Prelims

Half Title Page

BLEEDING-EDGE ENTREPRENEURSHIP

Series Page

CONTEMPORARY ISSUES IN ENTREPRENEURSHIP RESEARCH

Series Editor, Volumes 1–6: Gerard McElwee

Volume 7 onward: Paul Jones

Title Page

CONTEMPORARY ISSUES IN ENTREPRENEURSHIP RESEARCH, VOLUME 16

BLEEDING-EDGE ENTREPRENEURSHIP: DIGITALIZATION, BLOCKCHAINS, SPACE, THE OCEAN, AND ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

Edited by

JOÃO J. FERREIRA

University of Beira Interior, Portugal

And

PATRICK J. MURPHY

University of Alabama at Birmingham, USA

United Kingdom – North America – Japan – India – Malaysia – China

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Emerald Publishing Limited

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First edition 2023

Editorial matter and selection © 2023 João J. Ferreira and Patrick J. Murphy.

Individual chapters © 2023 the authors.

Published under exclusive licence by Emerald Publishing Limited.

Chapter 4, Social Relationships: The Secret Ingredient of Synergistic Venture Cooperation, copyright © Katarzyna Czernek-Marszałek, Patrycja Klimas, Patrycja Juszczyk, Dagmara Wójcik. Published by Emerald Publishing Limited. This chapter is published under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) licence. Anyone may reproduce, distribute, translate and create derivative works of this chapter (for both commercial and non-commercial purposes), subject to full attribution to the original publication and authors. The full terms of this licence may be seen at http://creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0/legalcode.

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A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN: 978-1-80262-036-8 (Print)

ISBN: 978-1-80262-035-1 (Online)

ISBN: 978-1-80262-037-5 (Epub)

ISSN: 2040-7246 (Series)

Contents

List of Figures and Tables

List of Figures

List of Tables

About the Contributors

Alamir N. Al-Alawi has worked as a Director of Admin and Finance, Assistant Dean for Academic Support Affairs, and, currently, an Assistant Dean for Academic and Scientific Research at the University of Technology and Applied Sciences-Salalah, Oman. He published in several steam journals and is currently working on a project worth around $30,000 funded by the Research Council “Ministry of Higher Education.” He has successfully supervised and examined a number of Master theses. His research interests include finance, PLS-SEM, entrepreneurship, tourism, and management.

Pablo Álamo obtained PhD and Master in Economics and Business from the University of Comillas (Madrid, Spain). He is the Partner of Invivus Consulting, Member of the Instituto de Consejeros Administradores (Madrid, Spain), and International Professor at CETYS University. He is an Expert in innovation in family businesses and also help companies and individuals to enhance their leadership and improve their productivity with human development.

Paula Arriscado is a Corporate People, Brand and Communication General Manager at Salvador Caetano Holding (since 2015), after 15 years as Brand, Marketing and Communication Manager at Toyota Caetano Portugal. Since 2007, she is a Teacher at IPAM – The Marketing School University and Affiliated Member of the IPAM Lab Research Unit (Universidade Europeia Holding). She holds a PhD in Brand Management and Integrated Communication at Santiago de Compostela University (2008), DEA (Advanced Studies Diploma) in Communication (2001), and Journalist degree (1995). Between 1991 and 2000, she developed a large activity in the Business Communication field and collaborated with several media. She was elected “Marketing professional of the year 2005 in automotive sector” by Portuguese Marketing Association APPM, and “Teacher of the year 2013” by IPAM. She is a Jury Member at Specialist Title selection process for title accreditation to university teachers.

Katarzyna Czernek-Marszałek is an Associate Professor, the Head of the Department of Management Theory, University of Economics in Katowice. Her research interests include inter-organizational relationships (especially cooperation and coopetition), its determinants (e.g., trust and social embeddedness), innovations, and knowledge transfer. Her empirical research focuses strongly on tourism sector. Her works are published in such journals, for example, Industrial Marketing Management, Tourism Management, Journal of Destination Marketing & Management, Annals of Tourism Research, Journal of Travel Research, and Current Issues in Tourism.

Brandon DeBalsi is a Cooperative Scholar and Alumnus of the University of Alabama at Birmingham Peace Studies and Human Rights Program. He studies worker cooperatives and workplace democracy by means of anthropological analysis. Economic democracy of all kinds is one of his enduring passions.

Claudia Dias has a multidisciplinary background including a degree in Economics at the Instituto Superior de Ciências do Trabalho e da Empresa (ISCTE), a Masters in Agronomics at the Escola Superior Agrária de Castelo Branco (ESACB), and a PhD in Management at the Universidade da Beira Interior (UBI). She is a Junior Researcher at NECE-UBI and a Research Fellow in the project “IIES I3Social BSE – Incubadora Itinerante para a Inovação Social das Beiras e Serra da Estrela” at UBI. In this university, she is also a Master’s Supervisor in the entrepreneurship and marketing fields. She is a Member of the Editorial Board of the Journal of Small Business and Enterprise Development, and an Author of several articles published in journals indexed in Scopus and WoS. Her research interests are entrepreneurship, marketing, and sustainability, especially in the agri-food sector.

