Bridging the Functional and Territorial Views on Regional Entrepreneurship and Development: The Challenge, the Journey, the Lessons

Transcription

1 European Planning Studies Vol. 17, No. 8, August 2009 GUEST EDITORIAL Bridging the Functional and Territorial Views on Regional Entrepreneurship and Development: The Challenge, the Journey, the Lessons BENGT JOHANNISSON &ÅSA LINDHOLM DAHLSTRAND Växjö University, SE Växjö, Sweden, School of Business and Engineering, Halmstad University, SE Halmstad, Sweden The main message of this introductory paper as well as the issue at large is that initiatives aiming at encouraging and supporting regional economic development always should be initiated from within the region. In order to support this thesis, we propose a framework for bridging the functional and territorial rationales (Johannisson & Lindholm Dahlstrand, 2009). There we suggest that these contrasting views can be dealt with in a reflexive way by introducing a three-dimensional model defined by the life-setting, the outlook and the competence dimensions. Proposing this framework, we invited a group of Swedish researchers to participate in a dialogue aiming at creating this special issue. It thus presents three papers illustrating the development of three Swedish regions: one in the middle of Sweden, one on the Swedish west-coast and one in the very north of the country. In one additional paper, the relevance of the present (Swedish) public support system is scrutinized. In the final contribution of this issue, the importance of incorporating broader views on entrepreneurship is illustrated. In order to trigger the reader s interest in further reading, we already here want to announce what contributions the different papers of this special issue may provide to the current research agenda and how they may vitalize the policy discourse. In doing so, the ideas and research contributions found in the different papers are brought together and discussed. We see four main reasons for the close interaction between research and policy matters. First, whether entrepreneurship is dressed as generally enterprising Correspondence Address: Åsa Lindholm Dahlstrand, School of Business and Engineering, Halmstad University, PO Box 823, SE Halmstad, Sweden. lindholm.dahlstrand@hh.se ISSN Print=ISSN Online=09= DOI: / # 2009 Taylor & Francis

2 1106 B. Johannisson & Å. Lindholm Dahlstrand behaviour, which we associate with curiosity, alertness and spontaneous interaction as evident in children s play and general approach to life, or as business venturing originating in complex competencies, it is localized, tied to the local/regional setting as a habitat for everyday and professional life. Secondly, both entrepreneurship and regional development are at present popular subjects in the policy-making European Community as well as in the global academic research community. Thirdly, since both entrepreneurship and regional development are now well-established, in fact institutionalized, fields of research and arenas for policy-making, they run the risk of producing standardized and unreflected mindsets, methods and programmes. However, as is repeatedly demonstrated in the different contributions in this issue, both entrepreneurship and the regional/local aspect on socioeconomic phenomena underline that all entrepreneurial initiatives are unique as much as all localities have their own identity. Fourthly, there is a risk that the research and the policy issues due to their intimacy push each other into trivialities. This makes it important to critically scrutinize how they are conceptualized and put into practice. These four shared concerns between entrepreneurship and regional development in both the academic and in the policy-making community of practice have triggered us to, first, reflect upon what further research issues the different papers individually and jointly bring up and then to elaborate upon their much needed contributions to the contemporary discourse on appropriate policies for enhancing entrepreneurship and regional development. Finally, we outline some practical implications of our conceptual and empirical research. Contributions to an Emergent Research Agenda Organizing the research implications of the contributions to this special issue, we rely on Morgan (1980) and thus first address the general ontological assumptions founding different research initiatives in the field of entrepreneurship and regional development. Then we look into the metaphors/theories applied and the methodologies/puzzlesolving approaches adopted. Our generic model, exhibited in Figure 1 (Johannisson & Lindholm Dahlstrand, 2009), and the two contrasting rationales that it presents as ideal constructs invite different paradigmatic views, conceptual frameworks and methodologies when put into practice. As regards the assumptions concerning the general constitution of society, several of the papers signal a need for a view which recognizes the social construction of reality. As pointed out by Johansson (2009), the objective-rational worldview has produced a biased understanding of entrepreneurship by associating it with (male) heroes, a view that is only intelligible within the functionalist view. Research published elsewhere, however, demonstrates that entrepreneurship appears in quite contrasting forms within a territorial perspective (cf. Steyaert, 2004; Johannisson & Olaison, 2007). A view that associates entrepreneurship with strong individuals lends itself to simplistic comparisons and bench-marking, supported by quantitative analysis and simple-minded policy-making. This is at the expense of a broader invitation of individuals and groups that jointly represent a wide variety of entrepreneurial behaviour which puts the many-sided human ingenuity at work in the making of robust regions. We think, though, that there is a great need for more research along the lines proposed by Johansson, before citizenship and entrepreneurship may dwell as roommates. Bill et al. (2009), though, demonstrate that it is the enlightened inability of small-business owner-managers to keep their business interests and community apart that gets them involved in support programmes.

