Entrepreneurial Leadership as Creative Brokering: The Process and Practice of Co‐creating and Advancing Opportunity

Abstract

How does entrepreneurial leadership drive the process of forming and advancing opportunity? Drawing from an ethnographic field study of Nashville music producers, I develop a model of entrepreneurial leadership as creative brokering – the practices and process by which entrepreneurs lead and mobilize a complex network of actors in co‐creating and advancing opportunity. I find that entrepreneurial leaders encounter three tensions as they advance this process: 1) generating novel ideas and fitting them within the competitive landscape; 2) incubating opportunity and seizing the moment in the market; and 3) fostering experimentation and navigating hyper‐competition. I show when these tensions arise and identify six creative brokering practices through which leaders leverage their brokerage role to navigate these tensions in order to move opportunity forward. The paper offers a model of entrepreneurial leadership as creative brokering, extends extant creative brokering scholarship to consider more distal market actors, and shows how creative brokering and leadership towards creative outcomes involve iteratively stepping forward to infuse market perspective and exert control, and stepping back to let others shine and co‐create ideas.

Dramatic social change (COVID-19) moderating complexity leadership and organisational adaptability in Zimbabwean SMEs

“…Uhl-Bien and Arena (2018) state that ENTLEAD promotes endogenous entrepreneurship and innovation, which is similar to Lingo's (2020) view of ENTLEAD as creative brokering. CLT conceptualises informal networks in organisations as the basis for absorbing and exchanging large amounts of information, thereby promoting higher innovation and ingenuity (Marion et al, 2016;Perry-Smith and Mannucci, 2017;Uhl-Bien and Arena, 2018).…”

“…When faced with challenging circumstances, leaders are expected to adjust their leadership practices to embrace change and manage it dynamically (Teece et al, 1997). Uhl-Bien and Arena (2018) assert that these practices are consistent with the co-creation and co-action processes associated with ENTLEAD, a view also supported by Lingo (2020). Therefore, we propose that ENTLEAD promotes activities that encourage endogenous entrepreneurship and innovation; thus, ENTLEAD is positively related to perceptions of OA:…”

Entrepreneurial Leadership and Employee Wellbeing During COVID-19 Crisis: A Dual Mechanism Perspective

“…Therefore, these assessments were just general evaluations. Entrepreneurial leadership interfaces with employees in a dynamic way (Lingo, 2020 ), and employees' proactive behaviors are also dynamics (Sylva et al, 2019 ). Therefore, future studies should investigate the impact of entrepreneurial leadership on proactive employee behavior from a dynamic development perspective.…”

Empreendedorismo feminino na economia criativa e seus desafios: um olhar sobre as competências

“…A criatividade não é suficiente para alcançar o sucesso, é preciso também, experiência aplicada na administração do negócio (Intrama et al, 2017). Para Lingo (2020) Baseado nesse cenário, este estudo tem como objetivo analisar os desafios de se empreender no segmento da economia criativa, tendo como cenário os constructos a respeito das características empreendedoras no âmbito das competências e da educação empreendedora, bem como a percepção dessas entrevistadas a respeito das questões de gênero e das políticas públicas de apoio ao segmento.…”