High-growth is rarely the prerequisite of high profitability In addition, high-growth is multidimensional and research has found difficulty in conceptualizing and measuring it

Profitability is rediscovered by challenging the current growth and profitability nexus. Popper suggests that something can be falsified by offering a justified alternative to the current view of knowledge. –profits instead of growth.

Statements that small businesses create most net new jobs are ubiquitous by policymakers. There is general agreement among academia and in public policy on three points about the role high-growth firms have achieved 1. A small group of high-growth firms have a key role in total employment creation 2. A dramatic increase of interest in these firms has increased during the last few years 3. Current knowledge about their economic contributions and management practices are limited and insufficient.

Subsequently,following three research questions: 1) Why is it justified to replace growth with profits in entrepreneurship research?; 2) Why is it justified to replace growth with profits in entrepreneurship practice?; 3) Why is it justified to replace growth with profits from an entrepreneurship
stakeholder perspective?

Factors that are argued to have contributed to the existence of such a myth are (I) the strong interest expressed in high-growth firms; (II) the supposition that a firm‘s growth per se is equivalent to a firm‘s success.

Research context: High-technology:Public policies have been set specifically to encourage entrepreneurial activities in hightechnology related industries in the hope of future prosperity included. The role of the IT industry is becoming increasingly important to the Finnish economy; Start-ups Despite the disproportionate focus on high-growth firms both in academia and public policy, little is known about their actual economic performance and the phenomena overall Two specific issues closely related to the discussion of growth, are those of growth type and firm value. The two most commonly measured growth types are sales and employment. In this thesis, firm growth only refers to sales growth.

A paradigm consists on what are the interesting research problems and which methodological approach can be used to tackle them

On an epistemological level, three distinct paradigms exist, In these three, the form of reality and the role and purpose of knowledge in has different meaning. Positivist, also called empiricist, refer to the same approach that others call quantitative. Similarly, interpretative, constructive, naturalistic, and ethnographic all refer to the same approach others call qualitative; The interpretative and constructive knowledge views have a more subjective view on reality. According to these paradigms, reality and knowledge are never independent of the mind: the object-subject relationship being dependent on each other. The researcher constructs the reality and knowledge not with the aim of predicting and controlling it, but in order to understand1 it better; The constructive view generates knowledge along the research process, which continuously draws an increasingly clear picture of perceived reality, a process through which knowledge is constructed. In comparison, the interpretative view primarily attempts to reveal and understand reality

Research approach: Traditionally, entrepreneurship research has been largely influenced by the positivist view and therefore focused on quantitative research methodologies, that research within the social sciences too often relies and builds theories only on the data that is available, hence failing to identify factors of significance. The research methodology needs to be adapted into the context in which it is used. In a practice-based discipline such as entrepreneurship, it is difficult to understand everything through a single perspective; the current system can be understood as the current growth and profitability nexus. The basic statement is: why it is justified to challenge the current growth and profitability nexus, by replacing growth with profit.

Definition of entrepreneurship: Entrepreneurship is the purposeful activity (including an integrative sequence of decisions) of an individual or group of associated individuals, undertaken to initiate, maintain and grow a profitoriented firm (adapted from Cole, 1959, 7). this definition covers three fundamental aspects of entrepreneurship: (I) entrepreneurship is about start-ups (initiation), (II) entrepreneurship is about sustainability (maintaining), (III) entrepreneurship has a clearly defined aim (grow a profit-oriented firm).

One should bear in mind that there is a fundamental difference between accounting profit and economic profit. While accounting profit refers to any remaining income once all expenses have been withdrawn, economic profit refers to ―the difference between the profits earned by investing resources in a particular activity, and the profits that could have been earned by investing the same resources in the most lucrative alternative activity‖

two performance elements, which should be used for measuring performance within entrepreneurship: The first element covers the reward the entrepreneur receives for his or her entrepreneurial effort. In order to break-even, the profit level must exceed a level that covers for the opportunity cost, lack of liquidity of investment (financial and human resources), risk, and uncertainty. The second element of performance takes into account the entrepreneur in a social context. This takes into account the social wealth produced by the entrepreneur, such as creating new markets and industries, new technology, employment, taxes, and productivity enhancements

The purpose of a company is to generate profits for the shareholders, unless otherwise provided in the Articles of Association. each firm should operate in ways that meet all eight objectives of a firm: marketing, innovation, human resources, financial resources, physical resources, productivity, social responsibility, and finally profits.

