Sylvain Bureau

Entrepreneurship in the Informal Economy: Why it Matters:

The informal economy is generating 10–20% of GDP in developed countries. It takes many forms and is difficult to measure, but has nevertheless a permanent and widely acknowledged characteristic: strong entrepreneurial dynamism. However, research seldom focuses on this aspect. This paper addresses this gap by offering a conceptual framework for entrepreneurial activities within the informal economy. The authors also discuss how crossing canonical entrepreneurship models and theories with atypical empirical contexts – such as, for instance, deprived neighbourhoods – can help consolidate existing evidence and/or, on the contrary, unveil myths and even generate new hypotheses and innovative and stimulating management methods.

Adaptive knowledge-based system for health care applications with RFID-generated information

Health care organizations are under increased pressure to continually improve their operational efficiency while simultaneously decreasing the overall operating costs with no appreciable degradation in the delivered quality of health care. Given the nature of such an environment where lives are at stake, it is natural to operate under a larger safety factor where risks are kept close to their necessary minimum. RFID tags are increasingly being used in health care organizations to reduce errors and to generally improve the effectiveness of the core processes. We develop an adaptive knowledge-based system framework for health care and illustrate the proposed framework using three example applications from the French health care environment. Specifically, we consider management of bottled gas delivery as well as tracking and tracing surgical equipment and prosthetic ancillaries within a health care environment using the proposed framework with item-level information generated through RFID tags. We use simulation analyses to study the underlying dynamics.

Radio frequency identification: a case for health care

The use of RFID tags in healthcare applications has been gaining momentum over the past decade. This is partly due to recent advances in information technology and the need to reduce errors while simultaneously improving the efficiency of the system. We, at the RFID European Lab, have been studying various aspects of RFID implementations in healthcare environment over the past several years. The potential for RFID implementations in healthcare environment is enormous. We consider several such opportunities and identify possible extensions.

Piracy as an avant-gardist deviance: how do entrepreneurial pirates contribute to the wealth or misery of nations?

In the literature, piracy is either described as destructive or creative for the wealth of a nation. In this paper, we try to overcome this contradiction by making the following assumption: piracy would be an avant-gardist deviance which generates two dynamics, either conformist or subversive. In the first scenario, the dividing line which is drawn between pirates and society is strengthened to the point where pirates are assimilated to standard criminals. In the second scenario, pirates develop subversive activities that challenge status quo and, when they succeed, transform the rules and values of society. In this case, pirates are no longer deviants; quite the contrary, they are perceived as creative entrepreneurs. This framework provides a complementary view of Baumols perspective to understand how rules can change and generate productive, unproductive or destructive entrepreneurship.

RFID-Embedded Decision Support for Tracking Surgical Equipment

Healthcare and supply chain management have recently been the two most active areas for RFID applications. The healthcare environment is a natural fit for generating and utilizing instance-level data for decision support. We consider a scenario from the French healthcare environment involving tracking and tracing of surgical equipment within and among hospitals and develop a knowledge-based system for decision support that helps improve the overall performance of the surgical instrument management process while reducing errors. We illustrate the process through the developed healthcare knowledge-based system and evaluate its performance.

Learning subversion in the business school: An ‘improbable’ encounter

Entrepreneurs develop activities that aim to challenge the status quo, break rules and subvert systems. How can such a thing be taught/learnt in a business school? This article contributes to current debates within entrepreneurship studies that seek to address the subversive nature of entrepreneurial activity. It presents an ethnographic case study of an entrepreneurship course that attempts to re-define the teaching and learning boundaries of subversive activities in a leading European business school. Drawing on the theory of Bakhtin, which has thus far been overlooked in entrepreneurship studies, we unpick the potentiality of art practices in the learning and experiencing of the subversive dimension of entrepreneurship. We employ the concept of ‘dialogical pedagogy’ in order to address calls for more ‘relationally experienced’ approaches to management learning that foreground the conflicts, emotional strains and uncertainties that are embedded in the fabric of entrepreneurial practice. We show how ‘subversive dialogues’ are enacted between students and teachers as they engage in the learning process, and we discuss implications for critical entrepreneurship teaching in an increasingly commoditized education environment.

