Johan Gaddefors

The best of both worlds: how rural entrepreneurs use placial embeddedness and strategic networks to create opportunities

Entrepreneurial activities are strongly influenced by the context in which they occur. It is therefore imperative to understand how different contexts enable entrepreneurs to create opportunities. In this paper, we focus on the spatial context of rural entrepreneurs and explore how the rural context impacts on their opportunity creation. Based on a multiple case study, we find that rural entrepreneurs mix what we refer to as placial embeddedness – an intimate knowledge of and concern for the place – with strategically built non-local networks, i.e. the best of two worlds. Notably, the entrepreneurs seek to exhaust the localized resource base before seeking out non-local resources. Our findings thus contribute to our understanding of entrepreneurship in context and challenge future research to explore how different forms of contexts are bridged in different settings to create varieties of entrepreneurial activities.

CREATING CONTEXT – ENTREPRENEURIAL OPPORTUNITIES IN A CONSUMER MARKET SETTING

This paper focuses on entrepreneurial opportunities in a consumer market setting. The purpose is to explore how the corporate branding process influences emerging entrepreneurial opportunities. The empirical results show the importance of symbols and images influencing emerging opportunities, rather than isolated product innovations. Here the importance of examining all the people involved in the entrepreneurial process, rather than just focusing on the entrepreneur or the entrepreneurial organization, is emphasized. The case illustrates the intensity and the devotion invested in the creation of a context that holds the Nav products. In this process the interplay between identity and image is described in a corporate branding perspective. I show how, by whom, and where, the creation of context becomes distinct. Introducing the creation of context to entrepreneurship theories change the opportunity discussion from a situation where organizational aspects are primarily focused on, to a situation also emphasizing the consumer market side of entrepreneurial opportunities. The theoretical results illustrate how branding theory and marketing/entrepreneurship interface theories shift the interest from organization aspects to market related aspects of the entrepreneurial process. The overall conclusions are that branding aspects of the entrepreneurial process are becoming more challenging in a society and on a market generally characterized by fragmentation.

Market creation: the epitome of entrepreneurial marketing practices

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine theories of marketing and entrepreneurship and compare these with entrepreneurial marketing practices.Design/methodology/approach – The paper uses a case study to explore the social constructions of narratives.Findings – The paper reveals how interactions based around meanings, purpose and identities work to create products, customers, entrepreneurs and even the market. Here the emphasis on signs, symbols and images redirects attention to create space for expectations to grow.Research limitations/implications – The paper develops its argument that merely modifying existing theory is conceptually inadequate; a new framework is introduced which enables the understanding of how entrepreneurship and marketing combine. The paper shows how this fertile dynamic produces not only new products, but also may actually create new markets.Originality/value – This case study demonstrates how entrepreneurship and marketing become inseparable in the co‐production of ident...

Returnees and Local Stakeholders Co-producing the Entrepreneurial Region

The purpose of this article is to examine how returning entrepreneurs and local stakeholders are involved in co-producing an entrepreneurial region. A theoretical framework is proposed based on two metaphors: embeddedness and translation. Moreover, the value of the framework is illustrated by a case drawn from a study conducted over a 3-year period. The work is based on a constructionist approach, and the results emerged from a narrative analysis. Our partial ethnographic methodology gives us the opportunity to follow the interaction between entrepreneurs and local stakeholders over time. The findings show that what needs to become embedded to attain regional development is an entrepreneurial attitude to life in the region, not only the embeddedness of the returning entrepreneurs and their firms. Consequently, the framework results in a perspective emphasizing the interplay over time between entrepreneurs and local stakeholders. The value of the article is that it shows how the co-production of the entrepreneurial region between entrepreneurs and local stakeholders results in a continued regional development.

Entrepreneursheep and context: when entrepreneurship is greater than entrepreneurs

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explain how context shapes what becomes entrepreneurial. Design/methodology/approach The paper is part of a longitudinal study over ten years, an ethnographic work including interviews, participating in meetings and shadowing. Texts and voices boiled down to transcripts and notes were sorted in NVivo. The empirical material was presented as a simple, short story, with the aim to question established assumptions and relations. The paper propose context as the unit for analysis, instead of entrepreneurs and outcomes. This opened up the scale from a narrow individualism to a much broader appreciation of the entrepreneurship as shaped by social factors. Findings The paper provides insights about how context determines entrepreneurship. It is not simply the context in itself, but the things that are going on in the context. What entrepreneurship does is to connect and thus create a raft of changes. The paper suggests that to depart from context as the unit of analysis will avoid the objectification of entrepreneurship and open up for discussing the becoming of entrepreneurship. The case illustrates how entrepreneurship is an event in a flow of changing circumstances. Entrepreneurship is formed from the context itself, rather than being individual or social; entrepreneurship appears simultaneously to be both. Entrepreneurship can and does exist in multiple states regardless of the observer and the observation. Originality/value This paper fulfils an identified need to learn more about how entrepreneurship and context interact. It illustrates how context is more engaged in the entrepreneurial process than entrepreneurship theory acknowledges.