Concluding remarks: the focus lies in creating profitability. Moreover, regardless of whether the process contains a disequilibrating or an equilibrating force, profit stands center stage. These almost myth-like assumptions about the means of achieving the preferred end, high-growth leading to high profits, have become widely accepted and eventually developed into something of a conventional wisdom.

Schumpeter’s frame-breaking perspective: The type of innovations that especially help to develop an economy, by shifting the curves of costs and revenues, are disruptive . A disruptive innovation is a radical new introduction to the market that completely changes the ways by which firms can create value. He defined entrepreneurial profit as the surplus over costs. In practice, this means all the costs deducted from the generated revenues. The costs include all direct and indirect costs, the wage of labor for the entrepreneur, rent for any land and finally a premium for risk.

Penrose and the growth of firms: Penrose suggests that it is assumed that the growth of firms is always, and only, driven by an opportunity to make a profit. She suggests that profits have two roles: for the sake of existence, and for increasing profits. Profits are hence an incentive for the shareholders, but at the same time the money used for new profitable investments. Finnally Innovation is the source of profit. Profitable growth opportunities exist in the environment, and in order to be able to take advantage of these, the firm needs a unique set of resources.

Kirzner’s incremental innovation perspective:the Kirznerian entrepreneur is one that is alert, one that sees undiscovered opportunities in the environment. The Kirznerian entrepreneur does not attempt to shift the curves of costs and revenues such as the Schumpeterian entrepreneur, but instead notices that they have been shifted. Profits is inseparable from the very possibility of entrepreneurship in general. It is necessary for an economy to move gradually towards a position of equilibrium. This movement happens through alert entrepreneurs who see profit opportunities.types of entrepreneurs: either the radically innovative Schumpeterian innovator or then the more passive and alert Kirznerian entrepreneur who does not require an innovation to take place.

The state of growth entrepreneurship research: The biological analogies, suggesting that firms grow like organisms, work as the basic foundation of the stages model. Despite strong critique against the use of biological analogies, the stream of research has progressed over decades without anyone critically assessing its basic assumptions. a holistically influenced methodology may work as a tool for breaking the current boundaries and viewing the phenomenon in novel ways, both theoretically and empirically

The state of growth entrepreneurship research: The biological analogies, suggesting that firms grow like organisms, work as the basic foundation of the stages model. Despite strong critique against the use of biological analogies, the stream of research has progressed over decades without anyone critically assessing its basic assumptions. researchers understand the field as more unified than it really is. When measures with low concurrent validity are regarded as comparable and used interchangeably, and often even used without proper justification , there is a danger of drawing false conclusions. a holistically influenced methodology may work as a tool for breaking the current boundaries and viewing the phenomenon in novel ways, both theoretically and empirically

1) Network externalities: when a large number of consumers use a product, it becomes relatively cheaper for them or for new customers to consume that product instead of one of the competitors. For the firm the cost of acquiring new customers decreases, therefore improving the profit margin. Similarly, existing customers will be retained for a longer duration, due to perceived higher switching cost. 2) First-mover-advantage: The concept of first-mover-advantage (hereafter FMA) also builds on the idea of early growth leading to an increase in profits . The underlying assumption of FMA leading to profits is that being first and achieving early market acceptance will promote proprietary learning effects, patents, preemption of input factors, and the development of switching costs. 4) Growth and profitability among Finnish high-technology firms: used EBIT-to-sales ratio (EBIT). EBIT was preferred over ROA because lifescience firms rarely require substantial assets. In addition, EBIT is mostly preferred by practitioners themselves

5) Experience curve: The basic assumption of the experience cost curve is that for each increase in output the unit costs will decrease. Therefore, the business with the highest output will be able to produce with the lowest unit cost, leading to cost leadership. The firm with cost leadership will thereby enjoy the highest profit margins. 6) Economies of scale: A necessity to grow, despite the consequences, has even influenced entire economies. an economy of scale – achieved by growth – is a means of increasing the competitive advantage of a nation. In this belief, economic growth.The extraordinary growth rate scaused impression, as well as fear and envy, among the leaders and policy makers in Western economies.

The smallest, and at the same time the most heterogeneous, of the sampling units is the individual. Entrepreneurship research is becoming increasingly more depersonalized, which is something that has also happened in economics research. This view considers growth simply as a dependent variable, an outcome, and then uses a number of independent variables to explain this dependent variable. Growth is a multidimensional concept, which can be conceptualized in a number of ways. Understanding this requires a closer look at some of the studies focusing on growth. Growth is most commonly associated with performance, which is further seen as being equal to success. "Although knowledge accumulation is dependent upon relationships among constructs being robust across different measurement and sampling decisions, scholars have not sufficiently established such robustness for the construct of firm growth".

the five most commonly used predictors of growth are (I) the personality characteristics of the entrepreneur, (II) the resources available to the firm, (III) the strategy of the firm, (V) its industrial context.

