Entreprenörskapets Vidunderliga Resa - Remneland, Björn

By using a dramatistic approach in the study of nascent entrepreneurship,
linear and deterministic beliefs can be held at bay, providing space for alternative
perspectives. Just as life itself, entrepreneurship studies will then become
richer – having been stained with dreadful backlashes, irrational proceedings
and self-defense mechanisms, but most of all filled with hope for a
flourishing future. A dramatistic approach can challenge the entrepreneurial
myths and yet not reduce them to something dull and ordinary. The smell of
excitement, the emotional rollercoaster, the visionary beautiful dreams, the
taste of victory, can all provide inspiration to other entrepreneurs and academicians
in the making, without boosting expectations to grandiose limits.
It transmits entrepreneurs as heroes and heroines before their assumed innovations
become diffused and labeled, while simultaneously not reducing the
drivers of the plots to solely the actors or the environment.
Discussion and reflections
The empirical story of Kompetensarena Väst and Idebanken.se shows that
the creation of web platforms, like most innovations, does not follow a linear,
planned and predictable path. Ideas are vague and often criticized in the
beginning. Over time they become increasingly verbalized and materialized
in work that struggles toward an unknown future. Constantly, and seemingly
never-endingly, their texts and motives are modified, concretized, overthrown,
replaced, developed and structured. In the midst of the process most
things are ambiguous and insecure, but in order to engage allies, the entrepreneurs
often act “as if” they are not (Gartner et al., 1992). Urged to travel
with their loosely coupled allies into a visionary future, they are aligning
themselves to legitimized discourses and institutions, translating important
stakeholders’ proclaimed purposes into the day-to-day activities of the project.
But, no matter how thoroughly they fine-tune their scripts and actions,
the anxiety for how the environment will react to them remains. There is a
potential tragedy waiting around the corner for every entrepreneur as well as
a possible future victory and a happy ending.
Entrepreneurship is often viewed as travel. A journey has aspects of both
intuition and intention, where the ups and downs of reality are clashed with
the travel catalogues’ seducing advertisements. It progresses and has a direction
but not always a known end. Journeys consume resources, but do not let
this dim the feelings of excitement. They take place together with known and
unknown faces and artifacts, and highlight the dream of discovering new
worlds, but perhaps most of all, creating everlasting memories. The fact that
emerging organizations are just emerging organizations leads to that the
entrepreneurs’ situation is influenced by both the present and the future. It is
this that makes the distinction between reality and dreams, between results
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