Exploratory research goes beyond testing existing ideas to illuminate phenomena without regard to offering a specific reason for doing so. For this reason, exploratory research is vital to entrepreneurship research where new phenomenon such as crowdfunding, social ventures, and digital business models emerge that scholars may lack existing tools to explain. Well-done exploratory research offers a great opportunity to make useful contributions to entrepreneurship scholarship.

In recent years, scholars have become increasingly interested in understanding the challenges and opportunities of building entrepreneurial family businesses from different perspectives. Most researchers in this area tend to draw on insights from the management and economics disciplines for theoretical and methodological guidance. However, other subjects, like psychology, family sciences, and history, have also been emphasized – and now even the humanities.

Today’s international markets are saturated with overwhelming concerns about issues related to the environment, specifically with issues related to how business intersects with environmental conservation. Consumers are becoming more and more prone to purchase products that consider the environment and sustainability, and they are more willing to pay the premium price tag that comes along with supporting those sustainability efforts. This growing concern has inspired manufacturing firms to develop more effective environmental management practices as they innovate newer and better products.

An increasing number of family firms choose to select a non-family CEO for the highest executive office when there is no suitable family member available. A recent example of this is the Swedish retail giant H&M where the third generation family member Karl-Johan Persson recently handed over to the non-family CEO Helena Helmersson. However, appointing a non-family CEO in a family firm tends to give rise to tensions.

Design is central to innovation. It refers to the way that people create ideas and solve problems. So far, innovation has been something that human beings alone do. But more recently, Artificial Intelligence (AI) has slowly begun to be used in innovation, saving people from doing the work of innovation, and freeing up human ingenuity to focus on the bigger picture of why we innovate.

Syrian refugees living in Lebanon today are facing limited freedom of movement, limited access to services, and constrained labor rights. For these people, mobile phones serve as essential tools for rebuilding social networks shattered by involuntary displacement.

New research on innovation explores how management ideas change workplace practices while workplace practices change management ideas.

Is it possible to use old knowledge to create new inventions? New research on knowledge recombination from House of Innovation researcher Holmer Kok suggests that so is the case.

Being an entrepreneur is hard work. On average, most entrepreneurs work longer hours and earns less than non-entrepreneurs. Despite this, the well-being of entrepreneurs is higher than that of non-entrepreneurs.

by Giancarlo Spagnolo, forthcoming in the International Journal of Industrial Organization, 2012, Papers and Proceedings, 30(3), 291-296