Literature summary: 1. The emergence of the prevailing growth mantra is difficult to understand. The works that has contributed significantly to the theoretical foundations of the field are all concerned with one thing only, profits. 2. Profits are of crucial importance for both the firm, as well as for society . Profits act as the pre-requisite for further profitable growth, 3. Regardless of the central role of profits, the focus of research has shifted into a very different phenomenon, namely growth and high-growth. 4. Entrepreneurship literature is to a large degree focused on studying performance. 5. When it comes to determining what performance is, very little consensus seem to exist. However, the word performance, which is mostly used synonymously to success, mostly refers to growth. 6. With regard to determining what growth is, very little consensus seem to exist. 7. Very few growth indicators are comparable with each other and the entrepreneurship research community seems to have failed to acknowledge this. This has lead to the research results often being dependent from the measures used. 8. The growth entrepreneurship research is criticized for being fragmented, its research results are inconclusive and very little is known about the phenomenon overall. 9. Calls have been made for research adopting more holistic views for a better understanding of complex phenomena)

points, one might assume that the major journals in entrepreneurship research would also focus specifically on privately-held start-ups. One might also assume that focus is placed specifically on the profitability of these ventures, due to the critical role of profits both for the firm itself and for society; Taking into account the fact that micro firms constitute over 90% of the firms in the economy of almost all European countries, it is surprising to see that most studies fundamentally concentrate on the outliers; large and established firms; This review concurs with these earlier studies and finds little congruence in the conceptualization of performance. Performance can refer to sales growth (72, 61%), profitability (67, 57%), employment growth (21, 18%), and market share growth (8, 7%). certain performance measure is given, it is still mostly based on its use in an earlier study. Rarely is the context-specificity or suitability of the measures addressed.

This was conducted in two separate studies, study IIA and study IIB. The goal of study II A and study II B was to challenge the current growth and profitability nexus within entrepreneurship practice, by justifying the replacement of growth with profits. The results presented here advocate a profitability-oriented business model, where unprofitable growth is evidence of unsound firm development. The majority of high-technology firms, both bio and IT, are far from thriving in terms of profitability. Therefore, it is justifiable to replace the current norm of growth-orientation, towards one of profit. This holds true regardless of the industry, and regardless of the firm‘s age.

Performance: Measuring growth: All of the respondents were asked how they measure growth. The most common measure of growth was sales growth. Growth as business success: All respondents were unanimous that success cannot be measured only in terms of sales growth. Growth can be seen as a measure of success when it is the outcome of a strategic move; a temporary state where growth has been pursued at the expense of profitability to achieve a strategically favorable position. Determining business success: When the respondents were asked about the best measures of business success among start-ups, the multidimensionality of performance was properly realized. None of the stakeholders preferred a single measure, but always mentioned a number of context-specific measures, preferably a combination of them. Overall, the venture capitalists preferred a case-bycase approach and emphasized the difficulty and danger of over simplifying when talking about a multi-dimensional concept as performance.

Methodological approach: a) How do the stakeholders conceptualize performance?, b) How do the stakeholders understand the relationship between growth and profitability and what factors affect these perceptions?, c) What are the arguments for a growth-oriented strategy and a profitoriented strategy?

Growth and profitability matrix: All respondents were asked which position; growth or profit would be preferable to reach a star position. This question was asked to understand better, which one they ultimately preferred the most, growth, or profitability. Results were fairly mixed and a number of arguments were given for preferring both the growth state and profit state.

Profits: The foremost argument for growth and high-growth are those of subsequent profits. These arguments are mostly based on the simple notion that if a firm sells more, also profits will increase. Value: The second pro-growth argument identified is that of increasing value. Value based arguments were often highly affected by the stakeholder view. A venture capitalist, in the case below, stated that value was something that stakeholders preferred regardless of its affect on profitability or sustainability of the business. Credibility is something that can be seen from the view of the entrepreneur, or then from the views of stakeholders; internal and external credibility. Internal credibility refers to the entrepreneurs own demand for credibility. Strategic advantages: The fourth pro-growth argument that emerged from the data is that of strategic advantages. These can for example be related to cost advantages derived from economies-of-scale, or to advantages derived through increased credibility.Raising capital The fifth and final pro-growth argument is that of raising capital. Even if this argument is also closely related to many of the earlier points, it still deserves its own reference. It deserves its own reference because the countless arguments offered for growth and high-growth are for one thing only: raising capital.