Iman El-Kaffas, BA, MPA, PhD, an Egyptian Academic and International Consultant with proven expertise with international development and donor organizations as well as government agencies, public, and private enterprises, and local non-governmental organizations (NGOs) around the world. Her consultancy work, teaching, and publications focus on education transformation, youth and women entrepreneurial development, and organizational assessment and development. She has worked and consulted in sub-Sahara Africa, the Near East and North Africa, Central and Southwest Asia, and the Americas. She has obtained PhD in Higher Education Administration from Bowling Green State University, Ohio. In 2007–2008, she was a Fulbright New Century Research Scholar investigating Innovative Approaches to Financing Higher Education.

Marta Félix is a Researcher at the Research Unit in Business Sciences at UBI (NECE). She holds PhD (2021) and Master (2013) in Management from the University of Beira Interior, Covilhã, Portugal and a degree in Education (2004). Over the last 20 years he has always worked in the area of Management from client management to project management. She also works as a Consultant in the areas of intrapreneurship, organizational management, and culture and leadership, which are also her main areas of interest in research.

Ronnie Figueiredo is an Academic Scientist at Centre of Applied Research in Management and Economics (CARME), School of Technology and Management, Polytechnic of Leiria. He is the Preferred Peer Reviewer for the Economics of Innovation Portfolio to Routledge Taylor & Francis Group and Associate Editor – Editorial Board of Innovation & Management Review (INMR), Emerald/Scopus, FEA/USP. His research interests include innovation, Geographic Information System (GIS), and Digital Business, and methods include bibliometric analysis, data mining, machine learning, spatial data mining, and spatial regression model. He is an Internationally Recognized Speaker in Innovation and an example for Authentic Leadership in Asia, Africa, South America, and Europe. He is the Chairman of Spinner Innovation Centre, Europe, and an author of Spinner Innovation Model®, published in indexed international journals. He received two awards, Global Teacher Award and Global Innovative Teacher Award.

Sofia Gomes is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Economics and Management of University Portucalense. She holds PhD in Applied Economics. Currently she is a Researcher at REMIT – Research on Economics, Management and Information Technologies. She is also a Reviewer Board in several journals. Her research interests include entrepreneurship, digital economy, innovation, corporate finance, and sustainability with publications in several international scientific journals.

Jaime Alonso Gómez is a Dean of the University of San Diego School of Business. He has worked for a wide variety of organizations across five continents as a Scholar, Consultant, and Executive Coach in the areas of strategy, leadership, family business, and executive talent development. He obtained PhD in Applied Economics and Managerial Science at The Wharton School of The University of Pennsylvania.

Kateri Gutierrez received her MBA University of Michigan Ross School of Business. Prior to school, she Co-founded a Worker Cooperative Cafe in Southeast Los Angeles. This experience further motivated her to help bridge the gap between business school acumen and employee ownership efforts.

Felicity Healey-Benson, BSc, PGCE, MSc, MBA, is a doctoral candidate at the University of Wales Trinity St. David, and an Entrepreneurial Learning Champion in the International Institute for Creative Entrepreneurial Development. She is a Member of the Erasmus+ funded EntreCompEdu Steering Group, which aims to develop teachers’ entrepreneurial education skills through global access online CPD underpinned by the European Entrepreneurship Competence Framework. She is passionate about sustainability and is a Co-founder of the Harmonious Entrepreneurship Society. She is a Writer and Academic Entrepreneur founded “Emergent Thinkers.com,” and “Pirates in Education,” both of which identify and share new educational and business practices to promote sustainability and support wider economic and social development. She contributed to, and supported the editing of Tay Kay Luan’s 2019 book Applying Sustainability: Principles and Practices.

Patrycja Juszczyk is an Assistant in the Department of Management Theory at the University of Economics in Katowice. Her research interests include the issues of strategic management – in particular the coopetition, cooperation, and competition, especially in non-commercial organizations (public and non-profit). As a researcher she conducts research that focuses mainly on the issues of social relationships and other sociological concepts and theories in the management and quality studies. She is an Implementer of research projects financed by the Ministry of Education and Science. Actively also involved in work on projects subsidized by the National Science Center.

