Residents of the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota must deal with joblessness, alcoholism, housing shortages, and rampant disease. To assist with these problems, the Lakota Fund provides training and loans to those wanting to start small businesses. (JOW)

A study of Internet usage by large, small, and midsized businesses suggests that midsized businesses may be at a competitive disadvantage. Found that small businesses were more likely than midsized or large firms to have home pages and to reveal computer/technology programs as potential Internet services needed to improve current operations. (PEN)

Shoals Entrepreneurial Center, in two Alabama locations, supports would-be entrepreneurs with extensive planning advice, rental space, loans, business training, and back-office infrastructure. The center favors business plans with the potential to create fairly high-paying jobs, a different focus from other businesses in the region, and an…

Discussion of the need for training and lifelong learning in light of new information and communication technologies focuses on small businesses with few employees who need rapid and continuous training. Topics include communities of practice; network-based learning; distance education; enterprise training; mutual training; knowledge creation;…

A study of the skill needs of small and medium-sized enterprises shows they are an increasing source of jobs for business graduates, placing greater emphasis on employability, career self-management, and transferable skills. Higher education institutions should integrate curriculum and career development to prepare students for these…

A study of 50 entrepreneurs in small businesses (fashion design, entertainment, new media) identified factors that helped them learn and develop their business, especially situated learning, networking, and mentoring. Similar naturalistic approaches are recommended for further and higher education focused on entrepreneurship. (SK)

The Prospects Programme assisted British military personnel in the transition to civilian life. The lifelong learning program included identification of transferable skills for new employment directions, accreditation of prior learning, resume and interview training, and 11-week work placements. (SK)

Highlights the views of three keynote speakers who will share their insights into the future of the camp experience at the next American Camping Association National Conference. Environmentalist Bill McKibben, educator Cynthia Tobias, and futurist Ira Blumenthal focus, respectively, on connecting children to the natural world, understanding…

Explores how entrepreneurial capability and identity are learned in the creative and media industries. This sector is of growing social and economic importance, and the majority of its employment and commercial activity takes place within small businesses. However, entrepreneurship in the creative industries and the related development of…

This article explores the characteristics involved when higher education institutions (HEIs) engage in management training in smaller firms. Building on previous research on how smaller firms and small firm managers learn and how these learning characteristics relate to the dominating culture in HEIs, the article suggests a tentative framework…

More than 10 years have passed since the employment provisions of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA) came into effect for employers of 15 or more employees. Americans with disabilities continue to be more unemployed and underemployed than their nondisabled peers. Small businesses, with fewer than 500 employees, continue to be the…

With the current growth of the Internet, we expect significant changes in how and to what extent companies acquire business information. By comparing two studies on information seeking by small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) carried out in 1982 and 2003 respectively, and comparing the results with other studies, this paper indicates that the…

The social, economic and political systems of former communist countries have faced considerable changes since the late 1980s. Most countries in Eastern and Central Europe have undergone their own individual brand of transition from a centrally planned, command system to a more or less liberalized, Western-style market economy. Many observers…

The America COMPETES Reauthorization Act of 2010 (Public Law 111-358) was put in place to invest in innovation through research and development, to improve the competitiveness of the United States, and for other purposes. The table of contents for this Act is as follows: (1) Sec. 1. Short title; table of contents; (2) Sec. 2. Definitions; and (3)…

Purpose: The focus of this paper is to highlight the synergies and mutual benefits associated with a range of entrepreneurship education initiatives for a combination of internal and external stakeholders. Design/methodology/approach: The paper provides a description of four entrepreneurship education initiatives in operation at the University of…