2022, Al-Kilani, Mahmoud, Meyer, Rolf

Necessity entrepreneurship in the small ruminant sector plays a strategic role in the Lebanese agricultural economy despite its small size. The sector is underdeveloped and facing many challenges. This article proposes possible solutions to the challenges facing necessity entrepreneurs in this sector. The findings show that an “agricultural business hub” could consolidate the sector and address many of the challenges on an ongoing basis in order to increase farmer productivity and profitability. Such a Hub could exploit modern technology - in particular, mobile phones, internet and apps - to facilitate communication and dissemination of information to farmers and their markets. Besides reviewing existing literature, this study was conducted using a face-to-face in-depth interview with a field expert.

2021, Al-Kilani, Mahmoud, Verkuil, Arie Hans, Meyer, Rolf

Social business hubs play an important role in facilitating social innovation and support social entrepreneurs to deliver social benefits to the wider community. This paper aims to firstly identify and evaluate the key success factors of social business hubs in the Middle East with the focus on Jordan, Lebanon and Iraq, secondly, identify what successful social hubs offer, and thirdly, identify the challenges facing social business hubs in the region. In-depth interviews with eight social business hub managers were conducted using a pre-designed questionnaire. The findings were interesting and meaningful and show the impact severity of the COVID-19 pandemic on the infrastructure of the social business hubs. Networking and collaboration seem to be the predominant success factor for social business hubs. Finally, we observe that social business hubs in the region are facing many challenges; the main two are lack of government support and funding issues.

2021, Al-Kilani, Mahmoud, Verkuil, Arie Hans, Meyer, Rolf

The fast pace of change brought on by advances of technology have led to significant pressure on companies to innovate to remain competitive and able to meet shareholders demands.