From the Editor It is a great pleasure to present two exceptionally talented scholars who were invited to co-edit this special issue. On behalf of all of us at JSBS, we thank you for this valuable research. Gerald E. Hills Editor Bradley University Letter from Special Edition Editors Welcome readers! On behalf of Domingo Enrique Ribeiro-Soriano and me, we would like to thank you for reading this special issue of JSBS from the 2nd Annual GIKA Conference held at the University of Valencia, Spain. The conference increased from approximately 70 papers and presentations the first year to more than 225 the second year. Featuring papers focused on entrepreneurship and strategy, we have chosen papers from the conference that fit our mission and readership. These papers come from a variety of disciplines and countries but all focus on small business, strategy, and entrepreneurship. We hope you will enjoy reading these articles from around the world. In “Validation of a Measuring Instrument for the Relationship Between Knowledge Transfer and Entrepreneurial Orientation in Family Firms,” Barroso Martínez, Bañegil Palacios, and Sanguino Galván perform an empirical study to reflect the validity and robustness of their knowledge transfer measurement scale. The goal of this scale is to determine the nature of the relationships between knowledge transfer, entrepreneurial orientation, and performance. The measuring instrument is innovative because previous measuring scales are unable to measure the aforementioned relationships. This research reveals that, although entrepreneurship depends on many factors at different organizational levels, people’s willingness to share their knowledge plays an important role in entrepreneurial capacity. The authors conclude that entrepreneurial orientation involves an extensive process of knowledge sharing among members of family-run businesses. Castaño-Martínez, Martínez-Rodríguez, and Ruiz-Fuensanta’s paper,“The Influence of Socioeconomic Factors on Entrepreneurship and Innovation,” contributes to the analysis of the factors that encourage entrepreneurs to innovate in their businesses. A broad range of elements condition entrepreneurial innovation. In this paper, however, the authors devote their attention to studying the role of socioeconomic factors such as social capital, institutions, and income distribution. These elements, which shape the environment in which businesses operate, can act as important incentives for innovation, or, conversely, S TRATEG Y JOURNAL OF SMALL BUSINESS may hinder the entrepreneurial behavior of economic agents. To accomplish their research aims, the authors estimate an econometric model for a sample of 13 European countries for the period 2002–2010. The results confirm that factors of this kind do indeed modify organizations’ innovative potential. In “Entrepreneurial Strategy, Innovation, and Cognitive Capabilities: What role for intuitive SMEs?,”Saiz-Álvarez, Cuervo-Arango, and Coduras contribute to the study of how intuition affects entrepreneurship in SMEs. The main goal of their paper is to build an index capable of estimating the degree of “entrepreneurial intuition”, in an attempt to yield the behavioral variables that characterize an intuitive entrepreneur. Specifically, the authors seek a response to the questions of whether intuition is more prominent in the early stage of entrepreneurship, and if higher degrees of intuition are linked to necessity- driven entrepreneurs. The role of intuition in entrepreneurship remains an under- researched issue. The present paper represents progress in this research field, through the authors’ proposal and testing of an indicator to measure the degree of intuition of entrepreneurs at the early and consolidated stages of businesses. “Performance and Risk as Signals for Setting up a Franchised Business” shows that, despite divergences of opinion among academics as to franchising’s status as a form of entrepreneurship, franchising is currently offering business opportunities to franchisors as well as creating employment for budding entrepreneurs through the opening of franchised outlets. In short, franchising is creating wealth. Thus, Calderón-Monje and Huerta- Zavala’s paper may serve to aid the decision-making processes of potential franchisees who wish to choose a franchise that ensures high returns and low risk. Signaling theory offers a possible solution for reducing information asymmetries between franchisors and franchisees. It is a pleasure and honor of the co-guest editors to present highly interesting and quality papers that provide relevant and rigorous insights into the critical issues of SMEs, innovation and entrepreneurship, and franchising in the special issue of the Journal of Small Business Strategy. The conference was very successful in the sense that it gathered scholars from more than 40 countries, including 450 participants and speakers who present their articles and obtain the criticism and feedback from international editors. Practitioners and researchers shared empirical research, including comparative case studies, as well as applied studies relevant to SMEs, entrepreneurship, and innovation. Sincerely, Domingo Enrique Ribeiro-Soriano and Dianne H.B. Welsh Special Issue Editors (Please see the following page for the bios of the Special Edition editors.) Dianne H.B. Welsh is the Hayes Distinguished Professor of Entrepreneurship and Founding Director of the Entrepreneurship Program at The University of North Carolina Greensboro. Dianne is a recognized scholar in entrepreneurship, family business, and franchising and has six books and over 150 publications. She is Chair-Elect of the Technology and Innovation Management Division of the Academy of Management and President of the Small Business Institute. She is the Past President and Fellow of the U.S. Association for Small Business & Entrepreneurship and served as a Presidential Appointee to the U.S. Air Force Academy. She is the 2014 recipient of the Leavey Award for Private Enterprise Education by the Freedoms Foundation. Domingo Ribeiro Soriano is a Professor of Management at University of Valencia in Spain. He has been published in international journals, including the Journal of Business Research, Small Business Economics, International Small Business Journal, Journal of Small Business Management, International Journal of Technology Management, Cornell Hotel and Restaurant Administration Quarterly, and Managing Service Quality. Soriano has also served as a reviewer and guest editor from prestigious journals published by Wiley, Emerald, and Blackwell-Wiley. He was editor-in-chief of the ISI-ranked journals Management Decision and the International Entrepreneurship and Management Journal, as well as editor and associate editor of the Service Industries Journal. Soriano was President of GIKA (Global Innovation and Knowledge Academy), has worked in Ernst & Young consulting, and was Director of European Community Programs. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.