Offering a comprehensive classification of the analytical approaches to the social within the fields of innovation and entrepreneurship studies, this book showcases a wide variety of perspectives and a collection of theoretical analysis tackling social complexity. The editors bring together contributors who mirror the heterogeneity present in the innovation and entrepreneurship fields, aiming to spark a discussion on the pluralist and critical nature of the social dimension within research, and to examine societal transformation processes and their attending multifaceted issues. Exploring how the social is analytically understood in innovation and entrepreneurship studies, the book proposes a non-exhaustive spectrum ranging from implicit assumption to explicit conceptualization in defining methodological foundations. Discussing the social and methodological challenges involved in the integration of social dimensions, this book will be a crucial companion for innovation and entrepreneurship scholars and students. This book is also a must-read for policy-makers and practitioners involved in societal transformation processes.

Passion, power and purpose: engaging with strategy in your organisation, and your life provides a professional and personal guide to navigating a world of complexity, uncertainty and pandemic-sized shocks. This book offers a comprehensive overview of applied strategy, suited to leaders and executives, graduate students, and all those interested in the power of strategy, igniting passion and enabling purpose.

Passion, power and purpose covers a broad selection of the essential frameworks, models and tools needed to engage effectively in shaping and influencing organisational strategy. It is the ultimate practical guide for leading the strategy conversation. Passion, power and purpose goes further by inviting the reader to reflect personally on these important topics. Every strategy concept that is applied to the organisation is also translated into a personal journey of curiosity, discovery and empowerment through a set of probing reflective questions at the end of each chapter.

Africa is rich with potential and renowned for its innovation. However, with the long shadow of the Berlin Conference ever present, for Africa to catch up with the developed world, an exponential growth trajectory needs to be charted.

Musa Kalenga, technologist, marketer, brand communicator, entrepreneur, author of Ladders & Trampolines and Group CEO and shareholder of Brave Group, believes this is only possible using the springboard combination of creativity and technology. The Brave Code explores Musa’s journey with Brave Group to pioneer a shared value creative enterprise as a blueprint for other organisations in Africa.

Exploring tangible ways to benefit every member of its ecosystem, Brave Group upends traditional advertising models, challenges assumptions around equity, and pushes back at commonly accepted but outdated client and agency practices. Seeking to blaze a new trail and aiming to create a replicable model that has relevance beyond the advertising and marketing sector, Musa is spurred on by what is called a massive transformative purpose by Singularity University, and calls others to join him on the journey.

Weaving together anecdotal examples and personal musings with a working theory of change, The Brave Code is an encouragement to the young entrepreneurs, professionals and trailblazers in Africa to play a critical part in unlocking the immense value that the continent has to offer.

South African organisations operate in an environment that is fast changing due to digital advancement, economic challenges, social complexities, and changing employee and customer values/expectations. In this environment, successful organisations empower talented employees to work in teams and make pivotal decisions that lead to innovation and exceptionally high performance. Success for these organisations is not by chance but is the result of adopting carefully planned and sophisticated interventions into the organisational structure, leadership and management orientations, culture, and processes and behaviours. In this respect, Organisational behaviour: a contemporary South African perspective provides a solid and scientific foundation for developing an integrated and holistic understanding of the individual and group processes in the modern organisation.

Organisational behaviour explores expectations that organisations and employees have of each other. It addresses contemporary issues related to organisational culture, change, engagement, performance excellence, changing communication technology, transformational and authentic leadership, diversity, business ethics, team excellence and globalisation. It contains many encounters, discussion questions, practical exercises and case studies with a southern African orientation to stimulate self-study, debate and reflective thinking.

Organisational behaviour is aimed not only at aspiring HR practitioners and managers, but also at established professionals who need to stay updated, irrespective of their field and nature of their organisation.

Exploring the process of university collaboration from the perspective of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), this book offers an in-depth examination of the collaboration process, dispelling the myth of the disengagement of these firms. Andrew Johnston and Robert Huggins present a thorough account of how SMEs can "unlock the ivory tower" and gain access to university knowledge to support their own innovation. Outlining and discussing the intellectual roots of research in this field in an accessible way, the book focuses on SMEs to provide insight to an often overlooked group of firms. Chapters show how the closeness of the partners in terms of network membership, working culture and practice, and technical language drive the formation and function of these collaborative links, offering a holistic account of this from idea generation to the completion of projects. This will be an essential read for academics researching innovation and the role of universities, as well as knowledge exchange practitioners wishing to further their understanding of collaboration processes. Policymakers seeking to explore how and why SMEs engage in open innovation practices will also find this an invigorating book.

