Prior research has shown that early development of marketing capabilities enable firms to achieve competitive advantage. The entrepreneurial orientation of the firm acts as a catalyst and impacts the market orientation and the marketing capabilities of the firm in a positive way. A high level of entrepreneurial orientation enables the firms to be innovative, take calculated risks and be proactive in their marketing-related activities. The marketing activity of the firm becomes entrepreneurial. In this empirical study, we test the various antecedents and outcomes of marketing capabilities in entrepreneurial new technology-based firms (NTBFs) in a developing country's environment. The study sample consists of 253 small and medium sized NTBFs operating in the METU Technopark, Turkey. The structural equation modelling approach using PLS was employed to test the research hypotheses. Results show that the early development of marketing capabilities of the NTBF significantly impacted performance, prompting implications for policy makers.

Estimates show that the average temperature of Earth's near surface air and oceans has raised by 0.74 ± 0.18 0 C during last 100 years. In this work the impact of the same has been explored for major urban areas of Pakistan. For this exploration long-term mean, mean-maximum and mean-minimum temperatures for the period 1961 to 2007 have been studied. The precipitation in the major cities of Pakistan, are also studied. The maximum increase in mean temperature is found to be 0.057 0 C per year (in Quetta). The minimum increase is found to be 0.019 0 C per year (in Peshawar). Both these increments are more than the global mean. An isolated discrepancy is found in mean maximum temperature of Lahore but the same can be explained in terms of heavy and prolonged monsoon rains. Moreover, precipitation in Karachi is found to be decreasing that needs to be further explored.

We intend to see how interventions during a business plan competition workshop impact the relationship between the personality, intellectual capital, entrepreneurial skills of the participants and their entrepreneur identity aspiration. INVENT is a nation-wide business plan competition in which university students from all over Pakistan (around 3000) participate. This is a 5 month process which involves a lot of training and mentoring during the various rounds. The interventions to promote entrepreneurship take place in the form of lectures, workshops, case studies, and mentoring sessions. The survey was conducted in two phases; the baseline survey was conducted during the initial workshops and the second survey was conducted towards the end of the competition and finals. In this paper, we evaluate the results of the baseline survey conducted during the initial workshops. To test the model, the constructs of entrepreneurial personality, intellectual capital, entrepreneurial skills and business program inputs were validated followed by factor analysis and structural equation modeling. We found out that the entrepreneurial interventions carried out in the workshops led to positive relationships between the variables and had a positive impact on the Entrepreneur Identity Aspiration of the participants.

It is generally believed worldwide and backed by research too that startups face a high risk of failure and eight to nine out of ten ideas may not work (Hisrich, Peters, & Shepherd, 2009). However, many experts claim that the situation can turn vice versa for family entrepreneurship (or creative family businesses) and franchise ventures (Francorp, 2016). This exploratory probe aims to discover these two phenomena for Johnny Rockets (JR) Pakistan, which is an international franchise of fast food chain of restaurants, and simultaneously it is a family business extension. Literature is reviewed from four perspectives: family entrepreneurship and business, franchise business, internationalization of companies, and fast food restaurant industry in Pakistan. Primary data is garnered from three sources: in-depth interviews from middle to top management of Johnny Rockets, owners of the franchises, and from its consumers in accordance with phenomenology method and purposive sampling to analyze their lived experiences with JR and its direct rivals. The data analytic techniques comprise thematic analysis and constant comparison. The f indings unveil that in the wake of tolerating several diff iculties, now Johnny Rockets seems to be on the right path of sustainable growth. The study underpins the notions that family entrepreneurship and franchise ventures enjoy a high probability of success, but it requires an organizational culture of the congenial work environment, and propensity to create a customer-centric modern learning organization, ready to accept trials and errors and continuously innovating its processes and systems.

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