Search Results (18)

The fashion industry represents a dynamic expression of cultural diversity and plays a crucial role in national economic health. This research designs strategic management guidance for BANU, a sustainable clothing startup in Senegal aimed at empowering local families to improve their lifestyles. Utilizing an exploratory research strategy, the study develops a comprehensive strategic plan for BANU as a natural textile dyes company, examining factors influencing its development at the macro, micro, and organization layers to identify key strategic issues and strategic options as a comprehensive strategic management plan for BANU to grow. A multifaceted strategic approach is recommended, including tailored operational strategies aligned with local traditions, sustainability, and customer engagement. Collaborations with local businesses, suppliers, and educational institutions are advised to strengthen BANU’s market presence. Additionally, differentiation through unique natural dye clothing and partnerships are encouraged. As BANU evolves, a shift towards corporate strategy, diversification, and international market expansion is suggested to enhance strategic management and ensure sustainable growth. Full article

Financial and administrative management models are crucial to the success of digital ventures, providing practices that optimize resource management and support strategic decision-making in dynamic digital environments. This study presents an original systematic literature review (SLR) following the PRISMA guidelines, analyzing 354 articles extracted from Scopus and Web of Science databases. Bibliometric techniques, including VOSViewer 1.6.19 version and R-Bibliometrix software 4.3.3 version, were used to identify key research themes, emerging trends, and future directions in the field. A notable 114.29% increase in academic output from 2019 to 2024 underscores the growing importance of these management models. The analysis reveals a focus on financial management tools (e.g., Valuation, Discounted Cash Flow models) and administrative models (e.g., RocaSalvatella, INCIPY), while also exploring the challenges and opportunities present in digital environments. The interaction between external variables (resource management, operational efficiency, adaptability, financial planning, technological innovation) and internal variables (market conditions, government regulations, economic trends) is discussed. This study highlights the integration of agile methodologies, such as Lean Startup, and the growing emphasis on digital resilience, organizational agility, and the impact of digital transformation on business models. The theoretical contribution of this study lies in offering a comprehensive framework that synthesizes existing models, highlights key research gaps, and emphasizes the need for future studies on the dynamic interaction between financial planning, technological innovation, and organizational agility. From a practical perspective, the findings provide digital entrepreneurs and managers with valuable insights into implementing financial tools and administrative frameworks that enhance decision-making, while also underscoring the importance of agility, operational efficiency, and market adaptability to navigate digital disruptions. Full article

Crowdfunding platforms are important for startups, since they offer diverse financing options, market validation, and promotional opportunities through an investor community. These platforms provide detailed company information, aiding informed investment decisions within a regulated and secure environment. Machine learning (ML) techniques are important in analyzing large data sets, detecting anomalies and fraud, and enhancing decision-making and business strategies. A systematic review employed PRISMA guidelines, which studied how ML improves fraud detection on digital crowdfunding platforms. The analysis includes English-language studies from peer-reviewed journals published between 2018 and 2023 to analyze the pre- and post-COVID-19 pandemic. The findings indicate that ML techniques such as Random Forest, Support Vector Machine, and Artificial Neural Networks significantly enhance the predictive accuracy and utility of tax planning for startups considering equity crowdfunding. The United States, Germany, Canada, Italy, and Turkey do not present statistically significant differences at the 95% confidence level, standing out for their notable academic visibility. Florida Atlantic and Cornell Universities, Springer and John Wiley & Sons Ltd. publishing houses, and the Journal of Business Ethics and Management Science magazines present the highest citations without statistical differences at the 95% confidence level. Full article

This study aims to develop a framework by incorporating well-proven project management techniques to help startup owners effectively set up ventures and secure early-stage financing. Startups not only open ways for innovative and updated technologies in the markets but also bring employment opportunities in a country that eventually increase productivity and the per capita income of a country. Despite all the benefits, the success rate of startups is meager, especially in developing countries, due to ineffective management and vague business plans. Therefore, this study aims to facilitate entrepreneurs using well-proven project management techniques from the literature and devise a new framework applied to a business case, as discussed in this paper. This study presents an approach to project management techniques for smartphone app-based startups. This study utilizes the fuzzy PERT (FPERT) for the best completion time and budget estimates. Experts’ opinions from eight private limited companies have been analyzed using FPERT. The critical path method (CPM) is also used to schedule activities. Finally, a techno-economic analysis is also performed to show the growth potential of such a startup, e-Karsaz. This study aims to help startups secure early-stage financing. Tech-based business ideas need to be commercialized in developing countries like Pakistan. There is a need to show long-term profitability to make an idea stand out among others and secure early-stage financing. The scope of project management techniques is confined to construction-based projects. The results show that it would take around 692 days for the e-Karsaz startup to become fully operational, with the capital budget estimated at around PKR 1.3 billion. The techno-economic analysis shows the project is economically viable with an internal rate of return (IRR) equal to 92 percent and a benefit-to-cost ratio (BCR) equal to 10. The sensitivity analysis, including five scenarios of weighted average cost of capital (WACC), shows that the project remains economically viable even if the required rate of return goes over 20 percent. This study is helpful for startups to make time and budget estimates and to show the growth potential to secure early-stage financing. Full article