Working business model The foremost reason supporting a pro-profitability orientation is that profitability is evidence of healthy working business behavior. Profits were seen as something that should be the fundamental driver of entrepreneurship. This view was shared by various stakeholder groups, and it was something that should follow through the entire life-span of the firm. Control: The second argument for a pro-profitability orientation is that of control. Control refers both to independence in decision making; having the control to decide the future direction of the firm and retaining control. Retaining control is the most effective way of minimizing the effect of stakeholder influence. Risk management: The third argument for a pro profitability orientation is that of risk management. A number of stakeholders simply saw the position of low profitability as an extremely risky state. Regardless of whether the low profitability state was caused by internal matters or changes in the external environment, high profitability was seen as a tool for managing it. As a consequence, high profitability was seen as a more stable and sustainable position. Self-sustained growth: Finally, the fourth argument for a pro-profitability orientation is the potential for self-sustained growth. Self-sustained growth fundamentally captures all earlier arguments: a working business model, control, and risk management. First of all, the existence of profits is evidence of a working business model. Secondly, the existence of profits allows the firm to retain control of its strategic moves, as the demands brought in by external investors can be avoided. Finally, the profits help to manage the risk of unexpected changes in the environment and hence avoid bankruptcy.

Growth and profitability are not the same. Nor do they give equivalent representation of a firm‘s success. Profitability is the only real measure of a firm’s success, not growth. Understanding the entrepreneur requires an understanding of the surrounding environment. In this environment, the growth and profitability nexus has become distorted.

Early research in entrepreneurship has traditionally relied primarily upon quantitative methods grounded in a positivist epistemology. We believe that this overreliance on quantitative methods has artificially constrained entrepreneurship research. there is considerable consensus that grounded theory, specifically, and qualitativemethods,more generally, are the best hope for generating new,empirically based theories

Entrepreneurial opportunity: a defining puzzle: any advance in knowledge accumulation is facilitated by “puzzles,” or agreed upon research questions and methods that help to define a scientific paradigm. the puzzles thatwe elevate as defining questions for a phenomenon contain within themhidden assumptions that lead us to select some methods over others. Scholars are debating fundamental questions about the epistemological and ontological nature of entrepreneurial opportunities.

Scholars' dominant viewof entrepreneurship is that opportunities are ‘discovered’ by entrepreneurs. This viewby scholars is based on a positivist epistemology and argues that opportunities are objective realities that exist in the environment and are “discovered” as a result of the unique characteristics of individual entrepreneurs. A meta-analysis of fifty-one studies of entrepreneurial orientation found that firm size and industry moderated the positive relationship between orientation and performance. A second metaanalysis identified key cultural characteristics that moderated the relationship between entrepreneurial orientation and performance, noting that orientation had the greatest impact in countries characterized by uncertainty avoidance, lowpower distance, high collectivism and political stability. The defining characteristic of this perspective, however, is the epistemological assumption that entrepreneurial opportunities exist in the environment in an objective sense.Moreover, these opportunities exist prior to entrepreneurs' awareness of them. Entrepreneurship opportunity, thus, occurs as a matter of objective discovery and the focus of entrepreneurial research should be to identify the conditions in the environment that provide such opportunities and the characteristics of entrepreneurs that predispose them to such discovery.

An emerging alternative view is that entrepreneurial opportunities do not exist in an objective fashion, nor do they exist prior to the awareness of entrepreneurs. Rather, “creation opportunities are social constructions that do not exist independently of entrepreneurs' perceptions”, In this view, entrepreneurial opportunities arise, largely, as a process of collective sense making. The entrepreneur must innovate productswhile simultaneously innovating social acceptance for those products in the marketplace.

In this view, successful opportunity creation is an act of institutional entrepreneurship in which the entrepreneur must mobilize resources that transformor create environmental conditions that favor his or her interests. entrepreneurial opportunities are endogenous and iterative acts of creation in which the entrepreneur socially constructs both the opportunity and the product or service.

