The becoming of an entrepreneurial opportunity. – reflections on different ‘opportunity-ontologies’.

Sine Maria Herholdt-Lomholdt

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Abstract

As innovation and entrepreneurship is about bringing something “new” into the world, a key point must be focusing on the entrepreneurial opportunity and how we get access to entrepreneurial opportunities. Contemporary research within entrepreneurship and innovation are mainly based in different forms of constructivist and social-constructivist approaches, by Alvarez and Barney (Alvarez & Barney 2007; Alvarez & Barney 2010) named creation theory. Within these approaches the entrepreneurial opportunity is growing from different forms of action and co-creation either among professions or between persons. However, newer research such as Verganti and colleagues (Verganti & Öberg 2013), Steyaert (Steyaert & Katz 2004) and Hansen (Hansen 2014) points out the possibility of - and also need for -other scientific approaches in innovation- and entrepreneurship research. With a starting point in phenomenology by Max van Manen (van Manen 2007; van Manen 2014), philosophic- aesthetics by Dorthe Joergensen (Jørgensen 2008; Jørgensen 2004b; Jørgensen 2014)and with an empiric departure in the work of Hansen and myself (Herholdt-Lomholdt et al. n.d.) on wonder-driven entrepreneurship, I suggest a phenomenological and aesthetic approach to innovation and entrepreneurship. In this paper I pay specific attention to the ontology of opportunities from such approach and how it differs from a social-constructivist approach to opportunities as something co-created. Through this paper I show three distinct differences between creation theory and a phenomenological-aesthetic approach to entrepreneurial opportunities. At first opportunities within creation theory starts out in disharmonies, whereas a phenomenological-aesthetic approach would prefer to start with a sense of harmony. Second creation theory is based in different forms of constructivism while pointing to opportunities as a endogen human creation, whereas a phenomenological-aesthetic approach instead would suggest a dissolution of the subject-object dichotomy (in creation theory expressed by the words endogen and exogenous) by instead proposing the possibility of an ‘in-between’ world, and opportunities as the revelation of the inherent meaning in this world. Finally, creation theory tends to approach the becoming of opportunities before being in the world, which differs from the phenomenological-aesthetic approach presented in this paper, where being in the world always comes first.
Original languageEnglish
Publication date19 Nov 2015
Number of pages16
Publication statusPublished - 19 Nov 2015
EventRENT Conference, Zagreb November 2015 -
Duration: 1 Nov 2015 → …

Conference

ConferenceRENT Conference, Zagreb November 2015
Period01/11/2015 → …

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