It Takes Two to Tango: Entrepreneurship and Creativity in Troubled Times – Vietnam 2012

Strikingly, most literature suggests that market competition will push firms to take creativity/innovation seriously as matter of death or survival. Using the data, we examined creativity methods (Napier and Nilsson, 2008; Napier, 2010) in conjunction with three influential cultural values – namely risk tolerance, relationship, and dependence on resources – to assess how they influence decisions of entrepreneurs.The primary objective of this study focuses on perceived values of entrepreneurship and creativity in business conducted within a turbulent environment. Our initial hypothesis is that a typical entrepreneurial process carries with it “creativity-enabling elements.” In a normal situation, when businesses focus more on optimizing their resources for commercial gains, perceptions about values of entrepreneurial creativity are usually vague. However, in difficult times and harsh competition, the difference between survival and failure may be creativity. This paper also examines many previous findings on both entrepreneurship and creativity and suggests a highly possible “organic growth” of creativity in an entrepreneurial environment and reinforcing value of entrepreneurship when creativity power is present. In other words, we see each idea reinforcing the other. We use data from a survey of sample Vietnamese firms during the chaotic economic year 2012 to learn about the ‘entrepreneurshipcreativity nexus.’ A data set of 137 responses qualified for a statistical examination was obtained from an online survey, which started on February 16 and ended May 24, 2012, sent to local entrepreneurs and corporate managers using social networks. The authors employed categorical data analysis (Agresti, 2002; Azen & Walker, 2011). Statistical analyses confirm that for business operation, the creativity and entrepreneurial spirit could hardly be separate; and, this is not only correct with entrepreneurial firm, but also well established companies. The single most important factor before business startup and during early implementation in Vietnam is what we call “connection/relationship.” However, businesspeople are increasingly aware of the need of creativity/innovation. In fact, we suggest that creativity and entrepreneurial spirit cannot be separated in entrepreneurial firms as well as established companies.

Coffee Filters and Creativity: The Value of Multiple Filters in the Creative Process

Creativity is often defined as developing something novel or new, that fits its context, and has value. To achieve this, the creative process itself has gained increasing attention as organizational leaders seek competitive advantages through developing new products, services, process, or business models. In this paper, we explore the notion of the creative process as including a series of “filters” or ways to process information as being a critical component of the creative process. We use the metaphor of coffee making and filters because many of our examples come from Vietnam, which is one of the world’s top coffee exporters and which has created a coffee culture rivaling many other countries. We begin with a brief review of the creative process its connection to information processing, propose a tentative framework for integrating the two ideas, and provide examples of how it might work. We close with implications for further practical and theoretical directions for this idea.

Resource Curse or Destructive Creation: A Tale of Crony Capitalism in Transition

This paper explores the “resource curse” problem as a counter-example of creative performance and innovation by examining reliance on capital and physical resources, showing the gap between expectations and ex-post actual performance became clearer under conditions of economic turmoil. The analysis employs logistic regressions with dichotomous response and predictor variables, showing significant results.Several findings that have use for economic and business practice follow. First, in a transition period, a typical characteristic of successful firms was their reliance on either capital resources or physical asset endowments, whereas the innovation factor was not significant.Second, poor-performing enterprises exhibited evidence of over reliance on both capital and physical assets. Third, firms that relied on both types of resources tended to downplay creative performance. Fourth, reliance on capital/physical resources and adoption of “creative discipline/innovations” tend to be mutually exclusive. In fact, some evidence suggests that firms face more acute problem caused by the law of diminishing returns in troubled times. The Vietnamese corporate sector’s addiction to resources may contribute to economic deterioration, through a downward spiral of lower efficiency leading to consumption of more resources. The “innovation factor” has not been tapped as a source of economic growth. The absence of innovations and creativity has made the notion of “resource curse” become identical to “destructive creation” implemented by ex-ante resource-rich firms, and worsened the problem of resource misallocation in transition turmoil.

