{"title":"Measuring a Blended Performance: Managerial Insights from the Field of Impact Entrepreneurship","authors":"Irene Bengo, Veronica Chiodo, Valentina Tosi","doi":"10.5772/intechopen.94441","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.94441","url":null,"abstract":"The commitment to generating a blended value is increasingly spreading in the business sector. At the forefront of this movement, impact ventures are organizations born to produce value for the society, i.e. social impact, while engaging in commercial activities to sustain their operations. On the other end, we have observed an increased emphasis on more responsible, sustainable practices that traditional for-profit businesses have been called to establish. Accounting for and reporting on social impact has become increasingly of interest to a range of institutions and sectors, with the result that many competing methodologies, approaches, guidelines and standards have been introduced. The chapter performs a comprehensive review of existing approaches for impact measurement and management implemented by socially-oriented ventures (both not for profit organizations and for-profit businesses) focusing on both methodological, governance and operational barriers and enabling factors of the practices. Then, it drafts a framework which helps any ventures to structure a process and methodology to measure its blended performance. The research not only contributes to the scant literature on impact entrepreneurship but impact ventures might offer a compelling laboratory to disentangle the obstacles posed by the combined achievement of financial and social objectives and how organizations might address these challenges.","PeriodicalId":182573,"journal":{"name":"Entrepreneurship - Contemporary Issues","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-11-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130478717","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Business Harvesting Strategies for Entrepreneurs","authors":"H. Shava","doi":"10.5772/intechopen.93442","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.93442","url":null,"abstract":"Entrepreneurship plays a pivotal role in our societies, such as employment creation. This is a key to addressing income inequalities leading to poverty reduction and economic growth. As a result of this critical role, the campaign is on establishing more entrepreneurial entities, and there is very little concern regarding harvesting an entrepreneurial entity. Entity harvesting is equally important as setting up a new entrepreneurial venture and this chapter explores this issue. During the harvesting process, the entrepreneur recovers value through the sale of an entrepreneurial entity or its assets. Having spent several years building and adding value to the business, the entrepreneur must design an entity harvesting strategy that would provide maximum returns on the investment of time, effort and money. Several reasons may compel the entrepreneur to harvest the business and this chapter provides some of these reasons based on extant literature and primary data collected from small- and medium-sized entity (SME) owners in Sub-Saharan Africa. Further, the chapter outlines various entity harvesting strategies preferred by SME owners in Sub-Saharan Africa and circumstances at which they deem appropriate to apply such.","PeriodicalId":182573,"journal":{"name":"Entrepreneurship - Contemporary Issues","volume":"72 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-10-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134595424","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Entrepreneurship in Urban Jungles through High-Tech Vertical Farming","authors":"Suaad Jassem, M. Razzak","doi":"10.5772/intechopen.93667","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.93667","url":null,"abstract":"Demographic movements forecasted by the United Nations indicates that, over the next few decades greater portion of people will be concentrated in and around large cities of the world. Such population dynamics in parallel with emerging phenomena such as global pandemics and impact of climate change are posing threats to the supply chain of agricultural production. The reliance on traditional open-field cultivation and transportation of fresh products to distant urban locations are coming under threat. This has been further exposed by the current pandemic (Covid-19) that is impeding farm production along with movement of people and goods. A viable solution lies in vertical in-door farming driven by advanced technologies. The use of high-tech solutions to grow vegetables, fruits and flowers close to consumption centers has taken off successfully in many locations around the world. However, majority of such projects have been set up by investors; with access to substantial capital. In order to mitigate the possibilities of food shortages in densely populated cities, initiatives need to be undertaken to foster growth of large-scale entrepreneurship by individuals that can venture into this field on a smaller scale and with less capital outlay.","PeriodicalId":182573,"journal":{"name":"Entrepreneurship - Contemporary Issues","volume":"26 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-10-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"133140563","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Innovation Processes in Aquaculture: Comparing Companies in Norway and Chile","authors":"K. Westeren","doi":"10.5772/INTECHOPEN.93672","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5772/INTECHOPEN.93672","url":null,"abstract":"In the last 20 years, aquaculture in general and harvested Atlantic salmon in particular has experienced very high growth rates compared to other food products, and at the same time, salmon production has evolved from semi-manual production techniques to the utilization of high-tech capital-intensive production equipment. This development has seriously challenged the environmental considerations and escalated fish health measures to combat existing and evolving problems. As an answer to these challenges and because of relatively high profit margins, aquaculture of harvested Atlantic salmon has also had a speedy innovation path. This chapter will give a theoretical background and an empirical analysis based on data collection at three companies, two in Norway and one in Chile. The focus is on how innovations take place in different stages of the production process, and how these are built into the production and managerial system. The results show, as expected, links between company operations and the actual innovations, but these links do not have the same structure in Norway and Chile. Factors like human and financial resources, technology, and company organization seem to explain most of the differences between how innovations take place in the companies.","PeriodicalId":182573,"journal":{"name":"Entrepreneurship - Contemporary Issues","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"128956681","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}