No open-access location is known for this record yet.
No open-access location is known for this record yet.
ABSTRACT This article examines the financial activities within a sample of entrepreneurship centers in the Unites States. Two hundred and forty-nine entrepreneurship centers were surveyed about their center 's endowments, budgets, salaries, fundraising, seminars/workshops and other financial activities. We received 122 responses for a 49% response rate. The findings of this research can be used as a benchmark for both U.S. schools and center directors in determining benchmarks for their respective centers. INTRODUCTION The nature of business has been transformed in this fast-paced, highly threatening, and increasingly global environment. With the U.S. suffering from its worst economic downturn since the Great Depression of the 1930's, companies are realizing that sustainable competitive advantage is fleeting. And yet, in the midst of this economic turmoil, successful companies have made the fundamental discovery that the ability to continually innovate (to engage in an ongoing process of actions) has become the newest source of competitive advantage (Kuratko, 2009). The Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) is a unique, long-term project initiated in 1999 and developed jointly by Babson College, London Business School, and the Kauffman Foundation. Now reaching 42 countries worldwide, GEM provides annual assessment of the environment of each country. According to the GEM studies, entrepreneurs lead to economic growth in two different ways. One is by entering and expanding existing markets, thereby increasing competition and economic efficiency. The other is by creating entirely new markets by offering innovative products, which present profit opportunities to others, further spurring economic growth. Overall, every GEM study continues to demonstrate that entrepreneurs' ability to expand existing markets and create new markets makes entrepreneurship important for individuals, firms, and entire nations (Minniti and Bygrave, 2004; Autio, 2007). Entrepreneurial firms make two indispensable contributions to the market economies. First, they are an integral part of the renewal process that pervades and defines market economies. Entrepreneurial firms play a crucial role in the innovations that lead to technological change and productivity growth. In short, they are about change and competition because they change market structure. The market economies are dynamic organic entities always in the process of becoming, rather than an established one that has already arrived. They are about prospects for the future, not about the inheritance of the past. Second, firms are the essential mechanism by which millions enter the economic mainstream. Entrepreneurial firms enable millions of people, including women, minorities, and immigrants, to access the pursuit of economic success. In this evolutionary process, entrepreneurship plays the crucial and indispensable role of providing the social glue that binds together both high-tech and Main Street activities (Kuratko, 2009). One definition of entrepreneurship points out that it is a dynamic process of vision, change, and creation to recognize opportunity that requires an application of energy and passion towards the creation and implementation of new ideas and creative solutions (Kuratko, 2009). In this light entrepreneurship is more than the mere creation of business. Although that is certainly as important facet, it's not the complete picture. The characteristics of seeking opportunities, taking risks beyond security, and having the tenacity to push an idea through to reality combine into a special that permeates entrepreneurs. An entrepreneurial perspective can be developed in individuals. This can be exhibited inside or outside an organization, in profit or not-for-profit enterprises, and in business or non-business activities for the purpose of bringing forth creative ideas. …
Loading…
Imported from OpenAlex (CC0) — nothing here is generated.