In the existing research on the dispatch and control strategies of park micro-energy grids, the dispatch and control characteristics of controllable energy units, such as response delay, startup and shutdown characteristics, response speed, and sustainable response time, have not been taken into account. Without considering the dispatch and control characteristics of the controllable energy units, substantial deviation will occur in the execution of optimized dispatch and control strategies, resulting in economic losses in the electricity market and adverse effects on the safe operation of power systems. This paper proposes a unified model to describe the dispatch and control characteristics of various types of controlled energy units, based on which we develop a three-tier optimization dispatch and control strategy for the micro-energy grid, involving day-ahead, intra-day, and real-time stages. The day-ahead and intra-day optimization dispatch strategy is implemented to obtain the optimal reference values in the real-time stage for each controllable energy unit. In the real-time stage, a minimum variance control strategy based on d-step prediction is proposed. By considering the multi-dimensional control characteristics of controllable energy units, the real-time predictive control strategy aims to ensure that the controllable energy units can precisely follow the optimized dispatch plan. The simulation results show that when compared with the dispatching method optimized by the improved quantum particle swarm algorithm, the adoption of the optimal dispatch and control strategy proposed in this paper resulted in a 45.79% improvement in execution accuracy and a 2.38% reduction in the energy cost. Full article

Background: The post-COVID-19 scenario has demonstrated the increasing importance of marketing for organizations, as retailers and entrepreneurs have had to adapt to new ways of selling their products and services. In this regard, this research aimed to identify challenges for developing the marketing plan of startups and validate them from the perspective of managers in the field, considering the market characteristics inherent to the post-COVID-19 era; Methods: To achieve this, a literature review and a survey were conducted among professionals in the field. The collected data were analyzed using the quantitative Lawshe method. Results: The results indicate that, for the development of the marketing plan of startups considering the post-COVID-19 reality, it is important to prioritize overcoming the challenges of “Consumer behavior pattern change”, “Differentiation from the competition”, “Digital expansion”, “Innovation capacity of companies”, “Creation of transformative marketing”, and “Reevaluation of marketing channels in the post-pandemic period”; Conclusions: Therefore, it can be concluded that these challenges reflect the main concerns and obstacles faced by startups in building effective marketing strategies and striving for a competitive position in the market. By recognizing and understanding these challenges, startups will be better prepared to face adversity and seize opportunities in this new market context. Full article

The impact of human resource management (HRM) on corporate growth is a crucial research topic, especially for growth-oriented firms. This paper aims to study how different payment policies (such as recruitment and dismissal strategies and payment plans) affect the human resource market system. Based on the HRM characteristics of growth-oriented firms, we develop an agent-based model to simulate the decision-making and interaction behaviors of firms and workers. The system performance is measured by six indicators: the average profit, the profit Gini coefficient, the average output of firms, the average payment, the payment Gini coefficient, and the employment rate of workers. According to the simulation results and statistical analysis, the recruitment plan is the only key factor that significantly impacts all performance indicators other than the employment rate, and companies should pay extra attention to such plans. This study also finds that the changing worker’s payment gap is influenced by industry growth and their abilities, and that the payment cap policy has a positive impact on the development of growth-oriented firms in the startup stage. Full article

The activation of the startup movement is one of the fundamental preconditions for the transition from innovation to a startup ecosystem, the development of which is impossible without special innovation structures that help startups promote innovative products on the market. The purpose of this article is to modernize the process of promoting innovative products on the market in the form of startups, taking into account the trends of the innovative development of the modern economy. The following methods are used in the article: situational and design approaches; methods of simulation and structural−functional modeling—to determine the potential market demand for innovative products and plan the process of their promotion to the market; and BPMN notation—to formalize the integration links between actors in the process of promoting innovative products on the market. As a result, a scheme for assessing the economic efficiency of innovative product market promotion process management was developed that sorts out several indicators at each stage of the innovation process, which allows one to increase the clarity and completeness of the promotion process management while reducing costs. The system of risk management of innovative products has been studied using the example of the promotion of the innovative startup Hideez Technology Ltd on the market in Europe and the USA. This has allowed the company to benefit economically from implementing the results, reaching USD 20,000. In conclusion, the sequence of actions for making management decisions during the implementation of the strategy for innovative product promotion process management was defined. Full article

