A business network perspective on unconventional entrepreneurship: A case from the cultural sector

Abstract

Entrepreneurship is perceived as a key process to be promoted in the current economic and social context. Academic researchers, policy makers and practitioners acknowledge that a “traditional” view on entrepreneurship is no longer sufficient to encompass all possible forms of entrepreneurship. In this line of thought there is a growing interest to gain a deeper understanding of ‘unconventional’ entrepreneurial initiatives. This paper aims to provide a contribution on the development process of unconventional entrepreneurial processes, placing emphasis on their networked nature. The paper adopts the IMP approach as the guiding conceptual framework and examines a single longitudinal case study of RATATA' Festival concerning figurative arts. This research contributes to the emerging literature on unconventional entrepreneurship emphasizing the key role of the interplay between the community of passionate people promoting the initiative and the wider business network progressively enacted along the different editions of the Festival.

Introduction

Entrepreneurship is perceived as a key process to be promoted in the current economic and social context. The European Commission aims at “reigniting the entrepreneurial spirit in Europe” (European Commission, 2013) and adopts a broad definition of entrepreneurship as “a dynamic and social process where individuals, alone or in collaboration, identify opportunities for innovation and act upon these by transforming ideas into practical and targeted activities, whether in a social, cultural or economic context” (European Commission, 2006).

Within the economics and management literature an effort has been made to catch the changing nature of entrepreneurship taking into account insights from emerging practices of entrepreneurs acting in the current complex market context, as well as by adopting an interdisciplinary perspective. As a result, phenomena such as social entrepreneurship and cultural entrepreneurship received increasing attention based on the assumption that a “traditional” view on entrepreneurship is no longer sufficient to encompass all possible forms of entrepreneurial processes (Gehman & Soublière, 2017; Grimes, McMullen, Vogus, & Miller, 2013).

More recently, there has been a growing interest to gain a deeper understanding of “unconventional” entrepreneurial phenomena (Cova & Guercini, 2016). Authors in this stream of thought highlight various emerging features: different - not only profit - as well as mixed motivations (Marcketti, Niehm, & Fuloria, 2006); the key role of the “user” nature of the entrepreneur, along with the surrounding “community” in a wide range of leisure or hobby activities (Haefliger, Jäger, & Von Krogh, 2010; Hargadon & Bechky, 2006; Shah & Tripsas, 2007); the nonlinear path when compared to more traditional entrepreneurial processes (Kim, Longest, & Lippmann, 2015; Shah & Tripsas, 2007); the development through a variety of forms - different from the more traditional shape of the “business firm” - such as temporary organizations, associations or events (Lindkvist & Hjorth, 2015; Steyaert & Hjorth, 2003).

We believe that the process of unconventional entrepreneurship - supposed as non-linear and influenced by a “collective” dimension - deserves to be further investigated. In particular, while the literature acknowledges the role of social relationships and social network in such initiatives (McKeever, Jack, & Anderson, 2015; Pohja, 2009), less attention has been addressed to the interplay between social and business relationships (Guercini & Ranfagni, 2016). In this respect we consider the IMP (Industrial Marketing and Purchasing) approach as a useful tool to enrich our understanding of the unconventional entrepreneurial processes in the light of its emphasis on the relevance of interaction at the actors, activities and resource layers, combining social and business network perspectives (Aaboen, La Rocca, Lind, Perna, & Shih, 2017; Havenvid Ingemansson & La Rocca, 2017; Snehota, 2011).

Relying on this line of thought the purpose of this paper is to provide a contribution on unconventional entrepreneurial processes using the IMP approach (Håkansson, Ford, Gadde, Snehota, & Waluszewski, 2009; Håkansson & Snehota, 2017) as the guiding conceptual framework emphasizing the networked evolutionary nature in terms of the overall actors, resources and activities (i.e. business network) involved. We argue that there is need for empirically based studies that could shed light over the features of unconventional entrepreneurship as called upon by different authors (Cova & Guercini, 2016; Shepherd, 2015; Steyaert & Hjorth, 2003).

Therefore the research question to be addressed is the following:

• - how does an unconventional entrepreneurial process develop in a community/business network context?

In order to pursue this goal this paper investigates unconventional entrepreneurship in the cultural sector. Specifically this paper presents a single longitudinal case study of an event (RATATA' Festival) that, born in a community of passionate people of a variety of contemporary figurative arts (art books, graphics, illustration, comics) mainly with the aim of being self-consumed, progressively is transformed in a more complex entrepreneurial initiative with an increasing degree of business orientation, different types of resources and activities involved, changing roles played by different actors in different phases of development.

The paper is structured as follows. In section two the background literature of the study is presented. We first introduce the concept of “unconventional” entrepreneurship. Then we explore more in depth contributions on the entrepreneurial process with emphasis on unconventional venture development. Finally, the IMP approach and IMP entrepreneurship-related studies are introduced and discussed, in order to outline the theoretical framework of the study. The research methodology is presented in section three. The fourth section concerns the case study description, while section five addresses the main findings and discusses the results of the analysis. The last section draws final remarks with particular emphasis on the contribution of the study and on further research developments.