Enacting Risk in Independent Technological Innovation

Journal article, 2002

The present study aims at investigating the role of risk in the activity of independent technological venturing. Altogether 12 deep-interviews were conducted with technological entrepreneurs, who had taken part in the inventive, developmental and the commercialisation phases of a technologybased innovation process. The interviews revealed a number of enactment approaches through which these innovators encountered and affected (dealt with or transformed) risk within the innovation process. Factors thus developed from the empirical material included: human capital, pace and priority, the world moves, activating social networks, risk learning, risk incrementalism, maintaining venture agility, and creating and sustaining autonomy. The paper presents a theoretical contextualisation as to the significance of these factors, and finally suggests a number of ways in which these may be interpreted for the benefit of innovation management.