This book identifies and discusses critical issues of ICT innovation at both the macroeconomic and organisational levels, bringing together two hitherto independent fields of study: economics and information systems. The book takes stock of these two fields, highlighting their complementarity in contemporary issues such as business competitiveness and e-commerce, organisational change and industrial restructuring, information systems implementation and technology infrastructure building. The contributions cover a broad range of issues, from analysing policy approaches for fostering ICT innovation at a regional level, to examining the way in which ICT-based information systems and organisational practice are simultaneously shaped. The book elaborates an understanding of innovation as shaped largely in context, rather than 'diffused' from the place of its conception into the place of its implementation. The theoretical perspectives offered by the authors include institutional economics, evolutionary economics, social constructivism, and structuration theory. Collectively, the chapters of this book present ICT innovation as a dynamic process involving multiple actors in multiple locations, codified and tacit knowledge, and instrumental and situated behaviour. This pathbreaking book will be of enormous interest to students, researchers and academics specialising in economics, information systems and ICT innovation, as well as policy and management consultants involved in information systems and development.

This book presents selected articles that discuss important issues related to entrepreneurship in Brazil, Russia, India and China as well as contributions from authors whose countries have a tradition on entrepreneurship support, such as Italy and the UK. The articles were presented and discussed in a conference on Entrepreneurship in Brazil in November 2013 organized by the Institute of Economics of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro and IBMEC Business School. This book covers four essential themes: financing entrepreneurs, innovation environments, social entrepreneurship and e-entrepreneurship.