Shinichi Furuzawa (p), Lily Kiminami , Akira Kiminami

Social enterprise and social entrepreneurship which execute dual-mission have potential to contribute the inclusive growth and development of the society. Since the 2000s, social enterprises in Japan have achieved growth and reached a certain scale in terms of value added and employment of the economy. However, realizing the sustainable development of the business is difficult while creating highly innovative products and services as well as solving social problems.
On the other hand, there are various empirical researches about the entrepreneurship and start-ups that are focusing on the entrepreneurial motivations of entrepreneurs, and institutional and social factors. However, there is few researches focusing on factors affecting the innovativeness of star-ups from the viewpoint of comparative perspective between social enterprises and commercial enterprises.
The purpose of this study is to clarify socio-economic factors affecting the innovativeness of start-ups in Japan by using the multi-method approach. It simultaneously clarifies specific factors for the social enterprises based on the comparative analysis between social enterprises and commercial enterprises.
Specifically, quantitative and qualitative analyses are used in this research. Firstly, exploratory and confirmatory multi-variate analyses are applied to the micro-data at enterprise level based on the Survey on Actual Conditions of Start-ups in 2013 (conducted by the Japan Finance Corporation, Comprehensive Research Institute). Secondly, Text Mining method is applied to the document data collected from the representative cases of start-up in innovative social enterprises. Finally, based on the analytical results, some practical and policy implications will be drawn for the development of the social enterprises in Japan.

Paolo Malfitano (p)

Previous literature about entrepreneurship and human capital theory suggests that opportunity entrepreneurs are often individuals with a larger stock of knowledge, labour market experience and expertise. Thus, they are more willing to succeed as business owners. On the other hand, individuals that start a new venture for the sake of pursuing a business idea, in case of lower than expected monetary returns, might easily disengage from the start-up venture and choose a wage-earning job. Similarly, innovation is often described as a favourable factor for firm survival, but in some cases, the newness of the products could arise resistance to acceptance by the consumer, uncertainty and risk of failure. Most of the previous studies positively correlate opportunity self-employment and innovative behaviour with longer firm survival, but the results are ambiguous in some cases. Hence, this research aims to understand the differences in start-up survival, distinguishing between individuals that start a business in order to pursue an opportunity and individuals that are involved in a new venture because of necessity reasons. Additionally, self-employment durations of individuals involved in innovative start-ups and in ventures that imitate existing businesses are compared. Furthermore, this study investigates other crucial individual and contextual features for firm survival, e.g. previous start-up experience and team size. The data set used is the result of a harmonisation of five international data sets about start-up ventures located in the USA, China, Sweden and Australia. All five projects started with screening a sample of representative adults to identify those active in business creation. The first screening started in 1998, the last in 2009. Preliminary results show that opportunity entrepreneurs are actually the fittest to survive, whereas results related to innovative start-up survival are mixed. From a policy maker's perspective, it should be a notable issue whether to support necessity or opportunity, imitative or innovative entrepreneurs through start-up tutoring or incubators. Moreover, understanding other survival features could improve the economic efficacy of entrepreneurial training programs. Finally, knowing more about firm survival might represent a useful tool for financial investors, banks or venture capitalists who want to calculate expected returns on their investment.

Vassiliki Delitheou , Mariarena Tasou (p)

Nowadays the need for territorial cooperation becomes more and more significant, especially among the EU Member States, which try to increase the competitiveness and their development. By identifying that necessity, EU put programs of Territorial Cooperation in place, named as INTERREG.
Since 1990, five programming periods of Interreg have succeeded. The last one is INTERREG V, which ends in 2020. In that program, the Territorial Cooperation between Greece and Cyprus is included (Interreg V-A Greece-Cyprus), which aims to support entrepreneurship and the usage of information and communication technologies in order to increase competitiveness. The program was authorised by EU, on 27July 2015 with the executive decision No: C(2015) 5319.
In particular, the program, aims to integrate all issues, relating to the environment, either in terms of protection against risks or in terms of promotion of the natural and cultural heritage. The region which participate in that, are Nothern Aegean Region, Crete Region, Southern Aegean Region and Cyprus (whole country). The data of the present abstract are collected, from sources like, the official site of European Commission, published reports and interviews from Greek and Cypriot press.
As far as the numbers are concerned, until the end of 2017, 32 projects have been allocated to the program, gathering €48.82 million, activating the 80% of its sources. It is significant to be noticed that since the revision of the program (2016), the total sources running at €64.560.486, of which €54.876.411 (85%) comes from European Regional Development Fund and €9.264.075 (15%) funded from National sources from Greece and Cyprus.
The evaluations which carry out every year, ameliorate the effectiveness of the program. According to the last evaluation, in 2017, there is scope for significant improvement in the expedition of integration, contractualisation, absorption and in certification of expenses of the projects. Cyprus reports more flexibility in projects accomplishment, thanks to the simplified procedures, in comparison with Greece. The procedures in Greece procrastinate due to the complexity of the legal framework.
At the present article, there will be displayed the European Programs which contribute to the Regional Development, as well as, the Territorial Cooperation between Greece and Cyprus will be analyzed. In particular, at the first part there are references on European Programs which boost the development and the competitiveness of European Union Member Estates and at the second part an extended description of the Territorial Cooperation between Greece and Cyprus, tries to approach the issue.

Stepan Zemtsov (p), Vera Barinova, Yulia Tsareva

The Russian regions vary significantly in terms of the level and dynamics of social and economic development, which is primarily due to differences in the availability of natural resources. However, a number of regions managed to improve their position relative to others since 1998, without having hydrocarbon reserves: Leningrad, Kaliningrad, Belgorod, Tambov, Kaluga, Rostov regions, etc.
The article discusses the existing mechanisms of influence of the sphere of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and innovation on the economy. We consider the creation of new firms as a transfer mechanism for transforming ideas into finished products. The purpose of the work is to assess the impact of entrepreneurial activity in the regions of Russia on the level of economic development and regional growth. Our calculations show that in the regions of Russia with developed entrepreneurship, the productivity of the economy is higher (the ratio of GRP to the labor force), in other words, the level of economic development is higher. If entrepreneurial activity in the region (the number of small and micro-firms per 1,000 people of labor) is higher by 1%, the productivity of the economy in it is higher by 0.1-0.2%, taking into account the concentration of human and physical capital. In recent years, the availability of favorable conditions for the development of entrepreneurship and attracting investors has played an increasing role in the development of regions. But at the same time, it was found that entrepreneurial activity is not a factor in the economic growth of Russian regions.
We used the results to propose some recommendations for the regional policy: reduction of investment barriers, preservation and attraction of human capital to large cities.