Entrepreneurship education: revisiting our role and its purpose

This paper seeks to focus on two questions. First, what value is created by entrepreneurship education? Second, how could any such value be created? The aim therefore is to go beyond any assumed notion that entrepreneurship education is beneficial to students in higher education, to question its underlying value. Design/methodology/approach – A critical realist approach is used to discuss the ontological nature of entrepreneurship education. Specifically, the process through which enterprise knowledge is developed and used by students in higher education. This research is based on a single-site case study at UTAS with the data collected by the author and complemented by other recent work that sought to empirically consider the notion of student value from entrepreneurship education within the same (UTAS) context. Findings – The paper argues that students in higher education understand quite well the limitations of the knowledge they develop about entrepreneurship. That they (the educators) need to better understand the students' journeys so that they can better develop learning environments within which the students' personal development can be advanced. Practical implications – The degree to which educators understand their limitations and the limitations of their students as potential entrepreneurs is critical to maximizing the likely value of entrepreneurship education in higher education. Originality/value – The paper provides a unique way of understanding the process of learning to be entrepreneurial in higher education. As such it offers an alternative way to understand how educators can redefine their importance in the provision of entrepreneurship education. It also highlights the likely limitations of student advancement in the domain of entrepreneurship education in higher education.

Connecting people and ideas from around the world: global innovation platforms for next-generation ecology and beyond

We present a case for using Global Community Innovation Platforms (GCIPs), an approach to improve innovation and knowledge exchange in international scientific communities through a common and open online infrastructure. We highlight the value of GCIPs by focusing on recent efforts targeting the ecological sciences, where GCIPs are of high relevance given the urgent need for interdisciplinary, geographical, and cross-sector collaboration to cope with growing challenges to the environment as well as the scientific community itself. Amidst the emergence of new international institutions, organizations, and meetings, GCIPs provide a stable international infrastructure for rapid and long-term coordination that can be accessed by any individual. This accessibility can be especially important for researchers early in their careers. Recent examples of early-career GCIPs complement an array of existing options for early-career scientists to improve skill sets, increase academic and social impact, and broaden career opportunities. We provide a number of examples of existing early-career initiatives that incorporate elements from the GCIPs approach, and highlight an in-depth case study from the ecological sciences: the International Network of Next-Generation Ecologists (INNGE), initiated in 2010 with support from the International Association for Ecology and 20 member institutions from six continents.

Contemplating an evolutionary approach to entrepreneurship

This paper explores that application of evolutionary approaches to the study of entrepreneurship. It is argued an evolutionary theory of entrepreneurship must give as much concern to the foundations of evolutionary thought as it does the nature entrepreneurship. The central point being that we must move beyond a debate or preference of the natural selection and adaptationist viewpoints. Only then can the interrelationships between individuals, firms, populations and the environments within which they interact be better appreciated.

A contemporary approach to entrepreneurship education

Entrepreneurial education is the process of providing individuals with the ability to recognise commercial opportunities and the insight, self-esteem, knowledge and skills to act on them. It includes instruction in opportunity recognition, commercialising a concept, marshalling resources in the face of risk, and initiating a business venture. It also includes instruction in traditional business disciplines such as management, marketing, information systems and finance. The purpose of this paper is to describe the design and introduction of a new program in Entrepreneurship at the University of Tasmania. Within this program the process and responsibility of learning has largely been reversed through the process of student centred learning. This method of learning represents a challenging departure from the traditional mainstream teaching practices. In considering the benefits achievable from this teaching method, this paper also considers the difficulties in transferring increased responsibility to students to manage their futures.

Critical reckonings : Global art and art history after the West and Eurocentrism

Review of Paul Wood (2013), Western Art and the Wider World. Wiley-Blackwell : Chichester, United Kingdom.

