In this study we present online software to rapidly assess the impact of mentoring techniques on a novice entrepreneur. We have built a prototype that collects data from team members in less than five minutes and that automatically returns a diagnostic analysis to the mentor. Between 2012 and 2015 we have tested three versions of our prototype with longitudinal analyses of teams attending start up weekend competitions, to confirm that our prototype supports mentors with few and yet relevant information. The results of our studies open several avenues of research regarding rapid diagnostic of project teams, whereas, from a practical point of view, our prototype entirely done with Google Docs can be easily used by anyone interested in entrepreneurship education.
Dynamic ridesharing is a form of carpooling that allows anyone in a city to hitchhike a ride on short notice. Firms like Lyft and Uber have location-based applications for smartphones that are said to revolutionize this sector of transportation. Nonetheless, this mobile service is still in its infancy and there is a constellation of alternative solutions, with no reliable way to benchmark their diffusion across cities. We propose a method that treats dynamic ridesharing like a virus and (1) collects data from Google trends, as if it were a flu, (2) monitors its viral diffusion by implementing an epidemiological model, (3) infers strategic choices of a firm and represents them on a business model canvas. Our data analysis illustrates that (a) the Susceptible-Infected-Susceptible model performs better than the traditional S-shaped curve, and (b) our method allows us to estimate the evolution of new users and dropped users in every city.
This paper refers to how entrepreneurs learn in contexts of high uncertainty, by comparing two approaches to entrepreneurship (known as causation and effectuation), which are two alternatives to support decisions of startup creators. We propose to analyze the evolution of common ground between the startup creator and the surrounding environment, by measuring the mutual understanding and the resource shared among the entrepreneur and the startup team. Previous studies show that a team with high common ground is more efficient, but they do not describe how to monitor its progression in real-time. We propose a process and a tool that allows to collect relevant data and to represent the updated path of a startup team in less than two minutes. Our preliminary data collection allows inducing a set of possible paths that entrepreneurs can decide to follow to create their firm, and it shows how causation and effectuation complement each other.
This article is addressed to managers looking for a support tool to redefine the governance structure of their enterprises. Enterprise governance has gained importance after the accounting scandals of 2001, but it is often addressed either (a) as “corporate governance” or (b) as “information technology governance”. Consequently, a gap in the literature exists, since existing research focuses either (a) on compliance rather than performance or (b) on information technology rather than the overall set of processes. Moreover, a theory to design a support tool, which can be used to define the set of responsibilities and practices, is missing. Therefore, we propose a model that uses as kernel theory the notion of common grounding in communication. As constructs we implement the well-known notions of “process maturity” and “responsibility chart”. We instantiate our theoretical model into a set of testable artefacts and we assess their quality by using Roger’s five intrinsic characteristics of innovations that influence an individual’s decision to adopt or reject an innovation. The contributions of our study are two-fold: (1) on the one hand we offer a new theoretical model to allow scholars to study the different types of enterprise governance structures, whereas (2) on the other hand we present a tool for practitioners to design and assess their own enterprise governance structures.
In this study we propose a new methodology for entrepreneurial education and we present a set of items used to assess students acquisition of competences needed to perform innovation. Previous research has already proposed a set of methodology to perform business model innovation in spinoffs, but our approach is more comprehensive since it covers a larger spectrum of soft skills it compares the perception of team members and their coaches. We tested our model in an entrepreneurial course, which has been given for more than ten years. The results show a difference of perception among team members and coaches, even though they might indicate two sides of the same coins. Considerations for further research are discussed in the conclusions.
Nowadays intangible cultural heritage is undoubtedly significant for travel destinations. However, this was already the case at the time when Swiss tourism was born, as travel guides from that time prove: democracy and freedom, overwhelming alpine scenery, the (idealized) life of shepherds in the mountains, and the experience of (more or less traditional) celebrations have been reasons for travelling to Switzerland since the beginning of the 19th century. Compared to earlier times, the gastronomic dimension of travelling has become more important, and traditional dishes promise a regional – even exotic – feature. The advertisement of cultural tourism has also changed considerably, having grown in quantity and type of materials, as well as tourist information in print and on the internet. Today living traditions are often presented by tourism stakeholders as ahistorical phenomena. The alpine mountain landscapes, along with intangible cultural heritage are presented as peripheral spaces, in which people are able to opt out of modern, frantic, urban, everyday life. Tourists, often seeking their rural “roots”, allow the living traditions to delight them because of their “typical character” and their “authenticity”. Ultimately, the tourist gaze influences and changes the intangible cultural heritage.
The objective of this manifesto (as a result of the JITT workshop in June 2014) is to identify a list of pivotal research topics and issues in e-tourism. E-tourism can be seen as everything that happens electronically in the travel and tourism industry/experience; more formally it is defined as the design, implementation and application of IT and ecommerce solutions in the travel and tourism industry as well as the analysis of the impact of the respective technical and economic processes and market structures on all the involved actors and especially on the traveller’s experience. In tourism as an “information business”, Information Technology has always played an important role since the 1960s with the computerized reservation systems/global distribution systems; these were one of the first world-wide electronic networks. And since the beginning of the Web in the early 1990s, travel and tourism was and is a major application domain for Web-based services. As such, the domain is also a major driver of technological innovation. This manifesto provides guidelines on strategic research issues for the research community, but as such it is also conceived as a basis document for industry and policy makers.
The diffusion of Mobile Social Networking (MSN) is driven by the development of new devices and improved mobile broadband. The instantaneous nature of MSN exchanges enhances the value of data access for mobile users, which generates network externalities. We explore the presence of these externalities in the diffusion of MSN in France, the UK, the US and Germany. For these countries, we compare estimates of two diffusion models: the Bass model and the Bemmaor model. We find evidence of network externalities in MSN adoption for all of these countries, captured by the left skew of the cumulative adoption curves. This evidence is confirmed even after taking into account the contrasting effect of heterogeneity in the propensity to adopt. Our results provide content providers, operators and regulators with insights about marketing strategies, helping with policy formulation under the combined presence of network externalities and heterogeneity.
From a strategy perspective, the growth of social media accelerates the need for tourism organisations to constantly re-appraise their competitive strategies. This study contributes theoretically to the tourism performance literature by validating a new approach to examining the determinants of hotel performance. Drawing from and extending prior hotel determinants studies, this study uses artificial neural network model with ten input variables to investigate the relationships among user generated online reviews, hotel characteristics, and Revpar. The sample includes 235 Swiss hotels for the period 2008-2010, with 59,688 positive reviews from 69 online sources. The empirical findings reveal four hidden nodes that have a significant impact on RevPar. Three of these have negative impacts: room quality, positive regional review, hotel regional reputation, and regional room star rating has a positive impact. Further, the findings imply that there may be boundaries to reputational benefits for Swiss hotels.
