Suchergebnisse

Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of higher education on the emergence of entrepreneurial intention (EI) and human capital (HC) as a component of intellectual capital (IC) that strongly influences the entrepreneurial process.


Design/methodology/approach
On the basis of a literature review, a theoretical model that is focused on the theory of planned behaviour was defined to verify the impact of higher education on the development of EI and HC. To this end, the structural equation modelling methodology was applied to two samples of students and academics, which differ each other in terms of both education level and specific characteristics of entrepreneurship education activities.


Findings
The main results show that there are significant differences between the two considered samples. In particular, the level and specific characteristics of entrepreneurial education are the key factors for the development of EI and HC.


Practical implications
The research may be of relevance for universities and policy makers. Universities must devote more attention to training and practice-oriented entrepreneurial courses and collateral activities (projects, initiatives, actions), both for students (first mission) and academic aspiring entrepreneurs (third mission) to encourage the emergence of EI and HC formation. For policy makers, this study suggests the need to define policy guidelines and frameworks to support universities' educational programmes and activities to strengthen the entrepreneurial process, so that they can be consistent with the EU and national entrepreneurship policies.


Originality/value
This explorative research intends to contribute to the scientific debate by filling the knowledge gap that is due to the very limited number of studies that analyse whether and how EI can mediate the relationship between higher education and HC as an IC component.

This paper aims at exploring the critical dynamic capabilities of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in the innovation process and at identifying the dynamic capabilities that enable the implementation of open innovation practices. Building on qualitative data from the manufacturing industry deriving from an in‐depth investigation of the capabilities of four innovative case firms, the patterns between the firm's portfolio of dynamic capabilities and the different types of open innovation processes are mapped. This study makes three primary contributions to the body of knowledge. This is the first attempt to link dynamic capabilities to an open innovation approach undertaken by SMEs. Second, the study extends existing work on innovation in SMEs by identifying key dynamic capabilities in this context. Finally, the case‐based research provides empirical evidence of dynamic capabilities in practices, where analysis reveals that companies with strong sensing, seizing and reconfiguring capabilities are more inclined to develop open innovation approaches. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

In this article, we report the results of an e-democracy experiment in which a group of supporters of a large political party were asked to debate online about ways to reform the electoral law. We compare a traditional forum with an online collaborative argumentation platform to capture the various proposals and their associated pros and cons. The aim of this study is to assess the capability of this tool to support online collective deliberation in a real-world case, as compared to an online discussion supported by a forum. By comparing users' experience across several metrics related to usability, activity levels, and quality of collaboration, our findings show that the forum produced more activity and ideas and its users perceived a better quality of the collaboration process, while the argumentation tool helped to reduce the amount of self-referential arguments and encourage viewing and rating of others' posts.