The Grand Tour: The Role of Catalyzing Places for Industry Emergence

Abstract

Research on clusters highlights that some areas display superior conditions to locally nurture concentrations of businesses. But why do certain industries-despite ascribing their origin to specific locations-emerge away from their birthplace? We respond by qualitatively investigating the influence that the town of Arco, Italy, and its periodic event 'RockMaster' exerted on the emergence of the global sport climbing industry. We advance the concept of 'catalyzing places' that support the emergence and growth of industries through an ongoing, cyclical process of three forces-centripetal (i.e., attracting), catalyzing (i.e., reacting), and centrifugal (i.e., ejecting). The forces attract communities of practice to the place, expose them to intense, transformational experiences towards entrepreneurship, and ultimately induce them to establish their businesses elsewhere. By redeploying the resources and reputation acquired in the place, these scattered communities enact a collective phenomenon of user entrepreneurship, and ultimately industry emergence. We claim that the ongoing activities of the place, and the periodic ones of the event, are mutually reinforcing. We advance two novel elements, 'portable economies' and 'springboard firms,' which in catalyzing places exert the antithetical effect of 'agglomeration economies' and 'anchor firms' in clusters. We discuss our contribution to research on industry emergence, new practices, and user entrepreneurship.

Using Sports Data to Advance Management Research: A Review and a Guide for Future Studies

“…For example, scholars have widely used sports data to explore organizational change and response, since the granularity and multilevel nature of such data are well suited to investigating these phenomena, via both qualitative and quantitative methods (Adriaanse, 2016; Suarez & Montes, 2019; Slack & Hinings, 1994; Washington & Ventresca, 2004). Future research using sports settings could explore the impact of external shifts on organizational change and response across different levels of analysis by coupling data on external changes—such as shifts in market conditions (Moliterno & Wiersema, 2007), evolutions in practices in other domains (Aversa, Bianchi, Gaio, & Nucciarelli, in press), regulatory changes (Marino et al, 2015), environmental changes (Sharapov & Ross, in press), and technological shifts (Aversa, Furnari, & Jenkins, 2021)—with granular tracking of players’ or teams’ national and international activities.…”

“…Furthermore, looking at the act or process of doing sports (Suarez & Montes, 2019) or at the business and technological innovation sides of sports (Aversa et al, 2015; Aversa et al, in press; Schweisfurth & Raasch, 2015; von Hippel & Kaulartz, 2021), rather than just the actual competition, may provide a more distal view of a theory or phenomenon, thus yielding a different way to advance their understanding.…”

Navigating Place: Extending perspectives on place in organization studies

“…and psychology (Canter, 1977;Gustafson, 2001;Twigger-Ross & Uzzell, 1996) -has already highlighted the relevance of place for organizing and organizations. There is no shortage of articles that feature rich descriptions of place throughout the organizational literature -prestigious places imbued with rich traditions (Croidieu, Soppe, & Powell, 2017;Dacin, Munir, & Tracey, 2010;Lok & de Rond, 2013), places of care (Lawrence, 2017;Wright, Meyer, Reay, & Staggs, 2021), extreme and remote places (Brown & Toyoki, 2013;Crawford, Coraiola, & Dacin, 2022;Kibler, Ginting-Szczesny, Vaara, & Heikkilä, 2022), ancient and sacred places (Jones & Massa, 2013;Kieser, 1989;Siebert, Wilson, & Hamilton, 2017), iconic places (Aversa, Bianchi, Gaio, & Nucciarelli, 2022), and many more. Indeed, research on place has exploded over the last several years.…”