Editor's note.

It is a real pleasure to present the first special issue of ABR with theme "Entrepreneurship and Innovation". The call for papers for the special issue got a tremendous response and we received papers from different domains of Entrepreneurship and Innovation. The number of total submissions was 90, out of which 55 research papers were processed for review after initial screening. Present issue covers the important domains of entrepreneurship and innovation including innovation in education, social entrepreneurship, entrepreneurship challenges, women entrepreneurship, SMEs and micro financing, Opportunities and entrepreneurship Failure etc. Trust, the issue will serve as an incredible document to the entrepreneurs, aspirants, policy makers, educationists as well as researchers and practitioners.

Scanning the issue, innovative paradigm shift in education has been nicely presented in the first article. Author with his rich experience in the education has drafted a complete roadmap for the futuristic innovative needs in the education. On one side, the author has presented the synergistic link of nanoscience, whereas the integrations of education and research has been given a major emphasis on the other. A real change in the education system has been foreseen by the author to generate the creativity and innovation loaded human resources. Veeraraghavan has illustrated the relationship between entrepreneurship and innovation in the second paper. Theories of entrepreneurship have been analyzed in detail to prove a noteworthy relationship with innovation. Jain on the other hand has discovered the concept of social entrepreneurship in his article. A study has been conducted on nine pioneer social organizations to propose a framework for social entrepreneurship.

Rena has analysed the entrepreneurship and development challenges in Papua New Guinea (PNG) with special focus on the rural area. Author has been able to outline the future prospects for increasing entrepreneurial activities as well as policy development. The work has a lot of relevance to the developing countries. A study on the employee emancipation in SME's has been presented by Dave and Praveeer. The descriptive research focuses on Six parameters for entrepreneurs and ten parameters of employees to measure the opinion of both the stakeholders on organisations climate. Authors observe that the entrepreneurs depict their firms as learning organisations, whereas the employees feel that there is only little scope of flexibility. Authors have focused that the employee participation through empowerment is a pre-requisite for organisation development. Continuing the behavioural demonstrations, Srinath and Supriya has compared the entrepreneurs in the manufacturing and service sectors to understand the intensity of entrepreneurial characteristics. In another behavioural study, Tanwar has investigated the factors resisting the change implementation in business units of southern Rajasthan.

There are two articles relating the micro finance to entrepreneurship. Basargekar has analyzed the relationship between micro-entrepreneurship and economic empowerment of women by looking into actual utilization of loan taken by Self Help Group (SHG) members through microfinance programme. The study has been conducted on the 217 SHG members of the microfinance programme launched by Forbes Marshall Company in India. Author has advocated a strong relationship between micro entrepreneurship and economic empowerment with the results of the study. Amudha and Banu on the other hand have focused on the elevation of social entrepreneurship by empowering the women through micro finance. The work has again been done on the Self Help Groups. Authors have concluded that emancipation of women in society will ensure to develop social network among the people and build socially, economically and technologically a strong nation. There are there more papers focusing on the women entrepreneurs. Authors have nicely analyzed the opportunities, motivational factors and problems of women entrepreneurs. The samples have been collected in different reasons by different authors. Thus a collection of there three articles, itself presents a complete picture of the complete Indian scenario.

Working on a different idea, Ansari and Mohammed have analyzed the role of venture capital in innovation and entrepreneurship. Authors have used the primary data to analyze the different kind of assistance by venture capital. Touching another important aspect, Subramanian and Vinothkumar have examined the types of career intentions shown by the failed entrepreneurs and the extent to which entrepreneurs cope with such adverse business failures. The work has significant implications in improving the internal strength and capacities among the failed entrepreneurs. A case study on "Drishtee Foundation" has also been included in the present issue and the entrepreneurial strategies in the rural development have been nicely analyzed by the authors.

I am eagerly waiting for the valuable feedback of readers on this special issue. Also, we wish to plan more special issues in near future with your feedback.

Prof. Vikas Kumar

Editor, ABR

[email protected]

Article Details

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Author:	Kumar, Vikas
Publication:	Asia-Pacific Business Review
Date:	Jan 1, 2009
Words:	763
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