This book offers cutting-edge insights into the changing landscape of entrepreneurial finance, as digital technologies play an increasingly dynamic role in the world economy. Assessing the rapid development of innovative technologies in entrepreneurial ecosystems, it contributes to a wider discussion on the role that technology plays in facilitating and commercializing ideas in the context of global finance. Chapters offer a systemic, comparative analysis of the interplay between financial activities and digital technologies, reflecting on the acceleration of the development of innovative technologies and alternative financing. The book includes thoughtful discussions of women entrepreneurs, crowdfunding, business angels and big data, connecting these topics to wider discussions of technology-based entrepreneurship. Offering interdisciplinary insights from a variety of entrepreneurial contexts, including startups, universities, corporations, and the public sector, contributors demonstrate the role of digital technologies in facilitating entrepreneurial ecosystems. Bringing together state-of-the-art qualitative and quantitative research on entrepreneurial ecosystems, this book offers crucial insights for academics and researchers of entrepreneurial finance looking for a better understanding of the contemporary role of digital technologies in alternative financing. Policymakers and practitioners will also benefit from the managerial implications of real-world scenarios analyzed by contributors.

The Handbook of Research on Artificial Intelligence, Innovation and Entrepreneurship focuses on theories, policies, practices, and politics of technology innovation and entrepreneurship based on Artificial Intelligence (AI). It examines when, where, how, and why AI triggers, catalyzes, and accelerates the development, exploration, exploitation, and invention feeding into entrepreneurial actions that result in innovation success. Individual chapters explore the factors that shape and drive innovation and entrepreneurship, including modalities (such as the Internet of Things (IoT)), challenges (such as privacy and safety concerns), and opportunities (such as augmenting the efficacy frontier of technological solutions enabled by AI). This Handbook provides comprehensive coverage of AI, technology, and innovation and entrepreneurship for academics, policy makers, practitioners, and students.

From bestselling author Robert Greene comes a new guide to the strategies of war that can help us gain mastery in the modern world. Spanning world civilisations, and synthesising dozens of political, philosophical, and religious texts, The Concise 33 Strategies of War is a guide to the subtle social game of everyday life. Based on profound and timeless lessons, it is abundantly illustrated with examples of the genius and folly of everyone from Napoleon to Margaret Thatcher and Hannibal to Ulysses S. Grant, as well as diplomats, captains of industry and Samurai swordsmen.

While much has been written about the U.S. Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program from both an institutional and a policy perspective, there remains a conspicuous void of general information about firms and research projects that are funded through the program. Providing a multi-dimensional picture of such firms and their projects, this incisive book is designed to help the reader understand in more depth the social benefits associated with the SBIR program. Albert N. Link and Martijn van Hasselt discuss the U.S. SBIR program from an institutional, empirical, and policy perspective, examining the policy transfer of the program to other countries, the transfer of technical knowledge through patents and scientific publications, and the technology transfer of commercialised research outputs. Exploring new program and project relationships, the book could serve as a springboard for future in-depth analyses about the SBIR program and its impact on economic and social matters. Forward-thinking in approach, Small Firms and U.S. Technology Policy provides a roadmap for future academic and policy research into the SBIR program, making it a valuable read for scholars and students of business and management studies. U.S. and international policymakers and business owners will also benefit from its discerning look into the SBIR program.

Bringing together a series of new perspectives and reflections on creative economies, this insightful Modern Guide expands and challenges current knowledge in the field. Interdisciplinary in scope, it features a broad range of contributions from both leading and emerging scholars, which provide innovative, critical research into a wide range of disciplines, including arts and cultural management, cultural policy, cultural sociology, economics, entrepreneurship, management and business studies, geography, humanities, and media studies. Designed to push the boundaries of understanding on the topic, this Modern Guide initially addresses definitional and methodological challenges, before offering new perspectives on the theory and practice of creative and cultural entrepreneurship, and exploring the role of networks and the importance of place and mobility. The book concludes by re-imagining creative economies, raising issues of inequality and justice, care and solidarity, and opportunities for value recognition, while providing new visions of inclusivity, cultural capability, and future development. A timely reflection on the importance of creative economies, this Modern Guide will be a critical read for students, scholars and policymakers working to support and develop future inclusive and sustainable creative economies.