The simulation-based company valuation values a company on the basis of the risks actually present in the company without having to derive them from the capital market data. The simulation-based company valuation takes into account the market imperfections, such as the probability of insolvency or the lack of diversification, and fulfils the legal requirements and auditing standards for a company valuation. The simulation-based company valuation is an alternative to the CAPM-based company valuation, which, under the assumption of perfect capital markets, derives the risks through capital market comparisons. A simulation-based business valuation has many advantages and is particularly suitable for valuing medium-sized companies, start-ups, companies in a crisis, and for integrating country-specific risks into business valuations. Due to the internationally widespread use of the CAPM, a simulation-based company valuation is still rarely used in practice. This article shows which valuation formulas are necessary for the application of a simulation-based company valuation. These are used for both the certainty equivalent method and for the risk premium method. In a concrete and valuation example, the simulation-based business planning and company valuation is carried out, and the derived valuation formulas are applied in a way that allows a transfer to concrete valuation cases in practice. It is shown that the certainty equivalent method and the risk premium method lead to identical company values. Full article

The evolution of innovative and systematic design methodologies over time has widened the design concept involvement from the product development phase, which also includes the production and start-up phases. Literature findings have presented to accomplish a Generative Design (GD) approach through the application of an innovative method called Industrial Structure Design (IDeS), a systematic design method able to discover the customer’s needs and the fundamental technical solutions to obtain a good innovative product, involving the whole organization for this achievement. Nevertheless, there is a social demand for solutions to the dramatic and growing problem of marine pollution from plastic materials, encouraging the designers to conceive a new innovative drone for waste collection at sea. Therefore, this study aims to merge all the most advanced design technologies with IDeS in an integrated way, by generating a structure that can also be adopted to plan the organization of a production company. The approach is validated with the design of the Recovery Plastic Drone (RPD) obtained with the IDeS methodology, combining Design and Product development phases, leading to a better and innovative solution for the market. Full article

The market performance of a company is greatly influenced by the functional experience of the chief executive. In the case of a small startup, the functional experience of the chief executive is even greater. Based on career data of chief executives, this study first classifies startups in the information and communication technology (ICT) industry into four different groups. In addition, this study analyzes the effect of the CEO’s experience on the market performance of ICT startups by deriving the efficiency of each company using the financial data of ICT startups provided in the database. This study estimates the technical efficiency of each group using stochastic frontier analysis and then uses meta-frontier analysis to compare the efficiency of different groups. As a result, the CEO group with a career in strategy and planning showed the highest meta-frontier efficiency, whereas the CEO group with a career in R&D showed the lowest. Full article

Municipalities are increasingly involved in energy transition planning. There are, however, doubts about whether municipalities are an adequate organization and scale level for this. In this context, the article aims to picture developments of local young technology firms in bringing energy inventions to market, in particular, how municipalities have provided support to them. Such aim, in the context of energy transition, is new. Derived from study in Nordic countries and The Netherlands, two findings make a valuable contribution to literature. Firstly, a share of almost 40% of young technology firms fails in market introduction, and if reached the market, a 30% is rather late. Barriers stem from high risk-taking, late (no) collaboration, and limiting circumstances in metropolitan cities. Secondly, municipalities’ initiatives appear useful in filling young technology firms’ needs, but the initiatives are fragmented and miss priority. However, partnering in professional start-up organizations tends to improve the situation, indicating that the municipal level is promising in transitional change with regard to new technology. In contrast, driving energy transition through regional cluster building, includes different levels of functional interdependence, territorial scale, networking and governance, causing manifold complexity and uncertainty. Not all (large) municipalities seem able to act in a promising manner, however, much empirical research needs to be done. Full article

Reducing the environmental pressure along the products life cycle, increasing efficiency in the consumption of resources and use of renewable raw materials, and shifting the economic system toward a circular and a climate-neutral model represent the heart of the current macro-trends of the European Union (EU) policy agendas. The circular economy and bioeconomy concepts introduced in the EU’s Circular Economy Action Plan and the Bioeconomy Strategy support innovation in rethinking economic systems focusing on market uptaking of greener solutions based on less-intensive resource consumption. In recent decades, industrial research has devoted enormous investments to demonstrate sustainable circular bio-based business models capable of overcoming the “Valley of Death” through alternative strategic orientations of “technological-push” and “market-pull”. The study highlights industrial research’s evolution on bio-based circular business model validation, trends, and topics with particular attention to the empowering capacity of start-ups and small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to close the loops in renewable biological use and reduce dependence on fossil fuels. The research methodology involves a bibliographic search based on the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) approach and the European Innovation Council (EIC) Accelerator Data Hub investigation to understand SMEs’ key success factors and start-ups of the circular bioeconomy sector. Eco and bio-based materials, nutraceuticals, and microalgae represent the most sustainable industry applications, leading to circular bioeconomy business models’ future perspective. Full article

