Start‐up Communities as Communities of Practice: Shining a Light on Geographical Scale and Membership

Abstract

The development of start-up communities is seen as critical to the successful development of entrepreneurship in a region. However, it remains unclear what exactly start-up communities are and how they can be facilitated. Ambiguity concerning the geographical scale and membership of start-up communities leads to different conceptualisations. In this paper, we apply communities of practice (CoP) theory to understand how conceptualisations of start-up communities work and how they can be facilitated. To this end, we qualitatively study start-up communities in Sydney, Melbourne and Canberra, Australia. Our results show that start-up communities that are confined to a particular workspace strongly resemble a CoP. Furthermore, many elements of CoPs can also be found in regional start-up communities. Finally, we find that workspace communities have more direct and top-down facilitation activities, while regional start-up communities have more indirect and bottom-up facilitation activities.

Situated learning in a business incubator: Encouraging students to become real entrepreneurs

“…Brokers may also establish links between various CoPs by introducing members or practices from one community to another (Wenger et al, 2002). The study carried out by Van Weele et al (2018) confirms the importance of IMs adopting roles as facilitators to introduce newcomers to the incubator (CoP) and as brokers to build links with external knowledge and resource providers.…”

“…Although there are conflicting views about the best background for the manager of an incubator (Redondo and Camarero, 2017), it seems clear that IMs need to balance the institutional output requirements while offering mentoring and support to incubatees (Nair and Blomquist, 2019;Redondo and Camarero, 2019a). IMs also have an important role in the selection of candidates (Van Weele et al, 2018) who will become active members of the learning community. Entrepreneurial clubs and societies (Pittaway et al, 2011(Pittaway et al, , 2015 as well as university educators (Matlay, 2009) and researchers (Barnes et al, 2015) can also play an active role in the creation of a community of practice.…”

Bank branches as places of knowledge creation: conceptual considerations and empirical findings at the micro-geographical scale

“…levin et al 2002). This effect of shared workplaces is also identified by the communities of practice literature (van Weele et al 2017). However, detailed discussions of the possibly diverse effects of micro-geography on knowledge creation are missing.…”

In the making: Open Creative Labs as an emerging topic in economic geography?

“…In this conception, coworking spaces are socially constructed by their users in an open process that allows additional members to engage with and take part in collective actions and eventually form a community of practice. Others like Capdevila () and Van Weele et al () conceptualize fab labbers, makers, coworkers, and startups as knowledge communities. In this understanding, each collective (fab labbers, makers, and coworkers) belongs to an international movement or trend and thereby forms, contributes to, and engages with shared knowledge dynamics.…”

“…While Fab Lab and makerspace communities constitute knowledge communities, coworkers exhibit collective practices but lack relational links among themselves (Capdevila, ). In comparison, start‐up communities in Open Creative Labs benefit from labs as physical nodes for community building and as community catalysers, because the space facilitates interactions and relationships (Van Weele, Steinz, & Van Rijnsoever, ).…”