Business Inspiration was a short, action-centred leadership and innovation development programme designed for owners and managers of smaller firms to address business survival and repositioning needs arising from the UK's economic downturn. The article examines the design and delivery of Business Inspiration and the impact of the programme on…

Agriculture is the mainstay of Kenya's economy and contributes significantly to the gross domestic product. A great majority of this contribution comes from smallholder farmers who paradoxically face numerous obstacles ranging from a lack of support structures to poor policies and inadequate resources. A major challenge is assisting these farmers…

The purpose of this paper was to evaluate the impact of Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer Research (STTR) grant programs of 5 federal agencies National Institutes of Health (NIH), National Science Foundation (NSF), U.S. Department of Education (USDE), U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), and…

Purpose: While information and communications technology provides new opportunities for supporting mentoring, there is a need to explore how effectively these potential benefits are being realized. This paper seeks to evaluate the effectiveness of a program in the small business context as a basis for proposing determinants of e-mentoring…

Purpose: This paper aims to appraise the delivery of an enterprise education course to a cohort of Polish students evaluating its impact in encouraging entrepreneurial activity. The Polish economy continues its expansion with adoption of free market economies post communism. To encourage this growth, entrepreneurial activity must be encouraged…

This report discusses the findings of a research demonstration project conducted to test the entrepreneurship programming approach, in which dual program objectives are pursued with equal emphasis: (1) training objectives involving the employability development of out-of-school disadvantaged youth, and (2) enterprise objectives involving the…

Business incubators can help fledgling firms get off the ground by providing business services and rental space, at below-market costs, for a business's first few years. The payoff for the community is more jobs. Concentrated until recently in urban areas, incubators are now succeeding in rural areas too. (JHZ)

In May 1983, Pueblo (Colorado) Community College (PCC) established the Myers Center for Small Business to assist entrepreneurs in the operation of existing businesses and the development of new ones. In March 1987, a study was conducted to determine whether the center had met its long-term goals; the number of new businesses started by center…

This paper draws on a telephone survey of 116 independent SMEs to explore the impact of a variety of training interventions on human resource (HR) practices and business performance in Great Britain. The paper investigates the extent to which targeting such interventions on the managers of SMEs affects the impact and the likelihood of changes in…

The Self-Employment Investment Demonstration (SEID) is a test, designed to run from 1988 to 1992, of the feasibility of operating a program to encourage self-employment among welfare recipients. Challenges facing SEID included selecting sites, developing curricula, recruiting clients, getting clients through business training, completing business…

This paper examines a data set that has its origins in European Social Fund Objective 4 financed training programmes in small- to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Britain to examine the extent to which three different personal development outcomes are attributable to different types of skills acquired during the training process. The three…

Lacking the resources of larger organizations, small businesses are often unable to find skilled workers to fill immediate employment needs and to identify strategies to meet their future workforce needs. In some communities, business and trade organizations, community colleges, and other public and private organizations have partnered to create…

Federal funding for children's health insurance may significantly reduce the problem of uninsured children in New York and subsequently improve child outcomes. This study evaluated the effectiveness of two program models in educating parents about available sources of health insurance and in increasing enrollment of uninsured children into…

The first and longest section of this publication is a comparative analysis summarizing the impacts of the two Unemployment Insurance (UI) Self-Employment Demonstration Projects in Washington State and Massachusetts. Based on the first wave of post-project follow-up surveys, this evaluation report provides results on the net impacts of each…

The General Accounting Office (GAO) evaluated the coordination of the export training offered to small businesses by the U.S. Department of Commerce and U.S. Small Business Administration through the U.S. Export Assistance Centers (USEACs). GAO staff visited 10 of the 19 USEACs. The agencies' training organizers or presenters were interviewed,…