The materiality of accelerators and innovation spaces

It all starts with a story: Questioning dominant entrepreneurial identities through collective narrative practices

“…However, those findings remain centred on individual needs as opposed to the underlying collective endeavours. Instead, a collective narrative perspective would help in understanding how practitioners, at the group level, attend to and account for their shared entrepreneurial experience (Campbell, 2019(Campbell, , 2021Knox et al, 2021). Beech (2017) suggests that multiple voices can help develop a more realistic understanding of the entrepreneurial experience and a 'less totalizing, restrictive assessment of the other' (p. 366).…”

“…To meet this challenge, the literature on EaP suggests considering a multiple-practitioner perspective on EI construction. According to Campbell (2019Campbell ( , 2021, this would provide a richer understanding of how practitioners, in groups, attend to and account for their shared entrepreneurial experience and develop more realistic identities while facing complex challenges. Adopting an EaP perspective (see Anderson et al, 2019;Campbell, 2021;Gherardi, 2015;Hytti, 2005;Knox et al, 2021) by considering that EI involves interaction with others and is performed when presenting the self in situated narratives, and that entrepreneurial practitioners draw on various discursive resources to do so, our study contributes to this literature on EI constructions, including the role of narratives as coping mechanisms when faced with challenges, trauma or injustice (Refai et al, 2018;Tomlinson and Colgan, 2014).…”

“…Relevant research questions include how practitioners leverage narratives to construct identity and acquire resources and legitimacy for themselves or their venture (Mmbaga et al, 2020), how collectives and networks of practitioners help in developing identities that are emboldening while remaining critical of the visionary, heroic entrepreneurs (Anderson and Warren, 2011), and the way practitioners and their stakeholders co-produce artefacts, such as identity or business models (Champenois et al, 2020), notably through shared stories and multi-voiced conversations (Berglund and Glaser, 2022; Campbell, 2019). The latter, involving the participation of others, calls for collective narrative practices (Lawrence and Maitlis, 2012); these are collective in the sense that they involve multiple voices referring to and emerging from collective endeavours.…”

“…Embracing the collective dimension of identity construction would help in understanding how practitioners, at the group level, attend to and account for their shared entrepreneurial experience (Campbell, 2019(Campbell, , 2021. This is important when cultivating identities that resist dominant plots (Frederiksen and Berglund, 2020), especially when practitioners aim to bring social change and address complex societal problems (Wagenschwanz, 2021).…”