3 Guest Editorial 1107 As indicated, we associate the functional rationale with the premises and outcomes of processes and the processes themselves with the territorial rationale. Network(ing) then appears as a useful concept, since it encompasses both the structural and processual character of interrelating. We have also elsewhere used the network metaphor to demonstrate the several generic features of entrepreneurship as creative organizing, such as its collective character (Johannisson, 2003), new organizations crystallizing out of personal networks (Johannisson, 2000a) and territories as networked socioeconomic structures (Lindholm Dahlstrand, 1999; Johannisson et al., 2002). These ideas are elaborated on in the next paper (Johannisson & Lindholm Dahlstrand) and also by Gaddefors and Cronsell (2009), who in their paper use the metaphor of embedding to capture the social context of local economic development. We think that our initial modelling can contribute to an understanding of how the energy needed for keeping learning processes going can be created. However, keeping the two rationales apart appears awkward, considering their parallel discursive and empirical manifestations. With the vocabulary proposed by the French philosopher Deleuze, it is more productive to see each pair of dual concepts as a contrariety, i.e. signifying two images that are different yet similar. The vitality of a region is thus constructed out of the awareness of keeping both (extreme) images alive in ongoing discursive and embodied practices. Talking about rural, local and focused without (also) having the contrarieties urban, global and complex in mind does not make much sense. We thus propose a dual rationale for a mindset and related (inter-)action repertoire that produces entrepreneurial energy out of the very tensions between the functional and territorial rationales and the associated centrifugal and centripetal forces. Recognizing such a duality suggests that local collaborative practices constructively use the tensions between rural/ urban, local/global and complex/focused competence to instigate and maintain change. The three concepts proposed by us, glocal, rurban and pracademics, will supposedly help to communicate our basic message, the need for a dialogue between the functional and territorial rationales as a dual construction. The notion of glocal as a basic contributor to a vocabulary for development that recognizes social as well as ecological concerns communicates that any place can make its own contribution to the creation of new worlds (compare Spinosa et al., 1997; Hjorth & Johannisson, 2003). Ylinenpää (2009) points out that independently of whether (competitive) innovation systems are associated with entrepreneurial initiatives or institutional decision-making, their regional aspects turn out to be critical. Both Berggren and Lindholm Dahlstrand and Ylinenpää illustrate how formal scientific knowledge-building complex competencies have to be combined with hands-on experience, that is, existing practices, in order to produce commercial success. There is a need to integrate the extremes both as embodied in researchers with industry experience and integrated in systems carrying pracademic competencies. Adherents of each kind of competence have to recognize each other and make such mutual respect a basis for dialogue. As pointed out by Schatzki (2001), the notion of practice is needed to point out that qualified human knowledge is embodied, reflected in activities and not (only) in language. In contemporary (2008/2009) Swedish society, there is also an increasing interest in apprenticeship programmes in junior high school. Whether the focus is entrepreneurship or regional development, educational initiatives call for an approach that includes internships and/or experiential, hands-on learning (Hjorth & Johannisson, 2007).

