Crowdfunding through the Internet, a new fundraising technique for small business ventures, can benefit fund‐seeking companies by helping to overcome funding difficulties, providing value‐added involvement, facilitating access to further funding, providing publicity and contacts, and enabling fundraising with only limited or no loss of control and ownership.

Purpose This paper seeks to address an underdeveloped aspect of entrepreneurship education (EE), which is still criticised for not explicitly linking educational practice with established educational theory. As such, the purpose of this paper is to propose a novel educational framework – Authentic Alignment – that the authors evolved based on their own EE practice, as well as two major educational theories. Design/methodology/approach A review of a range of conceptual educational frameworks in EE revealed a gap in the current literature, referring to the fact that practice is not sufficiently linked to sound educational theory. The paper combines a range of educational theories – predominantly Constructive Alignment (CA) and Authenticity – to develop a novel conceptual framework, termed “Authentic Alignment”. The discussion of Authentic Alignment draws upon EE literature, as well as student feedback and the reflections and experiences of the practitioners and academics involved in delivering a higher education unit underpinned by Authentic Alignment. Findings It is argued that Authentic Alignment coherently and explicitly links educational practice to major established educational theories and as such presents a valuable approach to education through entrepreneurship as it aligns authentic approaches to instruction, learning and assessment that strike a balance between resembling and being relevant for real entrepreneurial activity. Practical implications The paper invites educators to draw upon Authentic Alignment for their own entrepreneurship units/programmes by customising the specific approaches to their own requirements, while retaining the underlying principle of constructively aligned authentic education. Originality/value By explicitly linking EE to CA and Authenticity, this paper introduces a novel educational framework that provides a valuable structure for education through entrepreneurship. The customisability of Authentic Alignment, however, suggests a wider applicability and is thus valuable also for education about and for entrepreneurship.

Despite extensive proliferation of social media in different domains, higher education academics' use of social media remains unclear. This paper addresses this gap in the literature by providing a scoping review, covering the last five years of extant literature. It compiles and analyses previous empirical studies concerning academics' usage of social media, the benefits of social media for academics, and the challenges and barriers that academics face when using or considering using social media. The review of twenty-four published articles shows that not all academics currently use social media and those who do, tend to use it for research dissemination and personal reasons, mostly career and network development. Many academics do not use social media for teaching, mostly due to a lack of awareness, skill and confidence in using this emerging technology. Despite this limited use of social media by academics, social media provides clear benefits for career development, research and teaching, including: improved communication with various stakeholders, increased opportunities and contacts, and increased student learning and satisfaction. This review is intended as a timely introduction to current thinking about the usage of social media by higher education academics globally. By outlining the status quo in this underresearched field, it informs and becomes a useful basis for further research and highlights the need for academics to become more aware of, and accustomed to, using social media in their professional lives, not only for research and career development purposes, butmost importantlyalso for learning and teaching.

PurposeEntrepreneurial businesses often face financial and experiential gaps, which can constrain their growth. Business angels (BAs) can provide sources of financial, human and social capital to overcome these gaps. Building on the work by Munck and Saublens, this paper aims to introduce a framework that seeks to provide a detailed understanding of the benefits that BAs can bring to the firms in which they invest.Design/methodology/approachIn order to obtain a detailed understanding of the benefits that BAs bring to their investee companies, semi‐structured, in‐depth telephone interviews were conducted from an investee perspective. The key managers of nine angel‐funded companies were purposefully selected and the transcribed interviews analysed with the help of common qualitative analysis techniques.FindingsAccording to investee managers, BAs provide benefits in all four areas of the proposed framework. Specifically, BAs: help overcome funding gaps; fill knowledge/experience gaps through provision of their own expertise and involvement; provide a wide range of contacts and leverage further funding, including their own follow‐on finance.Research limitations/implicationsThe anonymous nature of the BA market requires convenience sampling, which, in addition to the small sample size used, does not allow for generalisability. The use of telephone interviews instead of face‐to‐face interviews did not allow for observation of non‐verbal cues. Nevertheless, the study identified various areas in need of further research.Originality/valueIn‐depth interview data enabled a detailed exploration of the financial and non‐financial benefits of BA funding from an under‐utilised investee perspective. The paper's main value, however, lies in establishing the usefulness of a framework showing BAs' benefits in a structured manner.

Fund‐seeking entrepreneurs who are interested in reaping value‐added benefits from their crowdfunders can positively influence their funders through the use of relationship marketing and trust‐building techniques.