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From the Editor
Fry, Fred L, Editor
Journal of Small Business Strategy; Fall 2007/Winter 2008; 18, 2; ABI/INFORM Complete
pg. 0_6

From the Editor 

Thanks for your continued interest in the Journal of Small Business Strategy. I hope this 
issue piques your intellectual curiosity and provides value to you in your teaching, 
research, or practice. 

We begin this issue with an invited paper. Bill Gartner was gracious enough to provide a 
variation of his previously published work with the Small Business Administration on the 
role of business plans and planning on start-up activities. He and Jon Liao used the PSED 
dataset to assess whether individuals who had developed business plans were more likely 
to start a business than those who had not. 

The second article, by Eva Cools and Herman Van den Broeck, is an award winner. Cools 
won the Best Paper Award for a Junior Researcher at the 20th Research in 
Entrepreneurship and Small Business (RENT) conference in November 2006 for an earlier 
version of this paper. It re-visits the "hunt for the heffalump" topic by adding cognitive 
characteristics to the trait research many of us have seen before. You should find it very 
interesting. 

Peake, Marshall, and Preckell report on a macro study - slightly unusual for JSBS. They 
look at the role of state policies and culture in firm births. Those of you who are interested 
in policy issues will find this article particularly interesting. 

Harris, Gibson, and Taylor look at the impact participating in SBI programs has on 
entrepreneurial attitudes. Using pre-and post-tests, they showed a positive relationship 
between participating in an SBI project and entrepreneurial attitudes. Since the Small 
Business Institute® is a co-sponsor of the Journal of Small Business Strategy, many 
readers will find this interesting. 

John Leaptrott studied the relationship between the need for cognition and early stage 
performance. His study suggests that the cognitive characteristics of the entrepreneur can 
influence performance. You may want to read this article after reading the Cools and Van 
Den Broeck piece above, as cognitive characteristics are key to each of the articles. 

Finally, Lawrence reports on a study of entrepreneurs in Jamaican businesses to determine 
the relationship between operations strategy and profitability. This paper is interesting in 
its own right, but it also has implications for other businesses outside Jamaica. 

I hope you find these articles interesting and valuable. I also encourage you to submit your 
own work to the Journal of Small Business Strategy. We look for articles that demonstrate 
a definite emphasis on strategy, but we are also interested in articles that break new ground 
in other areas of entrepreneurial research. 

Here is a heads up notification. See the Spring/Summer issue for a possible Special Issue 
announcement. We are considering a special issue on Social Entrepreneurship. I will let 
you know the details and an official call for papers announcement in the next issue. 

FredL. Fry 
Editor