The global distribution of Banana bunchy top virus reveals little evidence for frequent recent, human-mediated long distance dispersal events

Banana bunchy top virus (BBTV; family Nanoviridae, genus Babuvirus) is a multi-component single-stranded DNA virus, which infects banana plants in many regions of the world, often resulting in large-scale crop losses. Weanalyzed 171 banana leaf samples from fourteen countries and recovered, cloned, and sequenced 855 complete BBTV components including ninety-four full genomes. Importantly, full genomes were determined from eight countries, where previously no full genomes were available (Samoa, Burundi, Republic of Congo, Democratic Republic of Congo, Egypt, Indonesia, the Philippines, and the USA [HI]). Accounting for recombination and genome component reassortment, we examined the geographic structuring of global BBTV populations to reveal that BBTV likely originated in Southeast Asia, that the current global hotspots of BBTV diversity are Southeast Asia/Far East and India, and that BBTV populations circulating elsewhere in the world have all potentially originated from infrequent introductions. Most importantly, we find that rather than the current global BBTV distribution being due to increases in human-mediated movements of bananas over the past few decades, it is more consistent with a pattern of infrequent introductions of the virus to different parts of the world over the past 1,000 years.

Claiming the future of enterprise education

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to highlight the importance of enterprise educators working collectively to develop a unique scholarship of teaching. The authors argue that the time is right for educators in this domain to secure the future of enterprise education. Acknowledging the debate between "entrepreneurship education" and "enterprise education," the authors set out to develop a unification model through which educators can act collectively to demonstrate the leadership required to secure the autonomy of the domain. Design/methodology/approach The authors bring several pertinent ideas (pedagogical content knowledge, heutagogy and academagogy) to the attention of academics/researchers involved in the design, development and delivery of enterprise education. The innovative approach to combine these ideas with prevailing thinking in this domain has facilitated a model for collective action. Findings It is at the level of the shared philosophical positions that the authors can best cooperate to shape the future direction of enterprise education. The authors argue against dwelling upon how the authors differ in terms of context and process issues. Such matters can only fragment the theory and practice of enterprise education. The authors need to develop greater appreciation of shared philosophical positions and leverage this understanding into a unique scholarship of teaching, specific to enterprise education. Practical implications – As enterprise education becomes more global, it is also likely to become more attractive to business schools that long for a new positioning tool in the increasingly overcrowded markets that they compete in. Originality/value This paper encourages enterprise educators to reflect upon the knowledge they hold of their own practice, and that of other enterprise educators.

Understanding local processes: Contemplating franchisation

Increasing, there is growing acknowledgement of the importance of franchising within all modern global economies. Despite this, little is understood with regards the actual impact of franchising on local economies. This research aims to reframe the contribution of franchising by considering the process of franchisation. This study employed a mixed-method approach, utilizing critical realism to facilitate an outcomes-based explanation of firm survival. The focus of the study was upon generative mechanisms that were assumed to give rise to particular events from which (pizza) firm survival was enhanced vis-à-vis all other community members. A database of 2440 firms (or in excess of 21,000 company years) combined with archival records, interviews and the researcher’s observations provided the researcher with access to the nature of interaction occurring between firms. It was found that the survival of local firms was influenced positively by the day-to-day actions of franchise operators. However, it is argued that to understand how any such advantage my fall to local independent firms, we need too better appreciate the multitude of local processes related to such industries. This research re-examines several ecological concepts with the view of enabling a clearer investigation of underlying local processes. It also represents an authentic autecological approach to the study of firms.

Graduate entrepreneurship: More than child's play

Purpose With the unbridled demand for entrepreneurship in higher education, the purpose of this paper is to identify how pedagogy can inhibit students in making the transition to graduate entrepreneurship. Along the way, the concept of what and who is a graduate entrepreneur is challenged. Design/methodology/approach The paper reports upon the pragmatic development of enterprise programmes in Ireland and Australia. Despite different starting points, a convergence of purpose as to what can be realistically expected of enterprise education has emerged. Findings This study reinforces the shift away from commercialisation strategies associated with entrepreneurial action towards developing essential life skills as core to any university programme and key to developing entrepreneurial capacity among students. Despite similar government intervention, university policy and student demand for practical-based entrepreneurial learning in both cases, graduates tend not to engage in immediate entrepreneurial action due to the lack of fit between their programme of study and individual resource profiles, suggesting that graduate entrepreneurship is more than child's play. Practical implications There are practical implications for educationalists forced to consider the effectiveness of their enterprise teachings, and cautionary evidence for those charged with providing support services for graduates. Originality/value Given the evolutionary approaches used at the University of Tasmania to develop students as "reasonable adventurers" and at the University of Ulster to develop "the enterprising mindset" the paper presents evidence of the need to allow students the opportunity to apply entrepreneurial learning to their individual life experiences in order to reasonably venture into entrepreneurial activity.

