https://jer.ut.ac.ir/ Journal of Entrepreneurship Research en daily 1 Tue, 01 May 2007 00:00:00 +0330 Tue, 01 May 2007 00:00:00 +0330 https://jer.ut.ac.ir/article_30969.html The SMEs sectors in Iran play a very vital role in economic development and entrepreneurship growth, because the SMEs sector is totally private. In this paper, we find that the main causes of the weakness and disability of the SMEs sector are based on a lack of entrepreneurship talents and training. We try to find out the role of government-based training institutes and as well as semi-government institutes in entrepreneurship development in the SMEs sector in Iran, especially in recent years (1997-2001). It is recommended that all training activities of government and semi-government training institutions be turned especially toward the needs of the SMEs market and to transfer these training facilities to private sector. https://jer.ut.ac.ir/article_30970.html This paper focuses mainly on social aspects concerning trust and network, especially in higher education institutions. Trust plays a crucial role as social capital and is an important factor of social order, especially in countries in transition. The hypothesis that low trust is one major problem of entrepreneurship will be examined. In low-trust environments, trust is abused as soon as it is placed instead of being honored. Different strategies to avoid the abuse of trust, like control by contracts etc., are not useful instruments. Whether networks help to increase trust is discussed briefly in this paper. Universities worldwide are in a process of change. In these change processes, the entrepreneurial universities play a great role. Due to the lack of resources, income generating becomes an important activity of universities. Although research is a quite different activity from entrepreneurial ones, the paper examines the interrelationship between both activities prospectively. https://jer.ut.ac.ir/article_30971.html Despite the domination of entrepreneurship approach in individual, organizational and national levels and because of global environmental competition, industrial/manufacturing firms and corporations especially in the developing countries seem to be unable to follow up this approach in their own organizations. A relevant research in 130 Iranian industrial firms in 2000, examined the entrepreneurial barriers in such firms in the form of structural and behavioral obstacles as inter-organizational and environmental elements. This article based on the results of this field study, attempts to review organizational entrepreneurship and explain the research methodology as well as analyze the scientific findings by applying statistical methods and provide suggestions to remove the barriers in the way of corporation entrepreneurship. https://jer.ut.ac.ir/article_30972.html The following paper advocates an active rural employment policy in order to reduce rural poverty in the development countries and initiate a sustainable development process. The permanent large increases in the population call for a significant number of employment and income opportunities. As the agricultural sector’s capacity to provide employment is limited, the only alternative is the rural non-farm sector with its agri-business sector and its substantial capacity to offer employment. In order to achieve that goal, however, it will be necessary to establish a large number of very small, small and middle-sized enterprises. Highly motivated, innovative entrepreneurs are a prerequisite in addition to an adequate societal frame and supporting institutions. Innovative entrepreneurs invest their knowledge and capital and, hence, create active innovations with increased productivity in the rural sectors and generate employment and income opportunities. https://jer.ut.ac.ir/article_30973.html The development and evolution of any system–person, organization–nation depends on how the system succeeds to bridge the gap between what the system knows and what the system does (with the knowledge). We call this the gap between knowing and doing or the knowing-doing gap. If the system does not do what it knows, it will lose out in competition with other systems, its relative performance in any field will decline, it may run into stagnation and face destruction. When a system succeeds to do what it knows, the knowledge of the system will increase in time, giving the system new opportunities for doing. There is positive feedback between knowing and doing. Many nations are unable to make use of the knowledge pool available in the world. They prefer to stagnate. For the science/university system we observe, that a lot of knowledge and capabilities, learned and acquired, do not make into the economy. We also observe firms endowed with first class engineers and scientists, producing sometimes outstanding knowledge, even protected by patents, but somehow this knowledge idles around, does not find its way into new products or technology. It seems that “something” is missing in the concept of the knowledge society, knowledge management and similar ideas. That something is the factor which bridges the gap between knowing and doing, that transforms knowledge into action. We call this factor entrepreneurship and the persons bridging the gap entrepreneurs. Our focus is on academic entrepreneurs, those bridging the gap between knowledge produced in the system of science and the problems they face when applying this knowledge in the economy. We call academic institutions, who try to bridge the gap between knowing and doing the entrepreneurial university. https://jer.ut.ac.ir/article_30974.html To be an entrepreneurial university nowadays seems to be an attractive, convincing, modern vision for many higher education institutions and their leaders. The article goes through reflections on who will say what to whom when using the expression “entrepreneurial university” and it will show that there are at least four debates about entrepreneurial challenges to universities. The first debate has to do with the production of knowledge and directs our attention to the changing mode of the production of knowledge. The other debate is looking at the changing position of knowledge-producing institutions and their interrelationship: the “Triple Helix” debate. The third debate refers to a demanding balance between the global and the regional mission of a university. The fourth debate can be seen as a reflection on the consequences of the first three debates: the employability debate. The final remark has to do with the danger of being misled by the careless use of the expression entrepreneurial without recourse to its semantic aura and connotations.