Small Firms and the Growth Stage: Can Entrepreneurship Education Programmes Be Supportive?.

Whilst entrepreneurship education is booming, it focuses largely on nascent entrepreneurs and company creation. In contrast, a major challenge in small business entrepreneurship is growth. The authors first position growth and its barriers in small firms in the context of current theory and practice in entrepreneurship education: from this analysis, they identify prerequisites and drivers for growth-related entrepreneurship training for small businesses. A pedagogical experiment focused on growth, targeted at a mixed audience of small firm entrepreneurs and graduate students enrolled in an entrepreneurship major in a business school, is then described. The experiment is presented as an integrated process model. The authors suggest that such programmes could be developed in three main directions: (a) changing the culture of business schools so that they become less individual-centred and more open and value-creating for their students and the external community; (b) strongly and regularly involving entrepreneurship students in the realities of business beyond start-up; and (c) making systematic and sophisticated use of the Internet for enhancing growth through e-learning and community-building.

Performance Drivers for RFID-Generated Item-Level Information in the Oil Industry

Radio frequency identification (RFID)-generated item-level information provides interesting perspectives to increase operational performance in the oil and natural gas industry. However, costs and benefits of information systems with low-granular item-level information can be very different depending on various factors. We consider item-level information applications, especially RFID solutions, within the oil industry. We discuss why the incorporation of RFID tags in this system cannot be isolated and studied and how several related dimensions need to be considered. Among them, we detail characteristics like item-level identification, the rewritable and contact-less information functions, the existence of distributed sensors, and the overall network architecture. We consider the solutions used or potentially useful in the oil industry and evaluate three types of performance drivers (technical, operational, and strategic) related to these systems. Based on these, we propose five typologies—related to tubes, containers, other items, processes, and people—to characterize various critical empirical scenarios to identify the conditions under which item-level information is valuable in the oil industry. We then illustrate these typologies through potential applications.

Decision Support with RFID for Health Care

The health care environment is rife with issues that are urgently in need of solutions that can readily be addressed using appropriate tools for decision support. Recent developments in RFID technology facilitate this process through continuous provision of instantaneous item-level information. We consider an existing decision support framework and instantiate this framework using an example from the health care domain using RFID-generated item-level information. We illustrate the process by developing a health care knowledge-based system and evaluate its performance.

Developing knowledge from entrepreneurial actions – toward a taxonomy

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to enrich our understanding of entrepreneurs’ daily deeds, tasks and activities. The research investigates the ways in which entrepreneurs seize opportunities and gain knowledge from the start to the expansion of their ventures. Design/methodology/approach Two case studies were developed based on a longitudinal fine-grained analysis of two ventures over two years. Entrepreneurs’ success and learning were modeled in line with grounded theory methodology. Data were collected from both primary and secondary sources in the form of semi-structured interviews and archival documentation. Findings The authors develop an original conceptual framework that consists of ten entrepreneurial learning opportunities and four knowledge development modes. There are ten generic types of actions that entrepreneurs take. There are then four distinctive ways to transform these experiences into knowledge. The model is assessed in absolute terms and relatively to existing taxonomies. Research limitations/implications The findings question the premises on which entrepreneurial learning research traditionally relies. Opportunities can be open-ended rather than purely instrumental. Similarly, knowledge can be emerging as much as it can be espoused. This opens-up space for further research. Practical implications For practitioners, the findings suggest new ways for making sense of the daily experience of their entrepreneurial endeavor. The learning modes suggested can be used by coaches and mentors when helping entrepreneurs in their venture. Originality/value The research provides empirical evidence of what entrepreneurs do. This may help cast traditional debates about what there is to do (logical necessity) and what there is to know (a priori knowledge) in a new light.