The international cast of authors in this important book explore how internationalizing small and medium sized enterprises (iSMEs) face major crises, such as COVID-19, and have managed them to reach a stable and desired state post-crisis. Chapter orientations vary from theoretical to empirical. Each focuses on issues related to a major crisis, and present already-deployed success strategies in 14 different country environments. The rich diversity of chapters offers a highly significant and timely contribution to the field. This book consists of five parts. An introduction to the volume and an extensive literature review open the book and are followed in Part II by general, yet critical, topics such as firm capabilities, resources and orientations, which collectively influence how smaller firms perceive emerging, approaching or unfolding crises in their environments and how the national public policy as well as the evolution of the crisis affects them. Part III extends this discussion to look at digitization and 'servitization' for higher customer and market-orientation, supply chains and overall governance. Specific research-based examples of potent strategies by four internationalized SMEs in different industries and country environments fill out Part IV and the final part offers a view beyond the current crisis. Scholars and students in entrepreneurship, international business and other related areas will find this very timely volume illuminating.

Digital innovations influence every aspect of our lives in this increasingly technological world. Firms that pursue digital innovations must think carefully about how digital technologies shape the nature, process and outcomes of innovation as well as the long- and short-term social, economic and cultural consequences of their offerings. The Handbook contributes to building a transdisciplinary understanding of digital innovation by bringing together a diverse set of leading scholars from business, engineering, economics, science and public policy. Their distinct perspectives advance ideas and principles intended to set the agenda for future research on digital innovation in ways that inform not only firm-level strategies and practices but policy decisions and science-focused investments as well. The first of its kind, this Handbook provides scope and depth for scholars interested in information systems and digital technologies, innovation and entrepreneurship, strategy, and digital platforms and ecosystems. In addition, it is informative and enlightening to scholars and practitioners interested in the impact of digital technologies on organizations and the broader society. Contributors include: A. Aaltonen, C. Alaimo, E. Autio, N. Berente, C. Bubel, P.N. Courant, J. Cutcher-Gershenfeld, E.L. Echeverri-Carroll, A. Gawer, T.L. Griffith, V. Grover, J. Grudin, O. Henfridsson, S.L. Jarvenpaa, J. Kallinikos, M.J. Kim, J.L. King, R.J. Kulathinal, S. Kumar, K.A. Loparo, K. Lyytinen, A. Majchrzak, A. Malhotra, M.L. Markus, S. Nambisan, W. Nan, J.V. Nickerson, A. Pedraza-Avella, L.W. Rogowski, S. Seidel, L.D.W. Thomas, C. Velu, Y. Yoo, X. Zhang

This Research Handbook provides a solid foundation for exploring the vibrant field of strategic entrepreneurship, with an examination of important topics from theoretical, psychological and economic perspectives. Analysing new directions for future research, this Research Handbook spans the comprehensiveness of the field and offers insights into specific topic areas within strategic entrepreneurship including historical cognition, ethnomethodology and the strategic entrepreneurial mind. With contributions from scholars across diverse backgrounds, the Research Handbook not only critically analyses existing research at the intersection of strategy and entrepreneurship, but also identifies new avenues for future inquiry. The editors provide useful guidance for travelling new paths within the domain of strategic entrepreneurship research, and across other disciplines, based upon distinct theoretical foundations. PhD students, scholars, and researchers alike who want to investigate further into strategic entrepreneurship in depth as well as uncharted territories, will find this Research Handbook a valuable resource.

How are digital technologies changing the creation of new ventures? What are the critical skills for entrepreneurs in the digital age? How does digitalization change product design and communication with customers? How can small businesses in non-digital industries overcome the digital divide? This book helps answer these questions through real-world case studies and lessons learnt from the perspectives of real entrepreneurs in various industries, countries and types of business. Each case has abundant materials to support learning and reflection, including: discussion questions and assignments to stretch students decision-making simulations rich and detailed teaching notes to help enliven your teaching. Highlighting how entrepreneurship is changing in the digital age, this book will be an excellent resource for teachers and students of entrepreneurship, innovation management, new venture creation, marketing and strategy.

In Winning, their 2005 international bestseller, Jack and Suzy Welch created a rare document, both a philosophical treatise on fundamental business practices and a gritty how-to manual, all of it delivered with Jack's trademark candor and can-do optimism. It seemed as if "no other management book," in the words of legendary investor Warren E. Buffett, would "ever be needed."

Instead, Winning uncovered an insatiable thirst to talk about work. Since the book's publication, the Welches have received literally thousands of questions from college students and seasoned professionals alike, on subjects ranging from leadership and global competition to tough bosses and building teamwork. Indeed, questions about virtually every business and career challenge have poured in--some familiar, others surprising, many urgent and probing, and all of them powerfully real.