Creation and discovery?: The distinction between these two approaches is based, largely, on different epistemological assumptions about the nature of entrepreneurship opportunity. They are simply two different contingencies and that one or the other might predominate under different contextual conditions. Researchers in entrepreneurship should “recognize the value, and the limitations, of each of these theories, and to specify the conditions under which each should be applied”

“Entrepreneurial Inception: The Role of Imprinting in Entrepreneurial Action.” Using semi-structured interviews and archival analysis, These formative elements of the external environment, the authors argue, serve as sources of a “lasting and persistent stamp on entrepreneurs” that influence their future ability to recognize entrepreneurial opportunities.in this issue identify a range of recurrent sources of imprinting, including influential people (family, friends), practices (work experiences, hobbies, exposure to technology) and temporal phases of life

paper titled “Opportunities and Institution: A Co-creation Story of the King Crab Industry”. Using primarily archival/historical research methods of a single case study,

A second paper that also uses the concept of imprinting appears in the paper titled “Entrepreneurial Legacy: Toward a Theory of How Some Family Firms Nurture Trans-generational Entrepreneurship” Seeking to understand how these family firms have endured for so long, the authors determine that the families' ability to systemically embed the entrepreneurial values and spirit of the founder onto at least onemember of each successive generation is the key to success.

The third study that reinforces a “realist” ontology of entrepreneurial opportunity is titled “Embedded Entrepreneurship in the Creative Reconstruction of Place.” In this ethnographic study of two depleted communities in Northern Ireland, the authors focus on understanding how individuals who are highly embedded in their local context identify entrepreneurial opportunities.

The final paper in this group is, “How Should We Divide the Pie? Equity Distribution and Its Impact on Entrepreneurial Teams”. The study finds that the perceptions of justice amongst team members at the.initial stages of equity division have a profound imprinting effect on the long-run success of the entrepreneurial venture.

Collectively these four papers adopt the assumption that opportunities exist in the environment external to the entrepreneur.

paper titled “Emotional Arousal and Entrepreneurial Outcomes: Combining Qualitative Methods to Elaborate Theory.” The authors study acts of entrepreneurship in the super yacht industry and seek to understand the role of emotion and dramaturgy in acts of entrepreneurship.

“Failed but Not Finished: A Narrative Approach to Understanding Venture Failure Stigmatization.” This paper is unique in that does not address entrepreneurial success but rather tries to understand howentrepreneurs dealwith failure.

paper titled “Institutional Entrepreneur's Social Mobility in Organizational Fields” also adopts the perspective that successful entrepreneurs create rather than discover opportunity

“The Evolution of Interorganizational Relationships in Emerging Ventures: An Ethnographic Study within the New Product Development Process.” , the authors conclude that entrepreneurial success is the result of the degree of attentiveness of entrepreneurial firmsin constructing interorganizational networks.

Environment: One clear conclusion fromthis point of distinction is the proposition that the discovery thesis of entrepreneurial opportunity contains an inherent assumption that the external environment is both distinct fromandmore agentic than the entrepreneur. By contrast, in the creation thesis, the boundary between entrepreneur and environment is less distinct and the degree of agency between entrepreneur and environment is more evenly distributed.

Time: another proposition that we can draw from our studies is that the discovery thesis of entrepreneurial opportunity contains within it a distinct set of assumptions about the role and influence of time. In these studies time is seen as having an isolated episodic influence that creates path dependency in which critical incidents bear enduring effect that constrains or enables the ability to identify opportunity. From the creation perspective, by contrast, time is iterative, rather than a determinative influence, in which the entrepreneur's ongoing interaction with the environment creates mutual and simultaneous changes in both the entrepreneur and the environment that, over time, constructs opportunity.

Epistemological emphasis: A third proposition that we draw from the articles, thus, is the observation that entrepreneurial imprinting focuses our attention on concrete practices and objective experiences that are highly influential in explainingwhy and howindividual differences in the ability to recognize entrepreneurial opportunity arise. The clear emphasis is on practices and behaviors rather than perceptions and interpretations of those practices and behaviors. By contrast, the construct of entrepreneurial reflexivity draws our attention to the subjective and interpretive inner world of the entrepreneur as a key mechanismbywhich entrepreneurs can elevate their imagination beyond the institutionalized constraints of the existing environment and conceive of alternative social, economic and political arrangements.

Levels of analysis: other, the constructs of reflexivity and imprinting simply reflect differences in the observational perspective of the researcher. That is, researchers who focus on micro-level approaches to entrepreneurship, at the level of the group or the individual, are somewhat pre-disposed to focusing on somewhat objective and deterministic elements of the entrepreneurial process. In other words, looking “up” from the point of view of the individual or the team, the external world appears to be much more objective, powerful and agentic.

