processes of incubating, as it principally involves the same start-up process within a context of targeted support and with additional actors. The peculiar aspect of the everyday practices is that the closer we get to the processes, the messier it is, which contradicts traditional perceptions of organisational studies as an activity that we engage in to optimise planning and performance (Czarniawska 2008). Classical management and organisation theory is concerned with existing organisations, not with organisational actors striving to be something else, as entrepreneurial ventures do (Hjorth 2007, 715). Understanding incubating activities is from this perspective not about model building or one specific order to rule them all; it is about accepting organisational (venture) creation as relational, messy and local and accepting that it is in this mess of interactions and dialogues that potentiality is created (Steyaert 2004, 13). The reason for embracing the mess and pointing towards other stories of the field instead of looking the other way, although it may at times seem easier, is that understanding processes in their local setting makes it possible to change them, which is the ultimate ambition of this dissertation. As a result, the study is a close analysis of some of the intertwined, challenging and complex processes of making the makers of the world that usually are not told in incubation literature.
The relationship between the entrepreneurial learning perspective and the empirical fieldwork has brought a tension to light – a tension that suggests that impact in the form of learning is taken for granted or silent14 in the field. This interaction has given me insights into the many barriers to collaboration and openness – in this dissertation referred to as clashes between narratives in the field. To some degree these clashes seem to inhibit entrepreneurial learning as a potential or outcome of incubating activities, and answering the research question is an attempt to understand and explain barriers to entrepreneurial learning, and suggest an alternative language - narratives for interacting in and changing some of the existing practices in the field.
A relational study of entrepreneurial interactions with a focus on experiences and learning contributes with much needed knowledge about how value is created for entrepreneurial actors in the context of incubating activity. This kind of knowledge helps us to explore the paradox of entrepreneurial actors in need of support met by educators and advisors who do not know how to effect actual change (Johansson 1997, 12) by offering a learning perspective and asking how entrepreneurs learn and how they make decisions based on previous experience. One way we can investigate this empirically and achieve this understanding is through narratives (Wenger et al 2002). With this kind of knowledge, practitioners may be able to design and perform incubating activities with a relational focus on how to enable entrepreneurial actors to co-construct and gain experience with organising entrepreneurial ventures, to reflect on experience as a day-to-day practice and to learn.
This dissertation will not advocate that business incubating initiatives are to be closed down or praise the governmental/private/corporate efforts to create a stronger entrepreneurial community. Instead, the dissertation argues that historical overviews of business incubation studies show that despite the lack of knowledge of what works to support entrepreneurship, business incubating activities, understood as public and private initiatives to enhance and support entrepreneurship and create growth, are here to stay (Gibb 1997, Norrman 2008, Gibb 2009, Lewis et al. 2011, Bruneel et al. 2012), and that we might as well make the most of the resources spent. The dissertation therefore contributes with much needed insights into how to collaborate with entrepreneuring actors for the sake of entrepreneurial learning, as both a process and an outcome.
Economic and institutional theories do not capture incubating activities as processes and as a social phenomenon consisting of inter-related and interacting entities seeking to collaborate in a specific time and context (culture, values, markets, environment, and competition). Such theories miss out on how new ventures
14 The concept of silent or silenced (Hjorth 2003, Hjorth 2005) is used throughout the dissertation to present a silent relationship narrative that become visible when I look at the field from a different perspective than the managerial – in this case the perspective of relational constructionism. Hjorth (2003) discusses what is silenced and what is silent.
Something can be silenced (as an active intervention), and something can remain silent (which is passive; something remains unsaid without being actively silenced).
are created from relations (McNamee and Hosking 2012, 36), which therefore constitutes a gap in the literature. The research side of incubation and entrepreneurship support tends to rely on quantitative methods and calculations, which leaves less room for researchers to ask relevant questions for understanding the input-output mechanisms of support.
The relational aspect of incubating practice and everyday activities, the interaction about co-construction, is to a large degree marginalised or ignored, both in the incubation literature and in practice (Fletcher 2006, 425). I posit that the field of incubation studies and policy practice can benefit from greater knowledge about how entrepreneurs can learn from incubating processes in order to become self-managed growth firms. The relational focus on entrepreneurial learning is one possible way of constructing realities and relations from the empirical material, which gives voice to entrepreneurial learning in an incubating setting through the lenses of relational constructionism (Hosking 2011, 59) and the European tradition of entrepreneurship research (Gartner 2013). The analytical and methodological approaches applied to the empirical conduct constitute a theoretical and methodological contribution for understanding, designing and performing business incubating activities. The motivation of relational constructionism – and, thus, of this inquiry – is ‘to explore processes that could enable and support multiple local forms of life rather than imposing one dominant rationality of others’
(Hosking 2011, 60).