Winning: The Answers takes on the most relevant of these questions, and in doing so, its candid, hard-hitting responses expand and extend the conversation Jack and Suzy Welch began with Winning. It is a dialogue that is sure to be both compelling and immensely useful to anyone and everyone engaged in the vital work of helping an organization grow and thrive.

Innovation for Entrepreneurs presents a powerful but easy to apply toolkit for innovation, based on Professors Meyer and Lee's decades of experience as company founders and innovators for corporations around the globe. This textbook includes guidance for developing new product and service ideas with genuine impact, building teams around these ideas, understanding customers' needs, translating these needs into compelling product and service designs, and creating initial prototypes. It also helps students learn how to scope and size target markets and position an innovation successfully relative to competitors. These methods are fundamental for any new, impactful venture. The textbook is a series of frameworks and methods that build upon one another to the final deliverable - an innovation project developed by student teams, solving problems for specific types of users and use cases. Each chapter introduces readers to entrepreneurs and their stories of innovation and venture development, across different sectors of the economy and regions of the world. Going to a core theme of the book, each of these entrepreneurs has tackled a societal-focused problem and created economic value for themselves and their investors. These are stories of inspiration and achievement - and they illustrate the major frameworks provided in the book. Each entrepreneur faced a problem or challenge solved by the methods presented in that chapter. The authors' own entrepreneurial and corporate innovation experiences then complement these examples with additional industry applications of the method. Then, each chapter concludes with exercises for students to apply their newfound knowledge to their innovation projects. The book's final chapter then shows students how to best integrate their work from each chapter into a compelling presentation. Innovation for Entrepreneurs is an essential book for all undergraduate students. Entrepreneurship students in business schools will find it addressing a missing link in many business school curriculums - how to design a distinctive new product or service. At the same time, the methods-based approach combined with its inspiring stories makes this book a great learning platform for engineering and science students thinking about starting their own ventures or working for others upon graduation. Mindful, purposeful innovation is the gift that we wish to share in this book, arming readers with practical, powerful methods. Our students have started many interesting, impactful companies, and with this, have gained the deeper satisfaction of using creativity and technology to help others.

Organizations are in a race to become a digital enterprise. For those leading their company’s tech-driven change, this guide will help you along the way.

Every business makes plans for updating products, technologies, and processes. However, that is simply not enough for a twenty-first century company. While the pressure is intense, you can create a clear path forward using guidance from this book.

In Driving Digital, business technology executive Isaac Sacolick shares the lessons he’s learned over the years as he has successfully spearheaded multiple transformations and helped shape digital-business best practices. You no longer have to blindly trek through the mine field of their company’s digital transformation.

In this thoroughly researched one-stop manual, Sacolick teaches you how to:

• Formulate a digital strategy
• Transform business and IT practices
• Align development and operations
• Drive culture change
• Bolster digital talent
• Capture and track ROI
• Develop innovative digital practices
• Pilot emerging technologies

Presenting cutting-edge research from Europe and beyond, The Role of Ecosystems in Developing Startups examines the diverse triggers of the entrepreneurial process and evaluates the richness of different entrepreneurial ecosystems. Novel approaches and methodologies in the field of startups, small business and entrepreneurship are provided, together with the conceptualisation of ecosystems in the managerial field. The book also demonstrates the importance of context in terms of actors and networks, the complete entrepreneurial journey as a set of complex processes and the role of time and resources supporting new companies. Furthermore, the use of social networks in both the early stages and in strategy execution are investigated as key to the entrepreneurial process and its ultimate success. The book's up-to-date empirical approach and practical guidance will provide an excellent resource to scholars and researchers in entrepreneurship alongside other business and management topics, practitioners and policy analysts in the field of entrepreneurship and management.

Properly conceived and executed mergers and acquisitions (M&As) have the potential to unlock value for a wide range of corporate stakeholders. However, many of these transactions fail to deliver the expected outcomes.

In this fourth edition of Mergers and Acquisitions: A South African overview, the most important factors that contribute to M&A failure are identified. Suggestions are also provided on how to avoid the identified pitfalls in future endeavours.

The book fills an important gap in the academic literature on M&As in South Africa post-2020. Not only is considerable attention given to the strategic objectives prompting business combina- tions and restructurings, but several valuation techniques are also presented to determine the fair value of a target. Numerous case studies are included to highlight the implications. Focus is furthermore placed on the importance of due diligence investigations and post-intergration analyses.

Real-life examples, practical exercises, quick quizzes, multiple choice questions and long questions are included to enhance the reader's understanding of key concepts and calculations.

