In our paper we challenge the common notion that small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) have to adapt to the international business environment to be successful when acting in an international context. Although we believe in a need for certain adaption, we claim that the possibility that SME...

The technology transfer process between a public laboratory and a company has been the subject of many publications and has been widely discussed in economic theory. This paper highlights several newly identified asymmetries occurring between the different agents taking part in the process.The...

Whenever there is a crisis in the corporate world or the economy more generally, the same questions continue to surface: What is the purpose of a corporation? Is the purpose of a corporation simply to make money? Or do they have a broader role in society? Do corporations also have a social...

The paper analyses the importance of collaboration and networks in international entrepreneurship by distinguishing entrepreneurial small and medium firms (SMEs). SMEs, which characterized by fast internationalisation of their activity from the very beginning of the establishment despite limited...

Locally owned, northern SMEs often find themselves working out of and in small communities in sparsely populated regions. Using a constructive research design and semi-structured interviews with SMEs from Northern Finland, Norway and Iceland this study highlights the relationship between the...

The present work addresses how and to what extent the personal and professional relationship networks of small-scale local entrepreneurs help improve their scarce resource endowments. Adopting a mechanistic and functioning oriented view of social capital, the paper suggests the existence of two...

Die im Rahmen des vom Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung (BMBF) geförderten Projektes KompNet2011 - Erfolgsfaktoren regionaler Innovationsnetze - durchgeführte Befragung untersucht die Innovationskooperationen sowie Wissenstransferaktivitäten von schwerpunktmäßig kleinen und...

The paper at hand contributes to the field of proximity studies with a focus on social proximity. The paper gives an in-depth discussion of a theoretical and empirical definition of social proximity. Based on this, an argumentation follows why social proximity is of particular importance when...

We examine the relationship between network characteristics and innovation under different phases of innovation. Based on micro data of cross industry groups, small firm networks for knowledge sharing and Ramp;D cooperation, we show that close-knit networks, represented as dense communication...

Die im Rahmen des vom Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung (BMBF) geförderten Projektes KompNet2011 - Erfolgsfaktoren regionaler Innovationsnetze - durchgeführte Befragung untersucht die Innovationskooperationen sowie Wissenstransferaktivitäten von schwerpunktmäßig kleinen und...