Artificiality and Sustainability in Entrepreneurship Exploring the Unforeseen, and Paving the Way to a Sustainable Future

This open access edited volume explores the past, present, and future of artificiality and sustainability in entrepreneurship – the unforeseen consequences and ways to advance to a sustainable future. In particular, it connects artificiality, sustainability and entrepreneurship, intertwining artificial with the specific phenomenon of those novel digital technologies that provoke continuous and significant change in our lives and business. Unlike digital entrepreneurship research, which focuses on digital technology development and management, this book covers processes and mechanisms of sustainable adaptability of entrepreneurs, the business logic of start-ups, and the collaborative behaviours under the mass digital transformation, including the prevalence of artificial intelligence.

Some of the questions that this book answers are as follows: How has entrepreneurship reacted to such challenges previously? What lessons have been learned and need to be carried forward? How can entrepreneurship and the artefacts of entrepreneurship respond to current challenges? What should be the mindset of the entrepreneur to assure sustainable adaptation? How to embrace and embed the new business logic?

Part I: Introduction.- Artificiality and Sustainability in Entrepreneurship. Exploring the unforeseen and paving the way to the sustainable future.- Part II: Embracing digital transformation and opening up new business opportunities.- Digitalization and its impact on the internationalization models of SMEs.- Born digitals: understanding the sustainable competitive advantage across different markets.- The Value Chain Configuration in the Digital Entrepreneurship Age: Location Decisions and the Paradoxical Role of Digital Technologies.- Entrepreneurial Thinking and Acting in the Context of Great Transformations in Germany – How to Approach Entrepreneurial Personalities and Organizations in Order to Actively Shape Ongoing and Future Transformational Challenges?.- Part III: Building new capabilities and learning mechanisms to enhance competitiveness in the market predominated by the artificial environments.- The Evolution of the Dynamic Capabilities Framework.- Transforming a Highly Tactile Entrepreneurship Course “Ideas to Innovation” to an Entirely Online Delivery Model: Lessons for Theory and Practise.- Applying Eye Tracking Technology in The Field of Entrepreneurship Education.- Part IV: Setting new imperatives to related with the customers and stakeholders in the ecosystems.- Solutions of brand posts on Facebook to increase customer engagement using the Random Forest prediction model.- Entrepreneurial University and Social Innovation Ecosystems: Do They support HEIs knowledge-based Economic Development?.- Cultivating the impact of sustainable entrepreneurship – a discussion of upscaling approaches in sustainable entrepreneurial ecosystems.

Richard Adams is Reader in Entrepreneurship at the Bettany Centre for Entrepreneurship at Cranfield School of Management (UK). His research and teaching interests focus on responsible innovation and entrepreneurship, particularly in the context of start-ups, digital transformation and the sustainable organization. Richard is Specialty Chief Editor Blockchain for Good for the journal Frontiers in Blockchain and a Consulting Editor for International Journal of Management Reviews. His work has been widely published in international journals, including the International Journal of Operations and Production, International Journal of Management Reviews, Journal of Cleaner Production, Technovation, Research Technology Management, Strategic Change, and International Journal of Production Research. 

Dietmar Grichnik is Chair Professor of Entrepreneurship and Director of the Institute of Technology Management at the University of St. Gallen (Switzerland). As Co-Director he is part of the Global Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation and was elected as Dean of the School of Management. He has published 12 books and more than 200 articles in leading journals such as Harvard Business Review, Entrepreneurship Theory & Practice, the Journal of Business Venturing, the Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, the Journal of Management Studies, Long Range Planning, MIT Sloan Management Review, Research Policy and Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal. He served as an associate editor for the R&D Management journal and reviews currently on the editorial boards of the Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship Theory and Practices, among others.

Asta Pundziene is a Professor of Strategic Management and Organizational Psychology in the School of Economics and Business, Kaunas University of Technology (Lithuania). She is also a visiting scholar at the Institute of Business Innovation, Haas Business School, UC Berkeley, since 2018. Asta has more than 15 years of experience in executive management of research and innovation at different universities serving as a dean and vice president of research and innovation. She co-founded Start-up Space, the first academic incubator in Lithuania, and built an entrepreneurship ecosystem. She is a founding editor of the Baltic Journal of Management. Asta published more than 40 papers in leading journals such as Technological Forecasting and Social Change, California Management Review, European Journal of Innovation Management and others. She also leads national and international research and innovation projects in entrepreneurship and digital healthcare management.

Christine Volkmann is Chair Professor of Entrepreneurship and Economic Development and holds the UNESCO Chair of Entrepreneurship and Intercultural Management at the Schumpeter School of Business and Economics at the University of Wuppertal. In 2011 she initiated the foundation of the interdisciplinary Jackstädt Research Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation and has functioned as its executive spokeswoman since then. In 2018 she co-founded a university-wide, regional innovation lab. For several years she has been a jury member on Germany’s most prestigious entrepreneurial awards, such as the EY Entrepreneur of the Year and the Gründerpreis NRW. Christine Volkmann has served in a number of senior advisory positions, among which were the European Foundation for Entrepreneurship Research and UNCTAD and was appointed co-speaker of the German UNESCO chairs in 2019.