All four authors are Professors in the Department of Business Management at Stellenbosch University.

The Future of Creative Work provides a unique overview of the changing nature of creative work, examining how digital developments and the rise of intangible capital are causing an upheaval in the social institutions of work. It offers a profound insight into how this technological and social evolution will affect creative professions. Expert international contributors explore how robotics, artificial intelligence, blockchain, global digital platforms and autonomous systems will shape the design, production and consumption of culture. Taking a multidisciplinary approach incorporating creative industries studies, business, education and economics, the book analyses the technological drivers of disruption in the world of creative work. Chapters reveal how these changes will create new axes of power and inequality in the global sphere of creative work, predicting that conventional creative professions will be challenged and different species of creative work will evolve as a result. By charting the impact of digital and technological developments, The Future of Creative Work challenges traditional views of creative work, careers and education. This book will be a valuable resource for students and researchers undertaking creative industries studies. Its discussion of the application of creative careers across the economy will also be beneficial for scholars and practitioners interested in business, economics, and advertising and marketing studies.

Breakthroughs in science and technology increasingly happen outside of firms in informal interorganizational communities of innovators. The effort of a group on a specific topic across firms, expertise, and geography can function as an emergent organizational form, capable of great productivity. Using data from computer science, basic research, and management strategy to identify and study these intense clusters of innovators, or 'knowledge communities,' this book illuminates the new organizational logics that govern such collective success. The interplay between organizational boundaries and interorganizational collaboration reveals interesting and counterintuitive lessons about how science and technology work in practice. These insights fundamentally challenge the centrality of both firm boundaries and geographic clusters for innovation in favor of a decentralized network perspective. Academics seeking to understand innovation in science and technology, allocators of grants and research support, corporate R&D departments, policy makers and NGOs, venture capitalists, and management consultants will all benefit from this original and challenging work.

This critical book presents ways to improve the impact of corporate sustainability programs on the ecological and social systems that we rely upon. Integrating three decades of multidisciplinary empirical and conceptual research undertaken by three leading management scholars in three countries, this book addresses the current state of, and the prospects for, business to help create a truly sustainable society. Providing a balanced perspective, Salvaging Corporate Sustainability expertly charts the path from the promises of corporate sustainability, to where it has gone wrong, and on to where it needs to go from here. The authors conclude by outlining a research agenda for finding a working balance between free market and formal governance that can yield substantive corporate sustainability programs. Overall, this book will challenge readers to take a broader view of how we use the planet's limited resources and the ways in which corporations can work with their stakeholders and the government to address our global sustainability challenges. Offering new directions for uncovering better ways to increase sustainability through business, this book will be core reading for academics and students of business leadership, corporate social responsibility, corporate sustainability, and strategic management. It will also be useful for practitioners who oversee and implement sustainability practices, helping them to conceptualize how to approach their jobs.

The Lean Product Lifecycle is a playbook that provides frameworks, methods and tools to develop innovative new products and business models, while managing your core portfolio.

Follow the 6 key phases of a product’s life - idea, explore, validate, grow, sustain and retire – and discover how to develop products according to their life stage and ensure the right investment for each. For each stage there is a step-by-step guide of product development best practices using examples and case studies from several companies and start-ups.

Using the tools and templates in this book, you’ll be able to:

- Take a new product from idea to scale within a market.

- Understand the difference between executing on products that are already successful in the market and searching for profitable business models for new products.

- Use the right tools and methods for validating new products ideas and business models.

- Understand how to manage mature products and retire old products using lean innovation principles.

Discover how lessons from lean start-ups can transform your business.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is being rapidly introduced into the workplace, creating debate around what AI means for our work and organizations. This book gives grounded counterweight to provocative newspaper headlines by using in-depth case studies of eight organizations' experiences of implementing and using AI, providing readers with a solid understanding of what is actually happening in practice. Critical yet constructive, the authors address the challenges of implementing AI: organizing for data, testing and validating, algorithmic brokering, and changing work. Using a combination of existing literature and thorough practical examples, they provide answers to questions such as: What data do I need? When is a system good enough to actually take over tasks? And how can my employees be prepared for working with AI? The book presents four recommendations for WISE management of AI, requiring work-related insights, interdisciplinary knowledge, sociotechnical change processes, and ethical awareness. Offering insight into the unique characteristics of AI in organizations, this book will be essential reading for scholars of business and management, data analytics and information systems, technology and innovation, and computer science. With practical recommendations for managing the challenges of AI, it will also provide business managers with reflections to improve their own AI development and implementation processes.