4 1108 B. Johannisson & Å. Lindholm Dahlstrand As regards the urban/rural divide, Johansson in his contribution signals the need to pay attention to values and practices associated with Gesellschaft and with Gemeinschaft in order to be able to identify potential sources of entrepreneurship for regional development. Gaddefors and Cronsell (2009) vividly report on the emergence of both an individual embodied identity, and a collective social rurban identity. The mismatch with the public support system and the world of small business, producing support systems that are not recognized by its recipients compare the enacted case reported by Bill et al. may originate in the contrasting worlds of (EU/Brussels) policy-making and of rural owner-managers. What is even more important to state is that the functional and territorial rationales reflect different understandings of entrepreneurship and regions and their development. With respect to entrepreneurship, the functionalist rationale supports an understanding that is mainly influenced by economics and thus considers opportunities to exist, yet hidden, only to be revealed by informed entrepreneurs who are assumed to be economically rational and typically operate in markets where money defines the rules of the game. Shane and Venkatamaran (2000) and Shane (2003) are typical exponents of this stance. The contrasting view, inspired by the behavioural sciences, linguistics and philosophy, adopts, within a general social-constructionist view, a different understanding of entrepreneurship and how it may be critically researched. According to this view, coincidences are often the origin of opportunities which are then interactively enacted in ambiguous environments. Such collective processes are as much driven by commitment and passion as by intentional (inter)action, revealing social means as well as being ends for entrepreneurship; this view is, for example, outlined by Hjorth et al. (2003). Similarly, the notion of territory may either be considered as a physically demarcated entity or as a historically and culturally constructed sense- and identity-making arena (cf. Allen et al., 1998; Wellman, 2001). The two contrasting views on entrepreneurship are both often applied to individual organizations but their different implications for entrepreneurship as associated with regions and their development are less elaborated upon. In this issue, however, Ylinenpää s discourse on different ways of constructing regional innovation systems significantly reduces this drawback. While the systemic institutionalized approach involves many of the basic assumptions associated with entrepreneurship as a rational process on the market, the entrepreneurial approach recognizes many of the features which are associated with entrepreneurship as a social and irrational organizing process. The IRIS model has gained legitimacy and momentum because it benefits from a managerial vocabulary and formal membership in the innovation process. This contrasts with the ERIS model, where everyday language arouses commitment and initiative among the grassroots but also means fuzzy boundaries producing shifting memberships. Gaddefors and Cronsell s text in this issue provides an important illustration of how social/cultural and economic factors may combine to restore a community with a new self-identity that builds upon the creative destruction, or at least re-construction of an obsolete identity. Many features that once founded the old community are re-arranged into the new setting with significant contributions from new community members, itself a collective entrepreneurial project at the community level. Accordingly, this renaissance of a locality is not an outcome of systematic planning processes but rather a matter of crafting a (social) bricolage of existing resources and social practices (cf. Baker & Nelson, 2005; Johannisson & Olaison, 2007). Thus, more research along the lines of

5 Guest Editorial 1109 Gaddefors and Cronsell s contribution is needed to provide a repertoire that collectively brings about an understanding of the branding of a region. Then different research approaches are needed, in addition to the ones proposed by Gaddefors and Cronsell and also ethnographic (cf. Wigren, 2003) and interactive ones with the researchers themselves involved in the making of entrepreneurship and regional development (Johannisson, 2005). These approaches are needed to furnish the general model proposed by Johannisson and Lindholm Dahlstrand (Figure 1) with accounts which provide insights beyond the statistical data used. Myths, metaphors and an imaginative language in general, such as the approach provided by Bill et al. in this issue, are called for. They demonstrate that different support programmes cannot be justified within an economically rational context. If it is a statistical fact that small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) support has no intended effect, they use mythology to get the inspiration needed to solve the mystery that, in spite of such facts, support programmes keep being introduced and small-business owner-managers continue to apply for them. The enactment of entrepreneurship