Market growth is driven by product innovation. Beyond functional satiationthe marginal utility of product performance and variety decreases. We argue that socialcomparisons underlying innovation diffusion results in consumer motivations for upwardassimilation toward the behavior of better...

Das neue, von Dr.-Ing. Ansgar Woltering, DB Systel GmbH, verfasste Arbeitspapier befasst sich mit der bedarfs- und marktgerechte Ausgestaltung und Bereitstellung von Services in Bezug auf Informations- und Telekommunikationstechnik (ITK). Insbesondere wird auf das Instrument des Benchmarking...

Mirroring the railroad industry of the 1940’s and 1950’s, the trucking industry today appearsto be achieving impressive productivity gains. But it is easy to confuse true productivityadvances in transportation industries with changes in ton-miles per unit of input that are duesimply to changes...

In their quest to become highly efficient and professional asset managers in maintaining their roadnetworks and delivering a programme of network improvements some road administrations haveundergone significant changes in the way they operate in order to become more efficient and provide amore...

This paper shows the advantages of staged investments for venture capitalists.

Does entrepreneurial optimism affect business performance? Using a unique data setbased on repeated survey design, we investigate this relationship empirically. Ourmeasures of ‘optimism’ and ‘realism’ are derived from comparing the turnovergrowth expectations of 133 owners-managers with...

Entrepreneurship education ranks highly on policy agendas in Europe and the US, butlittle research is available to assess its impacts. In this context it is of primary importanceto understand whether entrepreneurship education raises intentions to be entrepreneurialgenerally or whether it helps...

Using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel Study (GSOEP), we analyze whethernecessity entrepreneurs differ from opportunity entrepreneurs in terms of self-employmentduration. Using univariate statistics, we find that opportunity entrepreneurs remain in selfemploymentlonger than necessity...

We analyze the implications of entrepreneurial spawning for a variety of firm characteristicssuch as size, focus, profitability, and innovativeness. We examine the dynamics of spawning overtime. Our model accounts for much of the empirical evidence relating to the relation betweenspawning and...

This paper proposes that risk aversion encourages individuals to invest in balanced skillprofiles, making them more likely to become entrepreneurs. By not having taken this possiblelinkage into account, previous research has underestimated the impacts both of risk aversionand balanced skills on...