Urban and rural areas differ in economic, social and environmental terms. Due to the diverging dynamics in urban and rural areas, the social and economic distance between them might increase in the future even more. Rural entrepreneurs with linkages to urban areas are able to bridge the rural–urban divide by accessing some of the urban features, such as knowledge and markets, while at the same time profiting from the advantages of their peripheral location. This paper highlights exploratory results from qualitative interviews with rural entrepreneurs, and we illustrate entrepreneurial linkages to urban centers. The interview data show that rural entrepreneurs with rural–urban linkages develop sensibility for core market demands and trends, they valuate rural assets, and they combine rural and urban sources of knowledge for innovation. Through their entrepreneurial activity, rural entrepreneurs with linkages to urban areas might constitute an opposite force to polarizing concentration of economic activities in cities. Hence, rural entrepreneurs with urban linkages might contribute to sustainable economic relationships between urban and rural areas.

Solar fuels could solve one of the most pressing energy-related issues of the present time: the switch to a renewable energy base in the transportation sector. Especially aviation and heavy-duty transport will mostly rely on liquid fuels, which makes solar fuels an enabling technology for future mobility. Here, an analysis of the solar thermochemical fuel pathway that converts CO₂ and H₂O into liquid “drop-in”-capable fuels is presented, taking into account its life-cycle, economic, environmental and social performance. For a baseline plant layout in Morocco, nominal production costs of 1.97 € per litre of jet fuel are estimated, with greenhouse gas emission savings of 80% with respect to conventional fuel. Social concerns such as child labour or forced labour arise mostly through the import of materials and components from other developing countries. Alternative production locations are analysed, finding that in Chile – the country with the highest solar irradiation – nominal production costs of 1.72 € per L could be attained at an improved environmental life-cycle performance but at a higher risk of permitting child labour. The potential use of fossil CO₂ (instead of CO₂ directly captured from the air) is discussed and it is found that it cannot be used for the production of solar fuels with significantly lower emissions than conventional fuels. Regarding the potential use of grid electricity (instead of on-site concentrated solar power), the specific carbon intensity should be lower than 0.15 kg CO₂ eq. per kW h to meet the EU RED II targets. Overall, the solar thermochemical fuel pathway using both renewable energy and CO₂ has the potential to supply sustainable fuels to aviation in principally unlimited amounts.

Industry experience and home advantage can have a varying influence on entrepreneurial competitiveness, depending on the regional context. We use matched employer–employee data from Statistics Sweden to analyse new firm formation in rural, urban and metropolitan regions. The results suggest that industry experience has a positive effect on firm survival, while firm growth is more influenced by home advantage. Interestingly, a positive home advantage only exists in rural regions, where native entrepreneurs create significantly more jobs than non-locals.

Purpose: This paper aims to assess the often repeated, but empirically unconfirmed, supposition that there is a positive connection between foreign board members (FBMs) and firm innovativeness and to set a research agenda for future studies on the topic.Design/methodology/approach: The analyses are based on a large sample of firms within the European Union, utilizing patent and trademark data together with information on the national diversity of the boards.Findings: The analyses confirm that there is a positive association between FBMs and firm innovativeness. Contrary to expectations, FBMs from less innovative countries than the countries of their host companies are more associated with innovative firms than are FBMs from more innovative countries.Research limitations/implications: This study provides empirical support for propositions, drawn from resource dependency theory and group effectiveness/diversity theories, that diverse boards of directors can lead to greater firm-level creativity and innovativeness. It also outlines a detailed research agenda for future studies to build on the tentative findings presented in this paper.Practical implications: The findings suggest that greater national diversity in the board of directors can enhance innovation.Originality/value: Earlier studies on board diversity have not analyzed empirically the issue of national diversity. The originality of this paper lies in its attempt to address this gap in the corporate governance literature.

The solar thermochemical fuel pathway offers the possibility to defossilize the transportation sector by producing renewable fuels that emit significantly less greenhouse gases than conventional fuels over the whole life cycle. Especially for the aviation sector, the availability of renewable liquid hydrocarbon fuels enables climate impact goals to be reached. In this paper, both the geographical potential and life-cycle fuel production costs are analyzed. The assessment of the geographical potential of solar thermochemical fuels excludes areas based on sustainability criteria such as competing land use, protected areas, slope, or shifting sands. On the remaining suitable areas, the production potential surpasses the current global jet fuel demand by a factor of more than fifty, enabling all but one country to cover its own demand. In many cases, a single country can even supply the world demand for jet fuel. A dedicated economic model expresses the life-cycle fuel production costs as a function of the location, taking into account local financial conditions by estimating the national costs of capital. It is found that the lowest production costs are to be expected in Israel, Chile, Spain, and the USA, through a combination of high solar irradiation and low-level capital costs. The thermochemical energy conversion efficiency also has a strong influence on the costs, scaling the size of the solar concentrator. Increasing the efficiency from 15% to 25%, the production costs are reduced by about 20%. In the baseline case, the global jet fuel demand could be covered at costs between 1.58 and 1.83 €/L with production locations in South America, the United States, and the Mediterranean region. The flat progression of the cost-supply curves indicates that production costs remain relatively constant even at very high production volumes.