The impact of World Cafe on entrepreneurial strategic planning capability

The World Cafe has been used to develop business and organizational strategies, to enhance safety performance, to support executive education, to foster community development, and for a host of other specific applications. However, is the World Cafe superior to traditional strategy workshop techniques in terms of increases in participant knowledge and understanding? Up to now there has been no absolute no answer to this question. This study examines and compares how the World Cafe and Strategy Workshops influence the development of entrepreneurs in the writing of business plans and as a means to model learning behavior. This study also investigates which kinds of leadership styles (transactional leadership or transformational leadership) can simultaneously benefit learning performance. A quasi-experimental design is utilized which includes pre-post tests. 120 participants attending an entrepreneurial program held by the government are observed. The results indicate that the World Cafe strategy has a significantly higher positive effect on their strategic planning capability than with traditional Strategy Workshops. Second, the leadership style of the focus leader can significantly increase the entrepreneur's strategic planning capability. Finally, in the discussion of World Cafe, the effects of transactional leadership on the entrepreneur's strategic planning capability is found to be greater than the effects of transformational leadership. (C) 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.