Empirical Evidence on Relationships between Ex Ante Innovation Pursuit and Post-M&A Performance in the Vietnamese M&A Industry, 2005-2012

This research aims to communicate new results of empirical investigations to learn about the relationship between determination of controlling an acquired firm’s capital, assets and brand versus its capability of innovation and ex post performance of the rising Vietnamese M&A industry in the 2005-2012 period. The analysis employs a categorical data sample, consisting of 212 M&A cases reported by various information sources, and performs a number of logistic regressions with significant results as follows. Firstly, the overall relationship between pre-M&A pursuit’s determination on acquiring resources and performance of the post-M&A performance is found significant. There exist profound effects of a ‘size matters’ strategy in M&A ex post performance. When there is an overwhelming ‘resources acquiring’ strategy, the innovation factor’s explanatory power becomes negligible. Secondly, for negative performance of post-M&A operations, the emphasis on both capital base and asset size, and the brand value at the time of the M&A pursuit is the major explanation in the post-M&A period. So does the absence of innovation as a goal in the pre-M&A period. These two insights together are useful in careful M&A planning. Lastly, expensive pre-M&A expenditures tend to adversely affect the post-M&A performance. As a general conclusion, this study shows that innovation can be an important factor to pursue in M&A transitions, together with the need to emphasize and find capable and willing human capital, rather than a capital base (equity or debt) and existing values of the acquired brands.

Rent-seekers' lost El Dorado: Vietnam's financial turmoil, 2007-2013

In this investigation, we examined 256 cases of financial failure and fraud in Vietnam’s chaotic years from 2007 to 2013. Categorical data analyses suggest that the rent-seeking approach, or resource-based orientation, alone does not help explain the outcome of a business intention while the association between Orientation and Approach is the best-fit predictor. Rampant financial collapse not only increases the cost of funds but also erodes trust in the economy. Entrepreneurship development and creativity capacity building, in light of this, are necessary to improve socio-economic conditions and the environment. In this manuscript, we also introduce intuitive and cognitive factors to predict ex-ante outcome of a financing scheme.

Acculturation and Global Mindsponge

Much research on acculturation around global experiences has focused on the “type” of overseas experience—e.g. expatriate, repatriate, inpatriate, flexpatriate. The experiences of people in those categories and across various demographics (single/married/divorced; gender; sexual orientation) can differ dramatically. In addition, given the explosion of people working in global business, some global business citizens could well fit into several of those various types of experiences over the course of their careers. In this paper, we propose to push in a somewhat different direction and explore something that for us would be quite new. Rather than focusing on the various categories and their resulting experiences, we take a step back to consider what attributes and ways of thinking a global citizen may need to become better as a global business citizen, regardless of type of experience. The question is less one of “Who am I” than “How can I become better?”. Essentially, we would like to explore what might be required in moving the global citizen from thinking about “global mindset” to “global mindsponge.” When we hear the term mindset, we think of a certain way of thinking that stays rather fixed. So part of the challenge of the paper will be to define and examine what mindsponge might mean in the global context—what does it take to unlearn or squeeze out certain ways of thinking or behaving before absorbing and reshaping new ways of thinking and behaving? Moreover, how might that become part of a natural and regular way of operating, especially in a rapidly changing developing country like Vietnam, in particular? At this early stage, we think of mind sponge as a mechanism that encourages flexibility and receptiveness through a process of using multiple filters and more focus on creativity, or doing things differently to improve an organization or individual performance. Our goal is to develop a basic conceptual framework for “mindsponge,” drawing upon a broad literature review as well as several unstructured interviews, to assess whether the idea of mindsponge helps people perceive that they are more culturally versatile and culturally mobile, regardless of whether they work in or outside of their “home environment.” We hope this would enhance their ability to shape an emerging set of cultural values that erases the divide between “foreign” and “local” cultural differences that so often dominates in emerging economies.

Vietnam’s political economy: a discussion on the 1986-2016 period

Being a member of the thriving ASEAN and successfully implementing economic renovation (Doi Moi) have drawn the world's attention on Vietnam around the turn of the millennium. Some even expected a much faster pace of transformation, and renewed economic, AND political, reforms in Vietnam, or Doi Moi II.However, in the recent transition turmoil the Vietnamese economy has experienced some significant setback, and the solution for getting the country out of the downward spiral of low productivity, waning purchasing power and increasing costs of doing business cannot be worked out without addressing those political economy issues that have shaped the modus operandi of the nation's economic system. This article discusses the post-Doi Moi political economy in Vietnam, from 1986 to 2016 – when the 12th Congress of the Communist Party of Vietnam takes place – and prospects of reviving reform momentum in subsequent years.