The study centres on business assistance targeted at start-up processes of entrepreneuring actors and in the interactions (how they work together to create value to the venture) between the support provider (advisors and incubation managers) and the recipient (entrepreneuring actors). Both entrepreneurship policy and the incubation literature have little to say about how the relationship (how they perceive each other and what they expect from each other) and interaction between incubator and incubatee are supposed to be initiated, constructed and maintained. This means that there is a risk that the supply side actors, who are also the designers of incubating activities do not articulate the (relational) mechanisms they expect to drive the relationship and collaboration or what elements the interaction consists of. I acknowledge that even though the physical space facilities, camps and educational material are important as a setting and frame of incubating activities, it is the assumption of this study that the impact of incubating activities is achieved through activities, relationships, expectations, learning and different levels and types of interactions and collective experiences – emphasising the relational focus of the study.
It is anticipated by the researcher that the importance of (inter)action and relationship are generic to the incubating processes of incubation in general, and I therefore claim that the dynamics and mechanisms of relationship and interaction are relevant to a variety of incubating activities – both programmes, investments,
events and conferences and office subsidies. This is another way of arguing for the relevance of my empirical findings at a general level of business incubating activities and not only yo the specific context of my field study. With this dissertation about incubating initiatives as an empirical field, I aim to contribute to the knowledge about how incubating practices are performed by actors of the incubation industry and the barriers to entrepreneurial learning - by interacting with and observing both the development of entrepreneuring actors and the work of advisors, investors and processes of incubating activities.
1.11. Delimitations
Working in a cross-disciplinary field it is important to stress that a study like this cannot cover all of the academic fields that might seem relevant. The dissertation bridges fields as economics, innovation studies, psychology, pedagogic, and apply ethnographic and sociological methods, but the primary theoretical scope remains to reflect the academic background of the researcher, coming from management and organisation studies.
The theoretical approach to entrepreneurship of the dissertation differs from the classical idea of
entrepreneurship as a trait or specific personality that some people and others not (Gartner 2013). With this perspective I do not study the personality of the entrepreneurs nor heroic actions that some successful entrepreneurs perform – rather I look into what can be said to be entrepreneurial actions that drives a venture forward and how they can be encouraged and facilitated (Steyaert 2007, Hjorth et al. 2008). It is my understanding that the entrepreneurial actions that make a new venture are specific to the venture, its context, time and product – but still that all kind of human beings can perform entrepreneuring activities.
The focus of the dissertation is the relational interactions of incubating activities, which means that I assume that if solid and sound relationships are constructed, entrepreneurial learning as increased capacity for entrepreneuring from the incubating process is likely to happen. I do not evaluate the concrete ideas, projects or teams of the empirical material – even though it obviously is a barrier to learning if the idea is poor, the technology does not work or the team incompetent. The taken for granted assumption of the researcher is therefore that the entrepreneurial idea/ project is potential and qualified for entrepreneuring.
It fell outside the framework of this dissertation to go into the various fields of social and psychological theories about how to enter into, manage, organise or facilitate dialogue, such as appreciative inquiry, active listening, collaborative consulting, team building, transformative dialogues (McNamee and Hosking 2012, 68). However, one of the key points for designers and performers of incubating activities to take away from the dissertation could be the acknowledgement of entrepreneuring activities, and thus also incubating activities, as
cross-disciplinary and hence as much a social, relational and psychological process as an economical and managerial endeavour.
As an industrial PhD student I had to follow the different rounds of participants. I did not choose or select participants, as the total population of participants had to be involved in the study.
The fieldwork material contains an almost endless series of great quotes, fragments of events and stories about incubating activities, entrepreneurs, technologies and advisors – and the in-betweens of business incubating processes. However, it is not possible to give all stories a voice within the frame of this text, and I have chosen to present an analysis of barriers to entrepreneurial learning from a relational perspective through narratives. I have chosen this focus because I find that the most important analysis to present is the lack of attention towards relations and entrepreneurial learning. I have structured my presentation of the fieldwork as narratives, as a method for writing up the large amount of interviews, observations, field notes and material from the Accelerator programme, but the dissertation does not aim at contributing to narrative theory or method. Nor is the dissertation an attempt of an evaluation of what has happened and whether the customers are satisfied – but rather a study of how things happened and why it did not happen. I am aware that many things (relational constructions) can happen outside my range as a fieldworker, but I can only study and analyse what I have seen, listened to and been part of.