Metaphor use in the entrepreneurial process

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to critically investigate the use of metaphor in the entrepreneurial process. In particular, the paper focuses on how metaphors are used in the construction o ...

Entrepreneurship as a community phenomenon; reconnecting meanings and place

This paper explores entrepreneurship as a community phenomenon to establish the roles of entrepreneurship within the social and spatial boundaries of place. During the decade of studying this place through an entrepreneurial lens, we were able to identify processes that might normally be overlooked. One, albeit unusual, entrepreneurial event had worked to trigger these changes. We found a renewed sense of belonging and a stronger sense of place meaning that had revitalised this previously depleted community. Entrepreneurship had worked in and for the community by realigning the meanings and attributes of place. We argue that our novel unit for analysis, entrepreneurship in place, offers a broader, perhaps richer, view of entrepreneurship as a socialised phenomenon.

Entrepreneurship as re-sourcing: towards a new image of entrepreneurship in a time of financial, economic and socio-spatial crisis

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to develop an understanding of entrepreneurship that can help researchers, policymakers and practitioners develop entrepreneurial responses to the current economic, environmental and socio-spatial crisis. Design/methodology/approach - The paper adopts a conceptual approach. Hudson’s diagnosis of the current patterns of production is applied to the two dominant streams of theorising on entrepreneurship: the opportunistic discovery view and the resourcefulness view of, for example, effectuation. Findings - The analysis indicates that the opportunistic discovery view and, to some extent, the resourcefulness view are both inadequate as conceptual platforms for entrepreneurial responses to the economic, environmental and socio-spatial crisis. Instead, an alternative perspective on entrepreneurship is developed: Entrepreneurship as re-sourcing. The perspective emphasises the importance of building regional-level resilience through entrepreneurial activity that sources resources from new places and uses these resources to create multiple forms of value. Practical implications - The paper draws attention to dysfunctions in the current theorising on entrepreneurship in light of the economic, environmental and socio-spatial crisis. Instead, the authors offer an alternative. In doing so, the paper also points to the difficult trade-offs that exist between, for example, long-term resilience and short-term competitiveness and growth on a regional, as well as firm level. Originality/value - This paper adds to research by offering an alternative view of entrepreneurship grounded – not in economics – but in economic geography, thus highlighting the importance of productions’ grounding in material reality and the importance of addressing non-economic concerns in our way of thinking about entrepreneurship.

Provoking identities: entrepreneurship and emerging identity positions in rural development

Abstract This article discusses entrepreneurship in a depleted community in transition. The purpose is to develop knowledge about how discourses are used in the positioning of identity in regional development. The concept positioning illustrates how identities are provoked, challenged, negotiated and moved into identity positions that break away from the idea of imitating successful and wealthy regions; instead, locality, place and history emerge as important resources from where local actors obtain agency and recognize new opportunities. Ethnographic data of a single case were collected over a six-year period between 2005 and 2010. The longitudinal nature of the study made it possible to incorporate how local stakeholders took on new identity positions, while handling their inspiration as well as their frustration. Results show how rural change was conditioned by discourses and how entrepreneurship challenged and reframed dominating structures through interaction between entrepreneurship and community. Four discourses, expressed as dichotomies available to people in this depleted community, illustrate the interactive process of positioning: change vs. traditions, rational vs. irrational, spectacular vs. mundane and individual vs. collective. The results support research emphasizing perspectives that acknowledge interaction between entrepreneurship and context as well as discursive aspects of regional development.

Romancing the rural: Reconceptualizing rural entrepreneurship as engagement with context(s)

This article considers how we conceive and research rural entrepreneurship. While we argue for the importance of context for understanding entrepreneuring, we also acknowledge that some perceptions of the rural context may be misleading. We critically review how the rural in rural entrepreneurship has been applied. We find how some romancing of the rural has had detrimental effects in theorizing about rural. However, we also find and discuss the interesting range of relationships between the rural and the entrepreneurship presented in the literature. We conclude that a conceptually robust approach can be achieved by examining the nature and extent of entrepreneurial engagement with the contexts that characterize the rural. Finally, we propose methods that will enable us to achieve better understanding of the processes of rural.