Learning Entrepreneurs: Learning and Innovation in Small Companies

Abstract

This article concerns agricultural entrepreneurs involved in organising their learning so as to develop innovative and learning enterprises. In hi-tech sectors, such as Dutch agriculture, this learning and innovative capacity is particularly essential for economic survival. Reviewing the literature, we conclude that innovation can be seen as informal learning processes, in which social networks play an important role. Workers learn by sharing knowledge in the working team and employers learn by creating networks of colleagues and advisers. The results of two research projects suggest that interactive learning and innovation should be analysed from a perspective of uncertainty. Learning skills for interactive innovation, as part of the entrepreneurial craft, should comprise the capability of selecting impulses and combining newly selected impulses with existing skills and routines. Paradoxically, they need new impulses from weak, unknown networks to be continuously innovative. Innovative learning involves balancing the chaos of uncertainty with the old grooves of experience. Knowing how to escape this paradox forms the core competence of innovative entrepreneurship.

Information networks that generate economic value: A study on clusters of adopters of new or improved technologies and practices among oil palm growers in Mexico

“…Part of the failure to do so might lie in that several AIM, despite providing different types of complementary advice, still have a rather linear 'technology push' orientation despite that a more responsive and demand-driven approach to stimulating technology adoption is required as recent literature indicates (Kilelu et al, 2014;Novo et al, 2014). Also, it appears that while the AIM provides complimentary services, it could more actively overcome homophily and act as a central catalyst of multi-actor networks, in line with work that underscores the need to foster such heterogeneous networks in innovation systems (Compagnone and Hellec, 2015;Gielen et al, 2003;Klerkx et al, 2009;Spielman et al, 2011;Thuo et al, 2014). As literature has indicated sometimes changes that are beyond the farm level, which requires a different type of network (following Garb and Friedlander, 2014;Hounkonnou et al, 2012;Poncet et al, 2010;Thuo et al, 2014), and AIM could do so by connecting homogenous networks of growers among each other and with other actors in the broader value chain and innovation system.…”

Hands off but Strings Attached: The Contradictions of Policy-induced Demand-driven Agricultural Extension

“…Clearly, farmers did not act as ''critical consumers'' -that is to say, they did not undertake extensive product, price, and provider comparisons (e.g., on the NMSS website) -before engaging in a transaction. Explanations for this may include: the fact that knowledge providers often took the initiative, farmers' preferred media use (see Wolf et al, 2001;Gielen et al, 2003), the (lack of) awareness of the website, the short time horizon of the project, and the fact that the list of preferred products based on client satisfaction measurements never materialized. Furthermore, a knowledge product can be seen as a service good in the sense that it is intangible and thus implies difficulties in ex ante evaluation (i.e., prior to consumption) (King and Hill, 1997;Coulter and Coulter, 2003).…”

Achieving best-fit configurations through advisory subsystems in AKIS: case studies of advisory service provisioning for diverse types of farmers in Norway

“…Commercial advisory services may be coupled with both selling and purchasing agricultural commodities but involving dedicated staff for advisory services (called embedded advisors by Klerkx and Jansen 2010), but may also be provided by advisors who provide only advice (called independent advisors by Klerkx and Jansen 2010). Besides advisors, farmers use different sources of information and support, such as media and peers, which often rank above advisors as most used sources (Gielen, Hoeve, and Nieuwenhuis 2003;Solano et al 2003;Oreszczyn, Lane, and Carr 2010;Lubell, Niles, and Hoffman 2014). As several authors argue, farmers are often surrounded by networks of different complementary advisors (Klerkx and Proctor 2013;Phillipson et al 2016), who also sometimes jointly offer integrated advice on complex issues that have several dimensions (e.g.…”