Though entrepreneurship has been studied for decades, in recent years, the study of “rural entrepreneurship” has emerged as an upcoming subtopic of the area. With the growth and continual ease of utilizing digital technologies to support entrepreneurial activities, these technologies now provide unique opportunities for advancing rural entrepreneurship. Though prior research focused on challenges for IT use in rural areas that specifically investigated investment and management issues, it is important to study all challenges and opportunities involved in this developing area of research. Rural Entrepreneurship and Innovation in the Digital Era is a pivotal reference source that provides vital research on the utilization of digital technologies in rural business ventures. Unlike other references, this book studies the conceptualization process of rural entrepreneurship and innovation with the intention of providing guidelines and support for entrepreneurs. While highlighting topics such as microfinancing, risk management, and rural development, this publication explores innovative practices as well as the methods of IT investment and management. This book is ideally designed for business professionals, entrepreneurs, business researchers, academics, and business students.

This volume focuses on innovative school-university-community collaborations that are being implemented in rural places in the United States. A foundational belief that underpins the contributions to this volume is that rural communities contain within themselves the resources to promote and sustain vibrant educational endeavors. This belief has inspired a wealth of innovations that collectively offer a countervailing perspective to the view that global competitiveness is the preeminent goal of education, and that this goal is best served by “big education.” Since early last century, there has been a pervasive implicit, and sometimes explicit, assumption that rural places are bereft of the ability to educate children effectively. As repeatedly witnessed in this volume, in collaboration with universities, schools in rural places and the communities that both sustain and rely on them can appropriately configure the educational environment to optimally nurture the intellectual growth of children. The chapters in this volume are grouped into three parts that explore, in turn, the design features of innovative school-universitycommunity collaborations, some novel approaches to such collaborations, and the contours of parental and community involvement in such collaborations. Chapters discuss both larger scale collaborations that involve many school districts across wide -spread regions, and smaller scale collaborations that involve intensive engagements among the educators and members of smaller communities, and offer theoretical insights into the collaborative process itself. As mentioned above, two narrative threads run through the chapters: that effective collaborations address goals and aspirations expressed by those who are privileged to live in rural America, and that effective collaborations are oriented to building on the strengths inherent in the social fabric of those rural communities.

Drawing from empirical analyses, case studies, and a synthesis of best practices, this book explores how innovation manifests itself in rural places and how it contributes to entrepreneurial development and resilience. Innovation in rural places may come about as a result of new forms of collaboration; policies that leverage rural assets and address critical service or product gaps; novel strategies for accessing financial capital; infusion of arts into aspects of community life; and cultivation of networks that bridge entrepreneurs, organizations, and institutions. The chapters illustrate how a number of innovation-related characteristics relate to economic vibrancy in rural places such as a strong connection to the arts, adaptive and sustainable use of natural resources, value-chain integrated food systems, robust bridging social capital networks, creative leveraging of technology, and presence of innovation-focused entrepreneurs. Through exploration of these and other topics, this book will provide insights and best practices for rural community and economic development scholars and practitioners seeking to strengthen the rural innovation ecosystem.

When it comes to high-tech innovations, the United States leads the path amongst OECD economies. However, in the context of the national record-breaking activities in high tech innovation, there lies distinct and growing geographical disparities. This report dives into strategies for better understanding innovation that occurs in rural places, and places outside major metropolitan areas, often going beyond science and technology.

Feeding the world in a sustainable and fair way is the challenge that a new generation of agricultural professionals must face. This will demand not just technological solutions but a whole package of social, economic, market and political innovations. Central to the challenge is enabling people and organizations with different perspectives and different interests to work creatively together. All this demands new ways of thinking and new sets of competencies. This book offers young professionals and students insight into the theory and practice of innovation systems. It covers important background and concepts, the how to of facilitating innovation, and the role of the broader context. The book is about the dynamics of rural innovation -how to work with the changing nature of both the context and people involved in rural innovation processes and how to facilitate networks of stakeholders to stimulate innovation. The aim is to support agricultural and rural development professionals, especially young ones, as enablers and facilitators of stakeholder-led innovation. Inspirational stories illustrate how different people from farmers to extension officers, business leaders, traders, NGO staff, and policy makers have collaborated to make new and successful things happen. KIT and CDI bring more than 30 years of experience working with partners in developing countries on agricultural innovation processes and social learning. This book capitalizes on these experiences and brings together both conceptual thinkers and practitioners in the writing process to articulate lessons. The book is targeted towards undergraduate- and masters-level students in Africa as well as development practitioners aspiring to use innovation systems thinking in their work."