David A. Kirby, BA, PhD, FHEA, FIBC, FRSA, was Founding Dean and Vice President of the British University in Egypt from 2007 to 2017, in which capacity he introduced entrepreneurship education to the University and country. Prior to this, he had pioneered the teaching of entrepreneurship in the UK and internationally, and held the UK’s first Entrepreneurship Chair at Durham University Business School from 1988 to 1996. At Surrey University (2000–2007) he not only introduced innovative new undergraduate and postgraduate programs but also the first SETsquared incubator on the Surrey Research Park. He holds Honorary Professorships at Almaty Management University in Kazakhstan and the University of Wales Trinity St. David, and is a Council Member of the International Accreditation Council for Entrepreneurial and Engaged Universities and is the Co-founder (with Felicity Healey-Benson) of the Harmonious Entrepreneurship Society. He has published 160 journal articles and 18 books and research monographs, including “Entrepreneurship” (McGraw-Hill, 2003). In 2006, he was a lifetime recipient of The Queen’s Award for Enterprise Promotion.

Patrycja Klimas is an Associate Professor at Wroclaw University of Economics and Business in the Department of Advanced Research in Management. As a Researcher, she researches within strategic management, focused on inter-organizational cooperation and coopetition considered under dyads, networks, and different types of ecosystems. Based on her research mainly on the aviation and the video game industry, she published several papers in the ranked journals (Long Range Planning, Industrial Marketing Management, Review of Managerial Science, European Management Review, and European Management Journal). She co-organizes the track on Coopetition–Ecosystems–Networks–Alliances at the annual EURAM conferences.

João M. Lopes obtained PhD in Management. Currently he is an Assistant Professor at the Miguel Torga Institute of Higher Education (ISMT) and University of Beira Interior (UBI), Scientific Coordinator of Undergraduate Degree in Management (ISMT) and Researcher at NECE (Research Unit for Business Sciences). He has done several publications in journals indexed to WOS and Scopus, and is part of the Topic Board Editor in the Journal Businesses. He is also a Reviewer Board in the Journals: Data, Social Sciences, Resources, Urban Science, Digital, Smart Cities, Tourism and Hospitality, and World. His main research interests include: regional innovation systems, RIS3, smart specialization, tourism, strategy, entrepreneurship, marketing, innovation, circular economy, and competitiveness.

Frayne Olson is the Crop Economist/Marketing Specialist with the North Dakota State University Extension and Director of the Quentin Burdick Center for Cooperatives. He conducts educational programs focusing on crop market outlook and price analysis, evaluating alternative crop marketing strategies, and the economics of crop contracting. As Director of the Center for Cooperatives, he Teaches a senior-level course on Cooperative Business Management and Coordinates the Center’s research and outreach activities. He received his PhD from the University of Missouri in Agricultural Economics, and MS and BS in Agricultural Economics from the North Dakota State University.

Marta Peris-Ortiz is a Full Professor at the Univesitat Politècnica de València and obtained PhD in Management at the University of Valencia. She is a Guest Editor of several management journals and has published numerous research papers indexed in the Journal Citation Report and Springer books in the area. She is an Expert in Innovation and Entrepreneurship and provides Consultancy Services to both public and private companies.

Raysa Geaquinto Rocha is the Project Manager of UBI’s team at ENTRANCE and RE-START projects, both financed by Erasmus Plus. She teaches Management and Marketing courses at the University of Beira Interior (UBI). She is a Junior Researcher at NECE-UBI and an Associate Member of the International Association for Knowledge Management. She received her PhD with distinction in Management from UBI. During doctoral program, she was granted two awards on her PhD project, including the 2021 MSR Promising Dissertation Award given by the Management Spirituality and Religion Interest Group of the Academy of Management. She is particularly interested in studying organizational practices that lead to a humanized strategy for long-term sustainable performance.

Kristi Schweiss is an Assistant Director of the Quentin Burdick Center for Cooperatives at North Dakota State University. As Assistant Director of the Center, she works alongside Director, Dr. Frayne Olson, to coordinate and implement the Center’s education, research, and outreach activities. She received MS and BS in Agribusiness and Applied Economics from the North Dakota State University.

Mohammad Soliman is currently an Assistant Professor at the University of Technology and Applied Sciences-Salalah, Oman. He has published multiple papers in reputed journals indexed in WoS and Scopus (e.g., Journal of Destination Management & Marketing, Tourism Management Perspectives, Geoheritage, Tourism and Hospitality Research, Journal of Medical Systems, Journal of Consumer Behaviour, International Journal of Finance and Economics, International Journal of Hospitality & Tourism Administration, European Journal of Tourism Research, & Anatolia). Additionally, he sits on the Editorial Board of some academic journals (e.g., Journal of Tourism & Hospitality, Tourism & Management Studies, Journal of Responsible Tourism Management, and Journal of Global Hospitality and Tourism), and serves as a Reviewer of some top-tier journals (e.g., International Journal of Hospitality Management, Current Issues in Tourism, Journal of Destination Management & Marketing, International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Management, and Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Technology). He has successfully supervised and examined a number of Master and PhD theses. His research interests include tourism management and marketing, tourism behavior, PLS-SEM, and bibliometric studies.

