Making sense of entrepreneurship: Blurring boundaries between academic and entrepreneurial work. Presentation at the 3E conference in Cork, Ireland, May 2017

Abstract

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</p><p><b>Purpose</b> – The paper focuses on how participants in a 24-hour business idea development Camp organized for university faculty make sense of entrepreneurship and academic work, and of their own abilities in entrepreneurship. </p><p>

</p><p></p><p><b>Design/methodology/approach</b> – Drawing from an ethnographic research methodology, the paper makes use of inductive analyses of the videotaped sessions, students’ reflective notes after the Camp in combination with the researcher’s field notes.</p><p>

</p><b>Findings</b> – The findings highlight that in the collective-social sensemaking reflection-in-experience is strongly influenced by the Camp facilitators producing normative ideas of entrepreneurship and ‘othering’ it from academic work and lived experience of the participants. It is in the individual reflective essays, where the reflection-on-experience is strengthened giving the opportunities for individualised accounts of drawing parallels between entrepreneurship and academic work, and thus enabling ‘constructing sameness’. <p>

</p><b>Research limitations/implications</b> – Longitudinal research is needed for developing understanding of sensemaking and for example formation of entrepreneurial identities in the university context. Further research is also needed on how entrepreneurial universities are co-constructed between the different internal and external stakeholders.<p></p><p></p><p>

</p><p></p><p><b>Practical implications</b> – (Multidisciplinary) universities consisting of several perspectives and viewpoints of (academic) entrepreneurship need to offer arenas for their faculty to support sensemaking. Facilitators knowledgeable of the university context may be better-equipped to support the faculty in their sense-making than external facilitators. </p><p></p><p></p><p><b>Originality/value</b> – Research focuses on generating understanding how university faculty make sense of entrepreneurship in the university beyond a narrow focus on research commercialisation or entrepreneurship in teacher education. </p><p></p><p><b></b></p><p><b><b>Keywords</b> Academic entrepreneurship, entrepreneurial university, sensemaking, faculty, entrepreneurship camp, ethnography <b></b></b></p><p><b><b>

</b></b></p><b><b><b>Paper type</b> Research paper</b><p></p></b><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>

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