The status of entrepreneurship education in Australian universities

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to provide an analytical overview of the current state of entrepreneurship education (EE) in Australia; placing emphasis on programs, curricula and entrepreneurship ecosystems. Design/methodology/approach The authors performed a contextual review of the literature by delineating entrepreneurship education programs, the entrepreneurial ecosystem and EE learning and teaching. The review was enhanced by a systematic collection of data from higher education institutions web sites, depicting the prevailing situation of entrepreneurship programs, courses, subjects and their ecosystems. Findings A number of interesting findings emerged from this study. From a curricular perspective, Australian universities offer 584 subjects related to entrepreneurship. This includes dominance at undergraduate level, representing 24 minors/majors and specializations in entrepreneurship. In total, 135 entrepreneurship ecosystems were identified. Research limitations/implications This paper presents findings from university web sites and as such requires introspection to validate individual university offerings. Practical implications The study provides the status of EE in Australia, and may guide academic and policy decision makers to further develop entrepreneurship initiatives. Originality/value This paper provides the first analytical overview of EE in Australia and paves the way for further evaluation.

Construction of a global map of human gene expression : the process, tools and analysis

This thesis studies human gene expression space using high throughput gene expression data from DNA microarrays. In molecular biology, high throughput techniques allow numerical measurements of expression of tens of thousands of genes simultaneously. In a single study, this data is traditionally obtained from a limited number of sample types with a small number of replicates. For organism-wide analysis, this data has been largely unavailable and the global structure of human transcriptome has remained unknown. This thesis introduces a human transcriptome map of different biological entities and analysis of its general structure. The map is constructed from gene expression data from the two largest public microarray data repositories, GEO and ArrayExpress. The creation of this map contributed to the development of ArrayExpress by identifying and retrofitting the previously unusable and missing data and by improving the access to its data. It also contributed to creation of several new tools for microarray data manipulation and establishment of data exchange between GEO and ArrayExpress. The data integration for the global map required creation of a new large ontology of human cell types, disease states, organism parts and cell lines. The ontology was used in a new text mining and decision tree based method for automatic conversion of human readable free text microarray data annotations into categorised format. The data comparability and minimisation of the systematic measurement errors that are characteristic to each lab- oratory in this large cross-laboratories integrated dataset, was ensured by computation of a range of microarray data quality metrics and exclusion of incomparable data. The structure of a global map of human gene expression was then explored by principal component analysis and hierarchical clustering using heuristics and help from another purpose built sample ontology. A preface and motivation to the construction and analysis of a global map of human gene expression is given by analysis of two microarray datasets of human malignant melanoma. The analysis of these sets incorporate indirect comparison of statistical methods for finding differentially expressed genes and point to the need to study gene expression on a global level.

Global Media and National Policies : The Return of the State

Conventional wisdom views globalization as a process that heralds the diminishing role or even 'death' of the state and the rise of transnational media and transnational consumption, that defy state control or regulation. This book questions these assumptions and shows that the nation-state never left and is still a force to be reckoned with.

Constructing Ethical Patterns in Times of Globalization : Hans Küng's Global Ethic Project and Beyond

