particularly looking at the approaches tackled by the pharmaceutical and cosmetic companies that succeeded in marketing those products. The main challenges faced during marine bioactives discovery and development programs were analyzed and grouped in three categories: biodiversity (accessibility to marine resources and efficient screening), supply and technical (sustainable production of the bioactives and knowledge of the mechanism of action) and market (processes, costs, partnerships and marketing). Tips to surpass these challenges are given in order to improve the market entry success rates of highly promising marine bioactives in the current pipelines, highlighting what can be learned from the successful and unsuccessful stories that can be applied to novel and/or ongoing marine natural products discovery and development programs.
Mesenchymal stromal cells (MSCs) are self-renewing, culture-expandable adult stem cells that have been isolated from a variety of tissues, and possess multipotent differentiation capacity, ...immunomodulatory properties, and are relatively non-immunogenic. Due to this unique set of characteristics, these cells have attracted great interest in the field of regenerative medicine and have been shown to possess pronounced therapeutic potential in many different pathologies. MSCs' mode of action involves a strong paracrine component resulting from the high levels of bioactive molecules they secrete in response to the local microenvironment. For this reason, MSCs' secretome is currently being explored in several clinical contexts, either using MSC-conditioned media (CM) or purified MSC-derived extracellular vesicles (EVs) to modulate tissue response to a wide array of injuries. Rather than being a constant mixture of molecular factors, MSCs' secretome is known to be dependent on the diverse stimuli present in the microenvironment that MSCs encounter. As such, the composition of the MSCs' secretome can be modulated by preconditioning the MSCs during
culture. This manuscript reviews the existent literature on how preconditioning of MSCs affects the therapeutic potential of their secretome, focusing on MSCs' immunomodulatory and regenerative features, thereby providing new insights for the therapeutic use of MSCs' secretome.
Controlling and monitoring temperature at the single cell level has become pivotal in biology and medicine. Indeed, temperature influences many intracellular processes and is also involved as an ...activator in novel therapies. Aiming to assist such developments, several approaches have recently been proposed to probe cell temperature in vitro. None of them have so far been extended to a living organism. Here we present the first in vivo intracellular temperature imaging. Our technique relies on measuring the fluorescence polarization anisotropy of green fluorescent protein (GFP) on a set of GFP expressing neurons in Caenorhabditis elegans (C. elegans). We demonstrate fast and noninvasive monitoring of subdegree temperature changes on a single neuron induced by local photoheating of gold nanoparticles. This simple and biocompatible technique is envisioned to benefit several fields including hyperthermia treatment, selective drug delivery, thermal regulation of gene expression and neuron laser ablation.
This work describes a new methodology for integrated decision analysis in the development and management of petroleum fields considering reservoir simulation, risk analysis, history matching, ...uncertainty reduction, representative models, and production strategy selection under uncertainty. Based on the concept of closed-loop reservoir management, we establish 12 steps to assist engineers in model updating and production optimization under uncertainty. The methodology is applied to UNISIM-I-D, a benchmark case based on the Namorado field in the Campos Basin, Brazil. The results show that the method is suitable for use in practical applications of complex reservoirs in different field stages (development and management). First, uncertainty is characterized in detail and then scenarios are generated using an efficient sampling technique, which reduces the number of evaluations and is suitable for use with numerical reservoir simulation. We then perform multi-objective history-matching procedures, integrating static data (geostatistical realizations generated using reservoir information) and dynamic data (well production and pressure) to reduce uncertainty and thus provide a set of matched models for production forecasts. We select a small set of Representative Models (RMs) for decision risk analysis, integrating reservoir, economic and other uncertainties to base decisions on risk-return techniques. We optimize the production strategies for (1) each individual RM to obtain different specialized solutions for field development and (2) all RMs simultaneously in a probabilistic procedure to obtain a robust strategy. While the second approach ensures the best performance under uncertainty, the first provides valuable insights for the expected value of information and flexibility analyses. Finally, we integrate reservoir and production systems to ensure realistic production forecasts. This methodology uses reservoir simulations, not proxy models, to reliably predict field performance. The proposed methodology is efficient, easy-to-use and compatible with real-time operations, even in complex cases where the computational time is restrictive.
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