This book makes original contributions to the literature on clusters, human capital, and regional development by focusing on the link between entrepreneurship and economic growth, aiming for a better understanding of the dynamics of growth determined by the entrepreneur's action in the regional space. The focus is therefore on critical reflection and rethinking the articulation between three levels of analysis of economic systems, namely entrepreneurship, human capital and regional development, which have not so far been perfectly articulated in the literature of reference on endogenous growth. Although there has been significant research so far into the success and failure of clusters, the implications of these multiple research efforts fail to provide political decision-makers and company managers with critical information about which mechanisms lie behind cluster success and also about how clusters survive and prosper. The innovative approaches presented in this book on entrepreneurship, human capital mobility and regional development have considerable potential to create new and original implications for decision-makers and managers. In terms of value added, this book contributes to the literature by seeking answers to the following questions: (i) Is the growth and success of clusters over time due to concentration and transmission of business competences through spin-offs located in a given regional space? (ii) Does increased density of job options outside the workplace contribute to increased mobility of human capital between firms located within clusters, and so improve coordination in the local labor market? (iii) Do spin-offs benefit from hiring workers from successful incumbents, inasmuch as those workers are expected to perform better than other workers from different origins? Integrating theoretical frameworks, empirical research, and regional case studies (from Portugal, Spain, Norway and Turkey), the editors and contributors demonstrate that the regional dynamics of industry growth are strongly influenced by the mobility of employees towards new firms.

39 One of the main challenges facing the member states of the European Union (EU) is 40 the fundamental need to accept the strategic importance of entrepreneurship as a force 41 for regional development and economic growth. Definition of this urgent objective 42 is set in the context of the European Council in Lisbon in March 2000, where there 43 was focus on other operational goals directed to improving performance in European 44 regions in terms of different variables indicating the level of economic activity, 45 particularly employment, real convergence, economic reform, and social cohesion. 46 In 2003, the European Commission (EC) initiated the public debate around the 47 need to strengthen entrepreneurship in the European Union, through publication of 48 the "Green Paper on Entrepreneurship" in Europe which raised two fundamental 49 questions for reflection by policymakers, entrepreneurs, and individuals: (a) why 50 do so few Europeans set up their own business? and (b) why are so few European 51 businesses growing? 52 Later, in the context of the 2004 Spring European Council, the European 53 Commission launched the "Entrepreneurship Action Plan" which aimed fundamen- 54 tally to: (1) change the way society views entrepreneurs, (2) create conditions to 55 encourage more individuals to become entrepreneurs, (3) allow SMEs and entre- 56 preneurs to be more competitive and assume a more important role in determining 57 growth, (4) improve conditions for access to finance by SMEs and entrepreneurs, 58

39 One of the main challenges facing the member states of the European Union (EU) is 40 the fundamental need to accept the strategic importance of entrepreneurship as a force 41 for regional development and economic growth. Definition of this urgent objective 42 is set in the context of the European Council in Lisbon in March 2000, where there 43 was focus on other operational goals directed to improving performance in European 44 regions in terms of different variables indicating the level of economic activity, 45 particularly employment, real convergence, economic reform, and social cohesion. 46 In 2003, the European Commission (EC) initiated the public debate around the 47 need to strengthen entrepreneurship in the European Union, through publication of 48 the "Green Paper on Entrepreneurship" in Europe which raised two fundamental 49 questions for reflection by policymakers, entrepreneurs, and individuals: (a) why 50 do so few Europeans set up their own business? and (b) why are so few European 51 businesses growing? 52 Later, in the context of the 2004 Spring European Council, the European 53 Commission launched the "Entrepreneurship Action Plan" which aimed fundamen- 54 tally to: (1) change the way society views entrepreneurs, (2) create conditions to 55 encourage more individuals to become entrepreneurs, (3) allow SMEs and entre- 56 preneurs to be more competitive and assume a more important role in determining 57 growth, (4) improve conditions for access to finance by SMEs and entrepreneurs, 58

Senior Entrepreneurship reviews the most relevant research output on self-employment and entrepreneurship of older individuals and aims to contribute to the future development of novel theoretical and empirical approaches explaining self-employment and entrepreneurship of older individuals, bridging concepts from different fields, such as psychology, gerontology, economics, and sociology. It discusses the profiles of the senior entrepreneurs and the potential contribution of senior entrepreneurship to create social wellbeing and economic value by surveying theoretical and empirical work in different fields. Senior Entrepreneurship is guided by two questions: What determines senior entrepreneurship? And what determines the performance of senior entrepreneurs? This research aims to shed light on how entrepreneurship might be shaped by the life stage of the individual. In this context, the present study contributes by reviewing previous literature and contributing to deepen our understanding of the significance older age might have on entrepreneurial skills and is the first encompassing and systematic literature review specifically focused on senior entrepreneurship. Section 2 presents and discussed the theoretical approaches to senior entrepreneurship. Section 3 introduces the literature search strategy, concepts adopted, and the approach applied to organize and analyze the articles reviewed. Section 4 reviews the results of the literature survey. In exploring the research work surveyed, the authors first discuss the concepts of senior entrepreneurship adopted by the studies and then the methods applied. Following that, theoretical developments that are specific to the phenomenon of senior entrepreneurship are examined and the empirical findings of previous studies are presented. Section 5 discusses the survey's results and potential future developments of research in the topic and Section 6 provides the conclusions.

Entrepreneurship Education: A Selective Examination of The Literature provides an analysis of the progress made in the field of entrepreneurship education by looking in particular at the contributions made to theory and at the challenges that keep emerging in practice. The authors build two different frameworks of analysis in order to examine recent literature on entrepreneurial education at two levels: (i) theoretical contributions, and (ii) emerging challenges and solutions in the entrepreneurial classroom. These simple frameworks are used to classify and analyze articles published on the Subjects of entrepreneurship education, encompassing methodologies, theories, contents, frameworks and evaluation of programs/Subjects, selected from a wide range of journals in the fields of Management and Education over the period 2000-2011. Entrepreneurship Education: A Selective Examination of The Literature is organized as follows. After an introduction, Section 2 looks at the roots and emergence of entrepreneurship education, and its progress towards the end of the 20th Century. Section 3 presents and discusses the methodology used to select the papers examined for the purpose of applying the frameworks. Section 4 presents a simple framework of analysis to classify and assess theoretical contributions, and applies it systematically to the papers selected in Section 3. Section 5 presents the second framework of analysis, targeted at problems and solutions emerging from practice in the entrepreneurial classroom, and applies it to the surveyed literature. Section 6 concludes, reflecting on the value and limitations of the analysis while providing suggestions for future research