Dagmara Wójcik is an Assistant in the Department of Management Theory at the University of Economics in Katowice. Her research interest include the strategic management issues, that is, inter-organizational cooperation and coopetition in particular in the creative industries such as performing arts. She is also the Researcher involved in individual and team projects subsidized by the National Science Centre, the Ministry Education and Science, or the European Commission.

Foreword

I like to think about entrepreneurship as an unexplainable but undeniable feeling that there must be a better way. The vagueness of that feeling complements a sharp mindset and dogged tendency to ignore the status quo. It is a mindset that compels you to walk to the edge of a cliff, look across the chasm at what could be, and then step off – not knowing exactly where you will land. Although the situation is extreme, a strong entrepreneurial disposition gives you unshakable confidence. You know you will land somewhere, and then it will be possible to build a bridge that will take you where you need to be. This illustration, I believe, conveys something about the true source of entrepreneurship.

The chasms between the “status quos” and the “better ways” are endless. As such, innovation and entrepreneurship compose a never-ending cycle. A “better way” eventually morphs into a status quo, which ultimately makes it possible for an even better way to emerge in the future. Without entrepreneurs who ignore the abyss of the chasm, and who thus take a chance, societies, and communities do not push the limits of what is possible. If human beings did not do entrepreneurial things, then we would still be making fire with sticks, and only a very select few of you would be reading this book today.

My experiences founding and leading several entrepreneurial ventures have taught me a few lessons. First, from an observer’s perspective, entrepreneurial activities appear to rise from opportunity and necessity. However, from the insider’s perspective of the entrepreneur who is taking action, opportunity, and necessity are almost invisible. Instead, for them, entrepreneurship is all about solving problems. I believe that entrepreneurs, in general, take action to engage and resolve problems. But it is also more than that. For instance, an inordinate amount of passion is instrumental to problem-solving activities. If one person feels the need to do something entrepreneurial, the effect of their passion for the underlying problem can become a force multiplier and set many things in motion. The result is an unstoppable pursuit of excellence, which continues to increase its momentum along the way.

On these grounds, I believe entrepreneurship represents a new paradigm for thinking about business, communities, and society. Pat Riley, the Famed Coach of the Los Angeles Lakers basketball team, once said that “excellence is the gradual result of always wanting to do better.” For me, the same kind of personal longing is what keeps me motivated as an entrepreneur. For scholars, I think the questions are interesting and profound. What kind of mindset compels a person or team to pursue excellence? How does passion for a problem evolve into an inner voice that yells, “no one else is going to do this, so you must!”

In entrepreneurial settings, empathy, creativity, and ego interact with one another in dynamic ways to generate performance and impact. The effect is multiplicative; if one element is missing, then performance and impact will not occur. Empathy, ego, and creativity are the human foundations of the innovations that move our world forward. Deep empathy for people drives questions about why it is so important to solve a problem. When the answers are clear at the outset, creativity comes to life. Then, the ego says “don’t tell me this can’t be done,” which leads to more questions, more external human connections, and more ways to show empathy. Without empathy, innovation is vacuous. Without creativity, innovation falls flat. Without ego, an innovative spirit dies before it reaches success. It is vital to understand the dynamic relations among these elements. Those relations play out within individuals and within teams. In the industries and communities of our world today, entrepreneurial people and teams are creating transformational change based on these foundations.

There will always be new challenges for humanity. Thus, there is no end to the opportunities that will emerge for entrepreneurs. Change begets change. Entrepreneurship spans all the sectors of our lives: energy, food, technology, business, and finance, just to name a few. Sectors that do not yet exist will offer fertile new soil to till and yield disruptive bounties that ripen and disrupt the status quo. When natural resources dwindle, dispersed communities become closer. When the need to make decisions quickly is intense, individuals with the knowledge to act move to the vanguard.

From my perspective as an entrepreneur, I am heartened to see the field of entrepreneurship taken seriously in the world of academia, and I applaud the efforts of researchers and professors to continue to build bridges so that students – the entrepreneurs of tomorrow – will be able to build new bridges that span future chasms.

Over the course of this book, you’ll be introduced to powerful ideas from the minds of scholars and successful practitioners. The implications of these chapters lead to challenging the status quo in some of the most progressive and avant-garde entrepreneurial sectors in the world. This is a scholarly book. However, the same principal question of “how can this be better?” still applies, just as it applies to entrepreneurs like myself.

Trent Kocurek

CEO and Co-founder, Airship

teamairship.com

Acknowledgments

We acknowledge the strong and reliable support that we receive from our universities and colleagues, which has made it possible for us to complete this book. We are grateful to the scholars who contributed to this volume. We dedicate this book to entrepreneurs around the world who enter radically uncertain realms and undertake the boldest actions in order to improve human society.