Relating the Process of Becoming Entrepreneurial to the I-NVC Dialogic

Paper in proceeding, 2014

Objectives Bruyat and Julien (2001) define entrepreneurship as an individual ↔ new value creation (I↔NVC) dialogic, where the individual (the entrepreneur) and the new value being created influence and shape one another. The question we care about involves understanding this co-construction when the individual is engaging in the process of entrepreneurship for the first time, i.e. nascent entrepreneurship. We ask: which aspects of becoming entrepreneurial stem from the individual relating to expectations around an entrepreneurial role, and which aspects of becoming entrepreneurial stem from the value creation. Approach To investigate the dialogic, seven nascent entrepreneurial teams pursuing an entrepreneurship education, each with three team members and located at a technology incubator, were studied over a nine-month period. The nascent teams were connected with intellectual property and put in the position of surrogate entrepreneurs developing the initial early-stage technologies into viable technology ventures. Almost two years after venture inception, six individuals from four of the initial seven teams were still running their ventures and therefore characterized as having become entrepreneurial. Secondary data and interview evidence from these individuals are accounted for in order to trace dialogic between the individual and new value creation (I↔NVC) individual and entrepreneurial role expectations (I↔ERE) as well as NVC↔ERE interaction. Results The six students more or less relate to entrepreneurial role expectations as well as new value creation. Over time, the ERE and NVC is increasingly interrelated into an individual entrepreneurial identity. Implications Understanding the processes which contribute to individuals becoming entrepreneurial through the I↔NVC dialogic, and the new I↔ERE dialogic, can enlighten educational design and incubation practice in which entrepreneurial competence and value creation are at focus. Educational arrangements including real value creation over time arguably offer entrepreneurial competence development not obtainable by other types of pedagogy. Value/Originality This is one of the first studies of nascent entrepreneurs becoming entrepreneurial. Insight into how the I↔NVC dialogic (and the new I↔ERE dialogic) impacts this process of becoming entrepreneurial can help improve entrepreneurship education and incubation support. The study also opens up for further study of how entrepreneurial identity developed in dialogic with a specific NVC can (or cannot) be translated into other settings.