While most studies have viewed bricolage as a tool to overcome resource constraints in the context of new ventures, few of them have directly investigated the effects of bricolage to identify new ...entrepreneurial opportunities in the context of incumbent firms. Drawing upon a subjectivist view of entrepreneurship, we reframe bricolage as a concrete activity of experiential resource‐learning that creates subjective knowledge of resource at hand. We argue that the subjective knowledge derived from bricolage will shape a firm's “subjective opportunity set” and facilitate opportunities identification, which will ultimately increase the likelihood of the incumbent firm's corporate entrepreneurship (including product innovation, venturing, and strategic renewal). Hypotheses are thus developed to examine the relationship between bricolage and corporate entrepreneurship as well as the mediating role of opportunity identification. Moreover, as bricolage activities depend on interactive social contexts rather than individual efforts, the firm's learning orientation is proposed as a moderator that influences the positive effects of bricolage on opportunity identification. We test these hypotheses using the survey data from 248 incumbent firms in China. The empirical results generally support our hypotheses by showing that (1) bricolage positively influences opportunity identification, (2) opportunity identification mediates the relationship between bricolage and corporate entrepreneurship, and (3) learning orientation has a positive moderating effect on the relationship between bricolage and opportunity identification. These findings contribute to our understanding of the role of bricolage in context of corporate entrepreneurship by being an opportunity identification incubator. Implications for managers are also included in the end of this article.
This article presents a comparison of business incubators with business accelerators as state support projects in accordance with the government order of March 6, 2015 No. 373-p, which implements the ...innovative development strategy for the period up to 2020 in the Russian Federation. Also is carried analysis, development specifics of them in the Irkutsk region and the advantages/disadvantages of the each system are revealed.
Institutions in the United States are undergoing modifications that present direct challenges for the environment and society and may result in institutional uncertainty and instability. This article ...explores whether innovation intermediaries can be employed as a key component of a strategy to create a window of opportunity for green job creation, infrastructure changes, and technological innovation in response to these types of institutional modifications. Based on a systematic literature review, this article outlines a framework that combines institutional modifications with technological innovation and infrastructure development as part of an economic development strategy. Important findings are that connections between innovation intermediaries, such as incubator and accelerator centers, niche actors, such as green champions, and regime actors, such as policy entrepreneurs, show potential to contribute to a green economic development strategy but require further examination for the specific roles played by policy entrepreneurs to help create the conditions for scaling niche experiments and simultaneously disrupting the regime. The key contribution is in defining the role of sustainability-oriented innovation intermediaries at linking local, state and business actions in order to scale-up and influence green economic development in a politically feasible manner during times of institutional uncertainty and instability.
In the context of incubators, particularly those that are driven to achieving social objectives, this paper investigates core processes that support the development of social innovation. Social ...innovation, as this paper argues, is underpinned by a new form of social collaboration and engagement built upon strong forms of sharing knowledge and learning. Coupled with this is the element of social capital reinforced by entrepreneurship and leadership that promotes sustainability in the community. These factors drive innovative thinking and ways of engaging among stakeholders in order to create new forms of socio‐economic impact. Such value‐creating activity occurs in firms that operate within incubators involving a wide range of stakeholders who work through networks to co‐create and meet social challenges. Through a case study of a social incubator and an incubatee, we demonstrate the core processes that irradiate the argument on social innovation. The contribution of this paper is threefold: First, social innovation is an emerging area of research, of which there is a dearth in terms of examining the processes empirically. We address the gap in this field by demonstrating the value of social collaboration and engagement using different innovation models. Second, we establish links between social innovation and incubation using the concept of social capital. This allows us to achieve our third contribution: exemplification of a dyadic value‐based partnership and collaboration processes between an incubator and an incubatee, through activities driven by social innovation that aim to have social impact. The paper concludes with practice implications and suggests directions for future research.
This paper introduces Technology Business Incubation (TBI) as a field of study and practice, exploring the concept, its evolution, and scholarship. Science parks, incubators and accelerators are TBI ...mechanisms considered to be important policy tools for supporting innovation and technology-oriented entrepreneurial growth. Their popularity is premised on the belief that these mechanisms provide critical value-added inputs essential for the creation and development of innovative Technology-Based Firms (TBFs). However, determining what type of TBI mechanisms and policies are most conducive to achieving the desired results is very much mission-driven and context-specific. A review of the past three decades of incubation literature, emerging practice, and future trends reveals that despite ongoing debate about their contribution and challenges, the future of TBIs is promising, and there are rich opportunities for research.
