نشریه پژوهش های کارآفرینی
سال دوم شماره 1 (پیاپی 3، بهار 1402)

An entrepreneurial ecosystem is a self-organized, adaptive, geographically limited community composed of complex agents operating at multiple and cumulative levels whose non-linear interactions lead to patterns of activities through which new ventures emerge. The present research aims to explain the factors that influence the creation of an entrepreneurship ecosystem in less privileged rural areas of Asad Abad in Hamedan province, Iran using the Interpretive Structural Modeling (ISM) technique. Out of the rural entrepreneurship experts and scholars, 15 people were selected purposefully for a semi-structured interview. Based on the content analysis using the ISM technique, the factors underpinning the creation of an entrepreneurship ecosystem in the less privileged areas were determined and leveled. Based on the results, the creation of entrepreneurial ecosystems in less privileged areas requires the availability and implementation of macro-governance factors, individual-behavioral factors, supportive factors, sociocultural factors, financing, human capital, market, and regional capacity. The results reveal that the macro-governance factors are the most important and effective factors in developing entrepreneurial ecosystems in less privileged regions. Financing and regional capacity are the second-most important factors involved in creating an entrepreneurial ecosystem (as a representative of society) in less privileged areas.

The main purpose of this study was to explore the effect of environmental factors on entrepreneurial intention among secondary school students in Dezful County, Iran. The statistical population consisted of all students in secondary schools of Dezful Township studying in the theoretical, technical-vocational, and career-knowledge fields (N= 1645). Based on Bartelt’s (2001) sampling table, 231 were sampled using the proportionate stratified sampling method. The main research instrument was a questionnaire whose validity was confirmed by a panel of experts and the calculation of average variance extracted and discriminant validity and whose reliability was checked by calculating Cronbach's alpha coefficient and composite reliability. Data was analyzed by SPSSWin23 and AMOS23 software in two phases of descriptive and inferential statistics. The results of structural equation modeling revealed that the perceived relational support had a positive and significant effect on the entrepreneurial intention of the students, but the effect of perceived educational and structural supports on entrepreneurial intention was rejected. Therefore, it can be said that although technical-vocational and career-knowledge schools have been established to train the students, they have only focused on theoretical training and their applied training lacks an entrepreneurial view and does not lay the ground for the emergence of entrepreneurial behavior in the students. The findings can have practical implications for secondary school managers, planners, and educators.

The present research aimed to analyze the process of identifying entrepreneurial opportunities to develop entrepreneurship and rural employment. The research was an applied study in terms of purpose and a mixed-methods study in terms of approach. The research population included experts and scholars of entrepreneurship and rural employment in Ravansar County. The inclusion criteria of the participants were an academic resume related to the subject matter and a history of executive activity in the field of entrepreneurship and rural self-employment. The sample was taken purposefully by the snowball technique until data saturation was reached. Data saturation was obtained by conducting 12 interviews with the participants. To analyze the data, the content analysis method was used with the inductive approach in the qualitative phase, and the hierarchical analysis process technique was used in the quantitative phase. In this research, entrepreneurial opportunities for the development of entrepreneurship and job creation in rural areas were first identified, and then based on the criteria extracted from the literature (such as the capacity to create employment, ease of financing, ease of exploiting the opportunity, matching the opportunity with the regional capabilities and economic value creation capacity) were prioritized. The identified opportunities were the opportunities for agriculture, horticulture, and animal husbandry, tourism and handicrafts, home businesses, and processing industries. The findings showed that the opportunities related to agriculture and horticulture were ranked the highest, and the opportunities related to home businesses, processing industries, animal husbandry, tourism, and handicrafts were ranked the next, respectively. The paper is concluded with some recommendations, e.g., increasing financial and non-financial support of rural entrepreneurs by the government, which is one of the most important ones.

It is impossible to improve the economy and development of villages without considering the importance of employment and entrepreneurship of rural women. Therefore, the research aimed to explore the determining strategies of entrepreneurship development among rural women in Ardabil County. The present research is a descriptive-analytical study conducted by the field method using a combination of SWOT (weaknesses, strengths, opportunities, threats matrix) and QSPM (quantitative strategic planning matrix) in the form of the Delphi technique. The statistical sample, taken by the snowball technique, included 37 experts and specialists in the agricultural and rural sectors in Ardabil County, who were active in the field of rural women's employment. According to the exploratory results in the SWOT matrix, 28 strength and weakness indicators and 31 opportunity and threat indicators were identified for the development of rural women's entrepreneurship. According to the sum of the final scores of the internal and external factors (EFE: 2.158; IFE: 2.694), decisive and focal strategies for entrepreneurship development, including competitive strategies (ST), were obtained. In examining the importance of the strategies selected in the QSPM matrix, creating a unit in charge of entrepreneurship and specialized counseling for rural women in agricultural or rural centers, planning to assess the needs of rural women's entrepreneurship and designing codified training-promotional programs, and creating or developing microcredit funds for rural women were determined as the first to third priorities in the target areas. Therefore, the focus of entrepreneurship development planning among rural women must be based on determining a certain authority in rural executive institutions. In this context, paying attention to developing a comprehensive program for entrepreneurship needs assessment of rural women and attracting the cooperation of women entrepreneurs in educational-motivational programs will play an essential role.

The University of Applied Sciences and Technology (UAST) of Iran introduces itself as a third-generation university and considers academic entrepreneurship (AE) as one of its missions. Knowledge is the foundation of innovation, and innovation is essential to entrepreneurship. In recent years, an increasing number of organizations have discovered the role of knowledge management (KM) in achieving their goals, and assessing the implementation of KM in the organization and its effect on organizational missions has become an attractive title both for managers and researchers. The purpose of the present correlational-descriptive study is to estimate the direct effects of KM components on AE in UAST. The statistical population consisted of 134 employees of the Deputy of Research and Technology in UAST. The sample size was estimated at 98 according to Cochran's formula and they were taken by stratified random sampling with proportional assignment. Data were collected with Nonaka and Taechuchy’s (1991) standard KM questionnaire to evaluate the KM and AE levels. SPSS26 and SmartPLS3.3 were used to analyze the data and to create a structural relation model. The findings showed that knowledge Internalization had a direct effect on AE while the effect of other KM components was not proven. To promote and expand AE, UAST should increase effective communication between its members, document the rules, and pay more attention to the transparent distribution of information.

Entrepreneurial branding is a new field in branding that has recently attracted the attention of researchers. Therefore, considering the necessity of studying entrepreneurial branding and the importance of social networks in branding, this research was conducted to discover and investigate the factors affecting entrepreneurial branding in the Instagram social network. The strategy of the research was data mining. The research database contained 789 records out of which 470 and 319 records belonged to successful and unsuccessful commercial pages in the field of branding, respectively. The database was reviewed and analyzed based on the Crisp standard using neural network algorithms, decision trees, and a priori algorithms to extract the rules. Data analysis was done using IBM SPSS Modeler 14.2. In this research, 29 features were identified by the neural network as the features influencing entrepreneurial branding, and the ineffective features were excluded. Then, the 29 effective features were used to make modeling, derive the rules, and determine the most important factors for the success of entrepreneurial branding. The most important factors were found to include the number of followers, exclusive logo, image and video quality, payment gateway, website, simultaneous attention to face-to-face and online sales, and the small number of unrelated hashtags. The research also addressed some factors that would cause the failure of entrepreneurial branding.