Nowadays social media and brand communities provide virtual places where the consumers can publicize their opinions about products and services and play an active role as marketers, advertisers, value creators through electronic word-of-mouth. Since most of the times these dynamics flow out of business control, in order to pursue firms' objectives, managers and marketers operating in many sectors look at the web social community with growing interest. The present chapter presents a system-wide analysis of the links and feedback mechanisms between the different aspects of value co-creation through social media marketing and brand communities. For the purpose, it is proposed a qualitative model built according to the principles of System Dynamics, a computer-aided methodology for policy analysis and design. Causal loop & stock-and-flows structures integrate the socioeconomic feedbacks between key variables, selected according to relevant literature, social media and brand communities observations, interview to consumer influencers.

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Purpose The international community recognizes the role of entrepreneurship education in fostering economic growth and sustainable development. However, preparing the next generation of entrepreneurs is not an easy task, since today’s complexity requires the creation of skills and capabilities for which the traditional programs reveal their inadequacy. Some scholars remark how entrepreneurship education and entrepreneurial intention are not necessarily related and, in line with policy makers’ concerns, call for educational programs more routed in financial skills’ enhancement. The purpose of this paper is to explore the potential of system dynamics (SD) for entrepreneurial education, investigating the relationships between financial and entrepreneurial skills’ formation and business development. Design/methodology/approach The paper introduces the main elements of SD, describes literature streams of SD applications fitting the entrepreneurial education spheres and proposes an SD’ insight model based on selected literature and declined in terms of stock-and-flow and causal loop structures. Findings The study provides a causal model capturing the links between the processes of entrepreneurial skill formation and firms’ start-ups and closures. Such model introduces a double effect of financial literacy on entrepreneurial orientation and locates the contribution of simulated entrepreneurial decisions in formal and informal educational contexts. Originality/value The paper displays how SD can contribute to entrepreneurship and presents an original causal model highlighting the accumulation of financial and non-financial skills through education and experience, their impact on business development and the usefulness of SD methodology for skill achievement.