[Context] Freelancers could catalyze the software development process by providing their niche skills to generate high quality outputs. They could help companies (including startups) to foster innovations by suggesting creative ideas and providing their expertise in implementing them (for instance, designing solutions, coding solutions etc.). Freelancers could effectively and efficiently work as a virtual member of the software development team. The company must make informed decisions about which task to allot to the freelancer, which freelancer to select, pricing the task, and evaluating the submitted work. On the other hand, the freelancer should make an informed decision about evaluating the monetary value of the task to be charged, trusting the requester, analyzing the skills requirement of the task (finding matches between skill requirement and skills processed), selecting the best task, and maintaining the highest level of reputation. However, the literature does not provide freelancers and the companies the guidelines that support their decision making. However, if freelancers are selected carefully for the most suitable task, the companies will benefit a lot in terms of improved software development metrics. [Objectives] The objective of this paper is to provide the research community the research trends in freelancer-supported software development. This helps to understand that which software development areas have higher concentrations of research efforts, which area has the support of empirical evidence to support management decision makings, and which area requires the research attention. [Method] The systematic study is conducted by planning the mapping protocol, executing the protocol, and reporting the findings using various visualization tools like bar charts and pie charts. The search process was planned to be executed using set of inclusion and exclusion conditions on four bibliographic databases (IEEExplore, Springerlink, Sciencedirect, and ACM digital library). The relevant papers are selected by applying inclusion and exclusion conditions. The google citations of the relevant papers are subject to the inclusion and exclusion conditions again to include the more relevant papers. Finally, the systematic schema was created and populated after analyzing the studies abstracts. [Results] The results indicate the following (a) The research focus is on generic software development (78%) rather on individual life cycle activities. (b) The number of empirical studies is limited (25%). (c) A number of studies proposing solutions and evaluating on live cases in industrial settings are missing from the literature. This is in comparison to the validation approaches (72%) i.e., solutions tested in laboratory settings. (d) At present, the literature has limited ability to provide the software companies (including startups) with the guidelines (in the form of opinions and experience reports) for involving freelancers in the software development process. (e) The reported challenges include Collaboration and Coordination (33%), Developer Recommendation (or selection) (19%), Team Formulation (14%), Task Recommendation (allocation) (14%), Task Decomposition (11%), Privacy and Security (Confidentiality) (11%), Budget Estimation (8%), Recognition (8%), Trust Issues (8%), Market Dynamism (6%), Intellectual Property Issues (6%), Participation of Crowd Worker (6%), and Capacity Utilization (3%). These challenges are highly interactive, and each challenge impacts all other challenges. (e) Recent focus of the researchers (total 7 studies in 2019) is on generic software development handling the collaboration and coordination (3 studies out of 7), Developer recommendation (2 studies out of 7), and task recommendation (2 studies out of 7). [Conclusion] The freelancer-driven software engineering research area has got the attraction of the researchers, but it will take a long time to gain maturity. This puts an urgent call for more empirical studies and evaluation-based solution research that could help companies (including startups) to foster innovations. Further, the research focus should be well distributed among the various development phases to address the unique challenges associated with individual activities. The accurate management of the freelancer in the software development could help companies and startups to foster innovations and remain competitive in the marketplace. Full article

Immigrant entrepreneurs face many challenges in the various early phases of their companies’ existence. These challenges are often referred to as “the liability of newness”. While some of these challenges are common to all entrepreneurs, the immigrant entrepreneur has an additional set of challenges. This article describes those challenges in the immigrant entrepreneurial experience in the Swedish agri-food industry. A qualitative research design is used. Interviews were conducted with 25 immigrant entrepreneurs who planned a business, had started a business, or had exited a business. Various websites and tax reports provided secondary data. The research, which covered a two-year time frame, identifies the strategies and actions the immigrant entrepreneurs adopted and used to try to overcome those challenges. The following strategies and actions were identified: use of business support, virtual embeddedness, family and ethnic groups, entrepreneurial experience, and niche markets. The companies in which the entrepreneurs recognized the gravity of those challenges early in their life cycle were more likely to survive beyond the start-up phase. The article, which also reviews much of the current literature on immigrant entrepreneurship, has implications for business support advisory services and policymakers who are involved in the effort to achieve economic (and social-cultural) integration of immigrants into their host countries. Full article