Operational scales, sources of finance, and firms’ performance: evidence from Vietnamese longitudinal data

This study investigates a longitudinal dataset consisting of financial and operational data from 37 listed companies listed on Vietnamese stock market, covering the period 2004-13. By performing three main types of regression analysis - pooled OLS, fixed-effect and random-effect regressions - the investigation finds mixed results on the relationships between operational scales, sources of finance and firms' performance, depending on the choice of analytical model and use of independent/dependent variables. In most situation, fixed-effect models appear to be preferable, providing for reasonably consistent results. Toward the end, the paper offers some further explanation about the obtained insights, which reflect the nature of a business environment of a transition economy and an emerging market.

The Harsh Reality of Pursuing Innovations: Emerging Market Perspectives

This short conference paper serves as a distillation of a keynote address delivered at the the Second National Conference on Management and Higher Education Trends & Strategies for Management & Administration hosted by Bangkok-based Stamford International University (Thailand) on November 1, 2014.Innovation is discussed as the heart of entrepreneurial processes occurring in today's capitalist economic systems, including transition economies like China and Vietnam, which underscores economic competitiveness of firms and economies. But the innovation effort and process also face dilemma of "entrepreneurial curse of innovation". Advantages and disadvantages are weighed for a more balanced view, especially in the context of outnumbering SMEs and given existence of pitfalls and traps along the innovation path of development. Toward the end, the value of the market is once again stressed amid the concern of subjective assumption and illusion about availability of market opportunities in the mind of innovators, which may contrast totally with the dismal outcome the actual market realities may show ex post.

Be rich or don’t be sick: Estimating Vietnamese patients’ risk of falling into destitution

This paper represents the first research attempt to estimate the probabilities for Vietnamese patients to fall into destitution facing financial burdens occurring during their curative stay in hospital. The study models the risk against such factors as level of insurance coverage, location of patient, costliness of treatment, among others. The results show that very high probabilities of destitution, approximately 70%, apply to a large group of patients, who are nonresident, poor and ineligible for significant insurance coverage. There is also a probability of 58% that low-income patients who are seriously ill and face higher health care costs would quit their treatment. These facts will put Vietnamese government’s ambitious plan of increasing both universal coverage (UC) to 100% of expenditure and rate of UC beneficiaries to 100% at a serious test. The study also raises issues of asymmetric information and alternative financing options for the poor, who are most exposed to risk of destitution, following market-based health care reforms.

Creativity and entrepreneurial efforts in an emerging economy

While much research has focused on entrepreneurship and creativity in developed economies, the notions of both topics are still embryonic in many emerging economies. This paper focuses on entrepreneurs in one such economy, Vietnam, to understand the perceptions of entrepreneurs about the role that innovation and creativity may play in their own entrepreneurial ventures and success. This is important because before reaping benefits from entrepreneurship, entrepreneurs need to decide when and on what conditions they start based on their calculations of required resources and predictions of likely outcomes. The research also sought to understand how "creativity," broadly applied ("innovation" and "creative performance") affects the ways that entrepreneurs think about and anticipate their own success and decisions. In essence, the study suggests that the higher the entrepreur’s creativity is, the more likely she or he is to start a new business and believe success will result. Future research could examine whether history, industry and geographic location matter in entrepreneurs’ perceptions as well as whether transition/emerging economies like Vietnam may have different views altogether about the two key concepts.

Resources, experience and perseverance in entrepreneurs' perceived likelihood of success in an emerging economy

This paper introduces new results obtained from a statistical investigation into a 3071-observation data set collected from a Vietnamese nationwide entrepreneurship survey. From established relationships, such factors as preparedness, financial resources and participation in social networks are confirmed to have significant effects on entrepreneurial decisions. Entrepreneurs, both financially constrained and unconstrained, who have a business plan tend to start their entrepreneurial ventures earlier. Also, financial constraints have a profound impact on the entrepreneurial decisions. When perceiving the likelihood of success to be high, an entrepreneur shows the tendency for prompt action on business ideas. But when seeing the risk of prolonging the waiting time to first revenue, a prospective entrepreneur would be more likely to wait for more favorable conditions despite the vagueness of "favorable". Additionally, empirical computations indicate that there is a 41.3% probability that an extant entrepreneur who is generating revenue sees high chance of success. Past work and entrepreneurial experiences also have positive impacts on both the entrepreneurial decisions and perceived chance of success.