Technology Transfer and Entrepreneurship (Discontinued) - Volume 5, Issue 2, 2018

Entrepreneurship has been considered as a key factor for regional development. In recent years, research about entrepreneurship and regional studies appear to be more intertwined and, at the same time, research about “regional entrepreneurship” became more popular. This article aims to resume the state of the field and opens directions for future research and also present some clues to orient research in this field.

The authors present, in the article, a critical approach about the characteristics and dimensions of wicked problems and discuss the application of this theoretical framework to the comprehension and action in a contemporary major issue: active and healthy aging. Under this conception, active and healthy aging promotion is conceived as a complex, uncertain and multidimensional problem requiring innovative forms of thought and intervention, namely in local or regional contexts. Innovative local ecosystems, engaging multiple stakeholders in a quadruple helix perspective, are presented as an adequate way to intervene in wicked problems’ response and particularly on the aging issues. At the end of the article, the authors present an example of a regional innovation ecosystem, in Portugal, associated with a global and synergic intervention in the domain of active and healthy aging and reflect on the critical elements of model’s replication.

Background: The objective of this article is to analyse if there are significant relationships between the most valuable companies operating in Spain regarding professional performance, according to nationality and location within their Autonomous Communities or any superior aggrupation. To do that, a sample of 100 companies has been selected. Methods: The methodology followed is based on the selection of the 100 highestvalued companies from the point of view of Human Resources' policy for the period 2013-2016 and through the measurement of six factors: Talent Management, Retribution, Work environment, CSR, Training and Employees' perception, and classified by nationality and location. The study was based on 12 hypotheses, using the Unifactorial Variance's Analysis, Pearson correlations and regressions. One limitation could be the fact that this study refers to a particular period, focusing on Spain and the variables mentioned, based on questionnaires. The added value of this work lies on the newness as it has a quantitative character, and on the fact that most of the hypotheses do not comply. Results and Conclusion: This allows to deny certain beliefs that affirm that European and American companies operating in Spain are more attractive than the Spanish or the Mediterranean ones.

Background: Innovation can result from progressive or significant changes to existing products leading to improvements in performance and user value. This is the type of innovation that is more easily perceived by the consumer, as it results in the creation of new products or the improvement of existing ones. Innovation in the Crafts Sector is a relevant topic to address market changes, and meet evolving consumer preferences. In this vein, artisans need to meet the calls for regularly investing in the design of new products and processes, with the purpose of achieving the sustainability of their business. Methods: This article addresses the existing calls for contextualizing the crafts sector and for fostering product innovation in this area, by investigating the barriers and problems faced by artisans, as well as by exploring existing experiences in overcoming them. The article builds on data collected in five European countries, under the scope of the Erasmus+ Project Craftsmanship+ “Fostering a New and Competitive Approach to Crafts and Semi Industrial high added-value sectors”1. Results and Conclusion: The aim is to analyze the importance of the crafts sector in a European context. This article contributes in a timely manner to the understanding of the crafts sector by paying attention to the obstacles that artisans face in order to ensure the sustainability of their business by introducing product innovation into their organization and/or market. This study offers a collection of innovation experiences in realities that are very significant for territorial identity, and thus aims to provide an incentive for further research.

Background: Universities have shown to directly influence entrepreneurial activity in students [4-6], since they are concerned for the students to develop their entrepreneurial spirit [1-3], promoting Entrepreneurial Intention in University Students (EIUS). Objective: Therefore, the objective of this research is to determine a model of entrepreneurial intention of Mexican university students (EIUS), performing a multiple regression analysis, by the method of Ordinary Least Squares (OLS), on a sample of 538, with 4 independent variables (Personal and social features, innovative features, performance features and creativity) to determine the influence on the EIUS. Results and Conclusion: The results indicate that the four variables proposed in the model are relevant to explain the level of the EIUS, without problems of multicollinearity and discarding the presence of heteroskedasticity with the Breusch-Pagan test; and with the Kolmogorov-Smirnov normal distribution test it is determined that the predictor variable of the model does not require more independent variables; the contribution made with this research is of explanatory type, offering an elucidation of the empirical observations that characterize the university system in which the study was conducted.