Entrepreneurial imagining: How a small team of arts entrepreneurs created the world’s largest traveling carillon

Abstract

Although imagination has been recognized as essential to entrepreneuring, the processes by which entrepreneurs imagine and generate novelty remain insufficiently understood. To begin addressing this oversight, we propose a rhizomatic process model of entrepreneurial imagining that comprises five elements: experiencing, early creating, reaching an impasse and gestating, (re)creating and evaluating imagined futures, and choosing and enterprising. To generate this dynamic process model, we undertook an abductive, 25-month case study, guided by enactive research, to investigate how a small team of arts entrepreneurs created the world’s largest traveling carillon. Our primary contribution is to offer new theoretical insights into entrepreneurial imagining as a complex, situated, relational performance that unfolds through conscious and unconscious, self-reflective and embodied processes.

Towards an Object-Oriented Organization Theory: The Role of Entrepreneurial Objects in Organizational Emergence

“…Following OOO's core premises, some objects-including organizations yet also some (but not all) other objects-must possess a distinctive quality that grants them the ability to emerge as organizations and not, for example, as paper mills or sunflowers. In search for a term for this as-yet unnamed quality, we draw on entrepreneurship, which extant theories regard as the process of organization creation (Chiles et al, 2004;Elias, Chiles, & Crawford, 2022;Hjorth et al, 2015Hjorth et al, , 2018, and arrive at "the entrepreneurial," which in other circumstances might sound (too) tautological. The entrepreneurial is a quality rather than an object; it characterizes an object as innovative and unprecedented (Schumpeter, 1947) yet is not the object itself (Harman, 2018).…”

“…The entrepreneurial is a quality rather than an object; it characterizes an object as innovative and unprecedented (Schumpeter, 1947) yet is not the object itself (Harman, 2018). Hence, we propose that the entrepreneurial quality can be attached to a human or non-human person, as well as to an inanimate object, such as a spacecraft capable of supporting life in outer space (McCray, 2013), a bushfire (Pierides & Woodman, 2012), a mobile carillon (Elias et al, 2022), or the Jesuit Book of Spiritual Exercises (Bento da Silva et al, 2022). While all of these may possess a range of striking qualities other than the entrepreneurial, it is the latter without which they cannot create unprecedented symbiotic bonds with other objects that irreversibly transform such objects’ reality (Harman, 2016b).…”

Closing the Product Utility Gap: How Tech Entrepreneurs Imagine Unknown Client Markets

“…Imagination is central to how opportunities are created and pursued in the entrepreneurial process (Elias et al, 2022; Hjorth & Reay, 2022; Sarasvathy, 2002). Imagining potential futures is critical in order to guide investments and decision-making in uncertain and turbulent environments (Beckert, 2021; Thompson & Byrne, 2022).…”

“…Entrepreneurs therefore rely a lot on imagination which, in this context, is about the narrative construction of potential future worlds within which their product can create value (Beckert, 2021;Garud et al, 2014;Roundy, 2021). Interestingly, whereas the importance of imagination in the business world in general (Beckert, 2021;Wenzel et al, 2020) and in entrepreneurial processes in particular (e.g., Roundy, 2021;Wood & McKinley, 2010 has been captured quite well theoretically in recent years, our empirical understanding of what is driving entrepreneurial imagination is still limited (see e.g., Elias et al, 2022). This study is designed to make an empirical contribution to this important emerging research stream, with a special focus on tech entrepreneurship.…”

Inquiry-Based Teaching: Emotional Intelligence and Academic Excellence of University Students

“…It is effects on different variables of these pressure of a dimension to insight. Without passionate insight abilities, youngsters might be progressively defenseless against physical sicknesses that drain their vitality and quality, and in addition emotional troubles that blocks academic achievements (Elias, Chiles, & Crawford, 2021).…”