Entreprenörskapets Vidunderliga Resa - Remneland, Björn

parent, but it also fuels views of entrepreneurship as rational, logical, linear,
deterministic and thus predictable and fully manageable.
The two cases
The empirical story is about small, innocent ideas and how they became
transformed into increasingly complex projects including a bunch of competing
and collaborating elements with fluctuating degrees of involvement. It is
about the emergence of strategies and plans, visions, conflicts and passions;
about offices, power-point slides, business cards, program codes and meetings
after meetings; about the construction and development of arenas for
collaboration; system artifacts with the aim of building shared platforms on
the web. The cases have apparent similarities but also important differences,
which provide opportunities for various reflections.
The project “Kompetensarena Väst” (in English “Competence Arena
West”) could be described as an attempt to link competences and resources
on a regional level, across organizational borders with the aim to facilitate
innovations and new businesses. The idea was initiated by a local entrepreneur
from the west of Sweden, and began to take shape in the Fall of 2003.
The concept is built around an IT-platform for structuring “valuable” relationships
between various human – competences, relations etc. – and nonhuman
– equipments, machines etc. – elements. The success of both the construction
and implementation depends on the project’s ability to mobilize
allies, working with and for the innovation.
Idebanken.se (in English “the Idea Bank”) was launched as a Web 2.0 application
in February 2005 by another entrepreneur from the west of Sweden.
It has the aim of building a creative community of problem solvers to
which companies and private persons can post challenging issues or questions
on an interactive website. The best evaluated solutions will be rewarded
according to beforehand agreed rules. Apart from this main service,
a member forum, a news room and other functions have been added over
time. The venture’s accomplishment is dependent upon attracting active
allies on both the supply-side and the demand-side of the community.
Both initiatives use Internet as platforms for letting various actors meet to
share ideas and resources and create new collaborative value. Both initiatives
are dependent on involving and engaging an increasing number of participants
into their networks, building critical masses of content as well as users.
They both had approximately the same starting point in terms of time and
place, and have been run by committed entrepreneurs with high ambition
and energy. But although they started from the same geographical location,
their scenes are somewhat different. While Kompetensarena Väst focused on
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