The extracellular matrix is fundamental in providing an appropriate environment for cell interaction and signaling to occur. Replicating such a matrix is advantageous in the support of tissue ...ingrowth and regeneration through the field of tissue engineering. While scaffolds can be fabricated in many ways, cryogels have recently become a popular approach due to their macroporous structure and durability. Produced through the crosslinking of gel precursors followed by a subsequent controlled freeze/thaw cycle, the resulting cryogel provides a unique, sponge-like structure. Therefore, cryogels have proven advantageous for many tissue engineering applications including roles in bioreactor systems, cell separation, and scaffolding. Specifically, the matrix has been demonstrated to encourage the production of various molecules, such as antibodies, and has also been used for cryopreservation. Cryogels can pose as a bioreactor for the expansion of cell lines, as well as a vehicle for cell separation. Lastly, this matrix has shown excellent potential as a tissue engineered scaffold, encouraging regrowth at numerous damaged tissue sites in vivo. This review will briefly discuss the fabrication of cryogels, with an emphasis placed on their application in various facets of tissue engineering to provide an overview of this unique scaffold's past and future roles.
Cryogels are unique scaffolds produced through the controlled freezing and thawing of a polymer solution. There is an ever-growing body of literature that demonstrates their applicability in the realm of tissue engineering as extracellular matrix analogue scaffolds; with extensive information having been provided regarding the fabrication, porosity, and mechanical integrity of the scaffolds. Additionally, cryogels have been reviewed with respect to their role in bioseparation and as cellular incubators. This all-inclusive view of the roles that cryogels can play is critical to advancing the technology and expanding its niche within biomaterials and tissue engineering research. To the best of the authors' knowledge, this is the first comprehensive review of cryogel applications in tissue engineering that includes specific looks at their growing roles as extracellular matrix analogues, incubators, and in bioseparation processes.
The paper introduces the term "digital (neural network) economy", which reveals the content of the processes of digital transformation of the national and world economic systems that are currently ...going on and makes it possible to form the methodological basis for further research in this field. It is shown that at the technological level the processes are accompanied by NBIC convergence of (nano-, bio-, information and cognitive) clusters of the digital economy, which generates synergy effects. The new structure of the modern economy is being formed. The building blocks of today's economy are: systems of the circular economy, clusters, network, business incubators, and technology platforms. The economic contents and the essence of the structure of the national economy are shown and the directions for its transfer are found out. It has been concluded that in the time of digital economy, as a result of network convergence, synergy effects of converged regional clusters appear. It has been found out that with a growing number of converged clusters of information spaces, the entropy inside them is stably going down. The paper reveals the content of the digital concept, defines the general principles, criteria and indicators of sustainable development. In order to characterize sustainable development, a number of indicators are used. They can be considered at different hierarchical levels: global, national, regional, local and industry-specific ones. The features of the "green economy" developing in the time of digitalization of the world and national economic systems are looked into. Given these features, a model of the regional concept has been developed and proposed. The model embraces sustainable development and organizational and economic mechanisms, which can be used to measure the efficiency of its implementation in the time of transfer to the digital (e-neural network) economy.
The aim of this paper is to analyze the role of university Technology Transfer Offices (TTOs) in contributing to the creation and the performance of academic spin‐offs (ASOs). More specifically, it ...investigates the relationship between resources invested in TTOs in term of employees and the creation and growth of ASOs. The empirical analysis refers to Italy, where since 1999 academicians have been allowed to be actively involved in setting up companies for the ‘industrial use of research’. We used data on ASOs and resources invested by Italian universities in TTOs during the 2002–2011 period to investigate if and to what extent such investments contributed to the birth and growth of ASOs. We also controlled the results using information on university and on local context, in which university is located. The results of the empirical analysis show that in a first phase academicians reacted more promptly than universities to the opportunities offered by the new legislation, which may in part be due to the organizational rigidity that characterizes Public Administration in Italy. However, the empirical analysis also shows that after this initial phase the size of the TTOs (in terms of employees) has had a positive influence on the number of new ASOs (i.e. birth), but not on the performance of ASOs (i.e. growth), which is influenced by both long‐term investments in research (i.e. the quality of research results) and other variables linked to the regional and national contexts, such as the presence of incubators or the level of economic development. Our results regard a widely studied topic and should provide incremental findings for the community of entrepreneurship scholars and relevant implications for policy makers and TTO managers.
In commercial egg production, chicks are exposed to a potentially stressful procedure during their first day of life. Here, we investigated how this procedure affects the chickens in a short- as well ...as long-term perspective by conducting two behaviour tests and measuring corticosterone (CORT) and sex hormone levels at different time points. These results were compared with a group of control chickens from the same hatchery and incubator that did not go through the commercial hatchery routine. Chickens were continuously weighed, egg production data was collected and feather scoring was performed. We found that chicks have a significant increase in CORT during the hatchery process, which implies they are exposed to stress. During first weeks of life, these chicks were more fearful, had a higher CORT reactivity during restraint and weighed more than control chicks. Later in life, hatchery treated chickens had more feather damages and injuries on combs and wattles, a faster onset of egg laying and higher levels of estradiol. We conclude that processing at the commercial hatchery was a stressful event with short- and long-term effects on behaviour and stress reactivity, and potentially also positive effects on production. The results are relevant for a large number of individuals, since the chicken is by far the globally most common farm animal.