and regional development certainly needs a versatile language that is able to grasp the complex processes that craft regions as robust socioeconomic entities. While some implications for future research of the productive side of a socialconstructionist view are commented on above, the critical side of the view must be brought up as well. Critical social research includes not taking what is said or written for granted, whether communicated by the academic community as a supposedly neutral and responsible collective agent or by any other societal stakeholder with self-interest. Self-reflexivity on the part of the researcher is another dimension of the critical approach to social phenomena (Alvesson & Sköldberg, 2000). Sometimes reflection may be combined with imagination to unlock taken-for-granted mental constructs. In this issue, several contributions travel beyond the obvious in order to reveal hidden agendas and unvisited potential spaces, but Johansson s contribution is certainly most explicit on this. Enquiries which are enriched by academic disciplines not usually being used to study entrepreneurship and/or regional research will, if also furnished with appropriate empirical research, help identifying not only measures but also goals which so far have remained hidden (cf. March, 1976). It goes without saying that research of the kind reported by Bill et al. creates a domain which, with the vocabulary of an objectivist view, exists at the very interface between socioeconomic and political issues. This boundary position not only brings research challenges but also invites itself to the call for intensified interaction between the academic community and society. More research is needed about how naïve researchers are exploited by different stakeholders in society, and we need more enquiries into how research funding in the name of rationality may produce facts which, at best, are meaningless, at the worst choke entrepreneurship and erode regions. This is one of many reasons why we see it as our responsibility to study entrepreneurship and regional development as a field mined with scientific and practical-political challenges. Accordingly, we will, after having reported on some research issues which bring the contributions of this issue to the research frontier of entrepreneurship and regional development, turn to an elaboration of the political implications of our general approach and the particular issues dealt with in this issue. Before turning to the policy issues, we want to provide some brief comments concerning the appropriate methodology or puzzle-solving, according to Morgan (1980), to adopt in order to contribute to knowledge creation in the field of entrepreneurship and regional development. Obviously, localized approaches cannot be crafted and enacted as a standard

6 1110 B. Johannisson & Å. Lindholm Dahlstrand application of general recipes but must be approached as collectives with unique identities produced locally and from below (Hjorth & Johannisson, 2003). According to these views, localities learn and change by way of cross-appropriation, that is, by translating what has been successfully adopted elsewhere. Frameworks that aim at generalization as well as national policies that try to define appropriate regional action provide vocabularies which focus on the obvious and generalizable, leaving the particulars aside. There is thus a need for further empirical research that illustrates the variability of process approaches to robust development. The kind of knowledge we look for is thus holisticintuitive rather than logo-scientific. The narrative mode of inquiry appears as the most appropriate (Czarniawska, 2004). We know from both entrepreneurship and local/ regional development research that stories told by entrepreneurs or community leaders commit both themselves and those concerned to realizing the visions and promises they make. Of course researchers may become invited or invite themselves to an interactive co-construction of entrepreneurship and regional development, as is illustrated by, for example, Johannisson (2005). Thus, it is obviously no coincidence that all contributions either include situated cases, narratives or closed experiments to present the authors arguments. If as researchers we are going to break out of traditional thinking, we cannot depart from what is already known and elaborate on that intellectually. This special issue as a joint effort only brings one shared mental construct Johannisson and Lindholm Dahlstrand, Figure 1 and then only as a point of departure and provider of a minimum of direction. Obviously, the contributors have interpreted that instruction in different ways. The authors of this issue jointly invite its readers to continue the reflective process that we only have started. This neither means that the model in Figure 1 cannot be questioned, nor that further research will demonstrate the omnipotence of the model. What it means is that as much as we believe in maintaining the constructive tensions in the model as an arena for dialogue between different views and practices, we believe in the contribution of the issue itself to ongoing conversations