The purpose of this study is to evaluate contemporary philosophical models for global ethics in light of the Catholic theologian Hans Küng s Global Ethic Project (Projekt Weltethos). Küng s project starts with the motto, No survival without world ethos. No global peace without peace between religions. I will use the philosophically multidimensional potential of Projekt Weltethos in terms of its possible philosophical interpretations to evaluate the general discussion of global ethics within political philosophy today. This is important in its own right, but also because through it, opportunities will emerge to articulate Küng s relatively general argument in a way that leaves less room for mutually contradictory concretizations of what global ethics ultimately should be like. The most important question in this study is the problem of religious and ideological exclusivism and its relation to the ethically consistent articulation of global ethics. I will first explore the question of the role of religion as the basis for ethics in general and what Küng may mean by his claim that only the unconditional can oblige unconditionally. I will reconstruct two different overall philosophical interpretations of the relationship between religious faith and human rationality, each having two different sub-divisions: a liberal interpretation amounts to either a Kantian-Scheiermacherian or a Jaspersian view, whereas what I call postliberal interpretation amounts to either an Aristotelian-Thomistic or an Augustinian view. Thereafter, I will further clarify how Küng views the nature of ethics beyond the question of its principal foundation in religious faith: Küng searches for a middle way between consequentialist and non-consequentialist ethics, a way in which the latter dimension has the final stake. I will then set out to concretize further this more or less general notion of the theoretical potential of Projekt Weltethos in terms of certain precise philosophico-political models. I categorize these models according to their liberal or postliberal orientation. The liberal concretization leads me to consider a wide spectrum of post-Kantian and post-Hegelian models from Rawls to Derrida, while the alternative concretization opens up my ultimate argument in favor of a postliberal type of modus vivendi. I will suggest that the only theoretically and practically plausible way to promote global ethics, in itself a major imperative today, is the recognition of a fundamental and necessary contest between mutually exclusive ideologies in the public sphere. On this basis I will proceed to my postliberal proposal, namely, that a constructive and peaceful encountering of exclusive difference as an ethical vantage point for an intercultural and inter-religious peace dialogue is the most acute challenge for global ethics today.

The 2015 IWGDF guidance documents on prevention and management of foot problems in diabetes: Development of an evidence-based global consensus

Foot problems complicating diabetes are a source of major patient suffering and societal costs. Investing in evidence-based, internationally appropriate diabetic foot care guidance is likely among the most cost-effective forms of healthcare expenditure, provided it is goal-focused and properly implemented. The International Working Group on the Diabetic Foot (IWGDF) has been publishing and updating international Practical Guidelines since 1999. The 2015 updates are based on systematic reviews of the literature, and recommendations are formulated using the Grading of Recommendations Assessment Development and Evaluation system. As such, we changed the name from 'Practical Guidelines' to 'Guidance'. In this article we describe the development of the 2015 IWGDF Guidance documents on prevention and management of foot problems in diabetes. This Guidance consists of five documents, prepared by five working groups of international experts. These documents provide guidance related to foot complications in persons with diabetes on: prevention; footwear and offloading; peripheral artery disease; infections; and, wound healing interventions. Based on these five documents, the IWGDF Editorial Board produced a summary guidance for daily practice. The resultant of this process, after reviewed by the Editorial Board and by international IWGDF members of all documents, is an evidence-based global consensus on prevention and management of foot problems in diabetes. Plans are already under way to implement this Guidance. We believe that following the recommendations of the 2015 IWGDF Guidance will almost certainly result in improved management of foot problems in persons with diabetes and a subsequent worldwide reduction in the tragedies caused by these foot problems.

The use of metabolomics to monitor simultaneous changes in metabolic variables following supramaximal low volume high intensity exercise

High Intensity Exercise (HIE) stimulates greater physiological remodeling when compared to workload matched low-moderate intensity exercise. This study utilized an untargeted metabolomics approach to examine the metabolic perturbations that occur following two workload matched supramaximal low volume HIE trials. In a randomized order, 7 untrained males completed two exercise protocols separated by one week; 1) HIE150%: 30 x 20s cycling at 150% VO2peak, 40s passive rest; 2) HIE300%: 30 x 10s cycling at 300% VO2peak, 50 s passive rest. Total exercise duration was 30 minutes for both trials. Blood samples were taken at rest, during and immediately following exercise and at 60 minutes post exercise. Gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) analysis of plasma identified 43 known metabolites of which 3 demonstrated significant fold changes (HIE300% compared to the HIE150% value) during exercise, 14 post exercise and 23 at the end of the recovery period. Significant changes in plasma metabolites relating to lipid metabolism [fatty acids: dodecanoate (p=0.042), hexadecanoate (p=0.001), octadecanoate (p=0.001)], total cholesterol (p=0.001), and glycolysis [lactate (p=0.018)] were observed following exercise and during the recovery period. The HIE300% protocol elicited greater metabolic changes relating to lipid metabolism and glycolysis when compared to HIE150% protocol. These changes were more pronounced throughout the recovery period rather than during the exercise bout itself. Data from the current study demonstrate the use of metabolomics to monitor intensity-dependent changes in multiple metabolic pathways following exercise. The small sample size indicates a need for further studies in a larger sample cohort to validate these findings.