This article, thus, explores howqualitativemethods might be used to generate a theory for examining entrepreneurial settings. The first theme is the unique role of imprinting, or the profound influence of social and historical context in constraining the perceptual apparatus of entrepreneurs and delimiting the range of opportunities for innovationavailable to them. Second, our analysis offers insight into the counterbalancing role of reflexivity, operating at both individual and collective levels of analysis, in generating the ability of entrepreneurs to overcome the constraints of imprinting.imprinting and reflexivity as key mechanisms and core constructs that underpin the larger tensions that question whether entrepreneurs discover opportunity or create it.

Social enterprise may no longer be synonymous with the shareholderowned corporation, yet this resonance with our personal sense of self nonetheless provides an intuitive link with corporate identity in all its forms from the ones we find in law to the expression of identity in branding. The collapse of Soviet communism seemed to have ushered in a democratic golden age, for which nonprofit NGOs would provide the social capital necessary for robust governments and markets. The millennial vision of civil society quickly gave way to the promotion of venture philanthropy and social entrepreneurship, with so-called traditional grant-funded nonprofits dismissed as inefficient and ineffective.Analogous to civil society at the height of the democratic revolutions of the early 1990s, a decade later social enterprise thrived in a symbiotic relationship with tech companies, the financial industry, and consulting services. Use the concept of social-entrepreneurship (largely in his definition) to increase his earnings providing discrete benefits to society and with little responsibility

the relatively rapid dissemination of social enterprise and social business as terms associated with the use of social media highlights the value of a familiar semantic anchor. What made the social enterprise model seem so naturally universal was that it expressed an insight that had been associated with the concept back at its beginnings, as a way of referring to the corporation as a legal form. When people join together in a group that has a shared identity, they are not just using a social medium to get business done. They have become a part of something that is greater than themselves. The newer version emerging out of Web 2.0, which sees social enterprise as people using online social media to communicate more effectively within a venture, sees organizational technology as fundamentally a neutral tool. How social enterprise provides a medium for defining individual and corporate identity, and how this relates to the existing nonprofit and for-profit forms that, in practice, anchor them in working life.

In the mythologyof social entrepreneurship, a so-called traditional nonprofit leaves individuals in a mundane position where they do not create—they just accept what they are given; wash, rinse, and repeat. By contrast, social entrepreneurs create an identity where they can do well by doing good. Couched in imported business buzzwords this can at times ring false, but it is ethical in the fullest sense of the word.

If social entrepreneurs are in the business of creating deliberate disruptive design to solve pressing social issues, it is imperative to understand why the changes they seek to bring about succeed and why so many fail.

1) principles were ideas that because of their nature rarely if ever changed. 2) Models were what we built to emulate principles. 3) Rules were those things we put in place to maintain the model and guide behaviors. 4) Behaviors were what we did to live the principles, based on the models we built and the rules that governed them. In order for social entrepreneurs to create successful and lasting deliberate disruptive designs, it is imperative to make sure that any new understanding of how the system can work affects not only the principles that govern that understanding—the mission and calling to action that propel many social entrepreneurs—but also the models, rules, and behaviors put in place to turn those ideas into action.

In the life of social enterprises, there are times when the founder or the investors decide that they want to exchange some or all of their ownership in the company for cash or something else of value. These are commonly referred to as “exit” events.

Nondisclosures agreements (NDA) may prevent them from pursuing a similar business opportunity with someone else if they don’t make a deal with you. Trademarks protect names and logos (or anything that uniquely identifies the supplier of goods or services) from anyone that wants to use a confusingly similar mark to identify themselves as the provider of similar goods or services. Copyright, by contrast, grants “authors” a bundle of exclusive rights with respect to their work. These rights include the right to reproduce, distribute, perform, publicly display, or create derivative works based on the original work. A patent is a right to an inventor “to exclude others from making, using, offering for sale, or selling the invention throughout the United States or importing the invention into the United States” for a limited time in exchange for public disclosure of the invention when the patent is granted. Licensing Ip: Intellectual property licenses take many different forms, but typically they consist of a contract or agreement by which the owner of the property grants to someone else the right to use it, subject to appropriate restrictions, in exchange for a royalty.

two traditionally separate models: a social welfare model that guides its workforce development mission and a market-base model that guides its commercial activities.

criticized for their excessive focus on stage-based activities and characteristics rather than the dynamics involved in the evolution of the process through stages; the soundness of the process depends on the objective or perceived expected value of the entrepreneurial profit and whether profits exceed costs