in society on the important issues associated with entrepreneurship and regional development. Dialogue is equally much a feature of the use of the model as a characteristic of the model itself. The motto of the dialogue then is (re)translation, that is, sensitive listening not only to what others tell us but also reflective consideration of how own sayings are received by the other party (cf. Czarniawska & Joerges, 1996). Vitalizing the Policy Discourse The functional rationale dominates recent policy-making, at least in Sweden and the supranational European community. An increasingly rapid and global knowledge development reduces the number of new breakthrough discoveries and technological innovations by isolated researchers and scientists. Instead, it is teams and networks that produce new findings. Generic and applied research and development, as well as research projects and firms, benefit from collaboration. That is, not only entrepreneurship but also research and innovative work have important links to collective learning (Keeble et al., 1998). However, the term network is vague, and in order to discuss local networking and regional development, it is essential to adopt a distinct definition. Yeung (1994, p. 476) provides a broad, yet clear, conceptual definition of a business network as...an integrated and co-ordinated set of ongoing economic and non-economic relations embedded

7 within, among and outside business firms. Thus network(ing) is both structure and process, and it can consist of relationships and links between both firms and economic and social institutions (Lindholm Dahlstrand, 1999; Johannisson et al., 2002). Naturally, the more complex process characteristics are more difficult to grasp than the structural characteristics (Compare Steyaert, 2007). As one consequence, the literature of economics and business has tended to be preoccupied with the creation of firms at the expense of entrepreneurship as a socioeconomic process; compare Johansson s discourse in this issue, compare also Johannisson (2007). This tendency has of course also influenced policy-making to focus on structures, and firms, instead of on the more complex processes. As argued by Johannisson and Lindholm Dahlstrand in the next paper, the functional rationale presents localized businesses as intentional constructs (rather than processes) by strong stakeholders that give priority to their international connections. In discourses on regional development, the functional rationale is crafted and supported by those who view technology as an almost universal force. As stated, such systems most often need an urban context, accommodating concentrations of scientific work as well as of economic and political power. Thus, with a functional perspective it is common to consider the structural features of the network as the main determinant. With a dominant (national and supra-national) discourse on growth and wealth creation, the functional view, with its focus on structural networks, rather than on networking processes, often benefits from support by national and international (EU) policies. This helps to reinforce the functional rationale. A territorial perspective, in contrast, puts the search for networking processes in focus. The notion of a cluster (of firms) as adopted within a territorial rationale is usually associated with the spontaneous emergence of relations from inside/below and appears mainly in rural contexts. The networks created in the process of local interaction are only occasionally externally supported (Ramirez-Pasillas, 2007). It is concluded that, while the functional rationale is associated with new technology and quantitative growth, the territorial rationale is connected to social creativity and spontaneous peer learning. However, policy-makers pay less attention to the territorial than to the functional rationale, especially at the national and supra-national levels. A third divide between the functional and territorial perspectives is hidden in the different views on the importance of firm size as a force in regional development. The functional rationale typically considers the large firms as centres of power and main movers in the market, systematically commercializing technology in the pursuit of growth. The contrasting territorial rationale makes every small firm a significant contributor to a collective that is self-organizing by way of improvization and flexibility (Johannisson, 2003). Again it is made clear that there is a need of creating a dialogue between the functional and the territorial rationales. In doing so, we would like to recommend two main roads forward: (1) acknowledging the role of knowledge, creativity and innovation and (2) recognizing the importance of a broadened entrepreneurship. Guest Editorial 1111 The importance of both entrepreneurship and innovation is something that the two perspectives share, even though the focus is somewhat different. Clearly, in this issue (see, for example, the papers by Ylinenpää, 2009; Berggren & Lindholm Dahlstrand, 2009), the role of large firms as centres of power has been somewhat displaced by the

