Abstract

Abstract

Abstract
Social networks, originally built as channels for personal interaction, are being used in the commercial market as a support for product sales. The use of applications integrated in social networks appears as an opportunity to explore by companies. Facestore emerged in 2013 as the first e-commerce solution integrated in social networks, allowing the creation of online stores within Facebook, without the customer having to leave the social network interface. Operations like looking into the catalog, choosing the product, and paying the transaction is carried out without the customer need to open a new website. The use of Facestore offers direct and indirect benefits on the different areas of an organization. At the direct level, there are changes in processes in terms of customer service and marketing and sales. However, its use also potentiates indirect benefits in other organizational areas, such as operations, finance, administration and information technologies support, human resources, and research and development.

Abstract
Universities have assumed an increasingly important role in transferring technology to society with a strong economic impact. The companies originated from the academic environment, called academic spin-offs, have fostered the appearance of new projects based on emerging technologies and knowledge, created by young students and researchers who seek to launch their own business and generate new jobs in society. However, the number of existing studies on academic spin-offs is limited and restricted to the specific national realities, and the results of these studies are typically incorporated only in scientific manuscripts. In this sense, this study proposes a web platform that allows the analysis of academic spin-offs according to multiple dimensions, such as firm, institutions, individual, localization, science parks, financial data and corporate actions. The application is built exclusively in open source technologies and allows data to be explored in real-time and interactively. The results obtained allow us to evaluate the behavior of the application regarding fundamental elements in the success of the adoption of a Web application, such as usability, security, interoperability and portability.

Abstract

Abstract
Purpose The purpose of this study is to determine whether new rural ventures represent effective rural entrepreneurship or are just entrepreneurial ventures located in rural settings. Design\methodology\approach Data were collected from a direct questionnaire involving 408 new ventures headquartered in Portuguese business incubators and science parks, of which 142 are located in rural areas. To analyse data, the authors performed a preliminary and exploratory statistical analysis. Findings The authors demonstrate that only a small percentage of ventures operating in rural areas constitute examples of effective rural entrepreneurship, with the bulk of them being just enterprises located in rural settings. Rural new ventures tend to be small (in terms of employees and turnover), rely mainly on the internal market and lag behind other new ventures (located in both rural and urban municipalities) in terms of performance. Research limitations/implications The study only includes new knowledge-intensive ventures, that is, those headquartered in business incubators and science parks. Therefore, it cannot be generalised to other new ventures located in rural settings. Originality/value The extant literature on entrepreneurship has neglected the empirical implications of mixing, confounding and/or merging the concepts of rural entrepreneurship and entrepreneurship activities in rural areas. In this study, the authors discuss and analyse the empirical boundaries of such concepts and uncover the magnitude of pure rural entrepreneurship.