Entrepreneurial Intermediation in Innovation: A Study of Multilayered Contexts and Embedded Dynamics of Organisation-Creation

Abstract

The article is based on a theoretical exploration and empirical analysis of formalized public initiated instruments-eight network entrepreneurs-intended to promote, intermediate and support innovation and entrepreneurship in firms and firm networks located in three different business areas in Mid-Norway: food value chain, experience industries, and renewable energy and environmental technology. The article intends to explore how the intermediation perspectives in innovation theory could be combined with the entrepreneuring perspective in entrepreneurship theory, to build an alternative analytic approach to understand and explain contextually and dynamically embedded organisation-creation, better than the innovation-intermediation and the entrepreneuring perspectives separately are capable of. By inventing a tertius typology representing six archetypes of organizationcreative action and strategies inherent in all innovative and entrepreneurial firm development, intermediation and entrepreneuring are seen as interwoven processes constantly emerging, evolving and interacting in multilayered contexts and dynamics of organisation-creation. Embeddedness or contextuality factors of all kinds are at work in every process of becoming and in spacing of newness, the primary goal for entrepreneurship and innovation suis generis. Accordingly, the article explores the traditional conceptions of change, entrepreneurship and innovation by contrasting them with process and event philosophical perspectives of firm development.

Entrepreneurship as Organizing Desire

“…This touches on ideas expressed by Steyaert and Hjorth (2003, p. 9), who posited that entrepreneurship, in all its forms, "creates channels for peoples' energies and directs these energies into efforts of differentiation," and that the entrepreneurial process has been described as a way of "channeling desire" into new or productive ends (Hjorth, 2014). Although this idea of channeling desire requires some ontological elaboration (e.g., within a Deleuzian framework as in Hjorth, 2009;Sletterød, Carlsson & Hjorth, 2021), it could also be mistaken for a quasi-magical ability possessed by the entrepreneur. However, as the above instance elucidated, being committed or invested in the initiative of creating Konsthall Tornedalen has also been experienced as way of being invested in the village.…”

“…They also adopted a Deleuzian framing in their conception of desire, which gave them an ontology whereby entrepreneurship became a device for creating vessels "towards which desire can flow" (Dey, Schneider & Maier, 2016, p. 1452. This language also ties back into how some scholars who have drawn on a Deleuzian understanding of desire have suggested that entrepreneurship is about "channeling" desire into sociality (e.g., Hjorth, 2014a;Sletterød, Carlsson & Hjorth, 2021). Although this philosophical vocabulary may open up new vistas for seeing desire and its relation to entrepreneurship, it can also be criticized for being overly abstract because metaphysical ideas about the production of desire can be difficult to translate into practice.…”

“…… For it is ultimately quite strange that people should so 'accept' to occupy themselves in the service of a desire that was not originally their own. Yet, entrepreneurs seem to repeatedly accomplish feats of aligning interests and instilling desire in others across diverse and culturally complex contexts (Clarke & Holt, 2010;Dey & Mason, 2018;Sletterød, Carlsson & Hjorth, 2021), as seen, for instance in many empirical research accounts of social entrepreneurship and the voluntary sector, in which people agree to work without monetary compensation (Gartner, 1993;Thompson, 2002).…”