8 1112 B. Johannisson & Å. Lindholm Dahlstrand role of knowledge institutions. That is, not only large firms but also institutions such as universities have been recognized as centres of innovation with a strong impact on regional development. Even the role of small firms has changed somewhat, and it is no longer their smallness, but rather their diverse contributions to processes of entrepreneurship that need to be recognized as stated by, e.g. Gaddefors and Cronsell (2009) and Berggren and Lindholm Dahlstrand (2009). Thus, for the creation of a dialogue between the functional and the territorial rationales knowledge and entrepreneurship as well as their important collective characteristics should be incorporated as main processes. Or, as Gaddefors and Cronsell put it: To us this process is characterized as a dialogue or a negotiation between entrepreneurs and local stakeholders, a process affecting the structure or the context in the region (our italics). This would imply a broad approach recognizing that formalized institutions, or structures, are embedded in a much wider socio-economic system with knowledge creation, creativity and innovation, together with a broadened entrepreneurship as some of its major features. In knowledge-based economies, regional networking, research and technology development and collective entrepreneuring appear as important key processes for future local development and attractiveness. Externalities are important for regional economic development, since they create openings for the unexpected and the entrepreneurial out of control of existing market forces. Adopting a functional view on externalities means approaching them from the point of view of the individual firm. Not surprisingly, Shaver and Flyer (2000) find that advanced firms have more to lose than to win if joining a localized cluster. However, the modelling of corporate behaviour applied disregards benefits such as access to localized tacit knowledge due to social embedding and synergistic gains in terms of the increased visibility and attractiveness of the cluster that its own choice of location creates. The findings that the authors report may alternatively indicate immigrant firms inability to build the trust needed to access potential positive externalities. In contrast, with a territorial perspective, it is natural to recognize the Marshallian external economies where mutual gains (or internalized potential externalities) result from, e.g. networking and learning between co-located actors. Audretsch (2004) has argued that the mandate for an innovation and entrepreneurship policy intervention is the result of four fundamental sources of market failure: (1) network externalities, (2) knowledge externalities, (3) failure externalities and (4) learning externalities. Clearly, these externalities are important to consider whatever view, territorial or functional, we adopt. For society as a whole, without policy intervention positive externalities might be underproduced and negative externalities overproduced. But which aspects of these externalities are focused on depends on which pair of glasses we put on. With a functional view, policy-making tends to focus on avoiding underinvestment in technology and innovation, i.e. knowledge externalities. With a territorial perspective, positive networking and learning effects clearly stand out as the clearly most prominent. Learning externalities are also important in a functional perspective, although more attention is paid to knowledge externalities. Certainly, all externalities are of importance for regional development, but depending on whether the functional or the territorial rationale is prioritized, different market failures will be addressed by policy makers. Thus, without a dialogue between the two rationales, there is a risk of not acknowledging the importance of attending to all market failures and of incorporating associated externalities in the appropriate policy-making. An example might be the networking externalities that today tend to get overshadowed by the importance of the knowledge externalities due to a dominating functional rationale.

9 Guest Editorial 1113 Some Practical Implications Although the responsibility for an intelligent policy-making, of course, rests with policymakers and not with academic researchers, we also think that researchers have to contribute to the bridging between research and hands-on policy-making. Commenting on the implications of the ideas brought forward in this issue, we trust the reader to make whatever additional translation is needed to put them into practical use. Today entrepreneurship has become a catchword on the political agenda. Johansson s discourse analysis of the concept in academic texts unveils a phenomenon which is considered to be intrinsically good. Entrepreneurship as an all-embracing concept appears to be the most prominent means to craft a better society, economically as well as socially (Steyaert & Katz, 2004). Ironically, then, he continues to argue, this entrepreneurship discourse seems to serve conservatism more than being an opener of democratic development empowering people to create a better society. Starting our discursive journey we argue in Johannisson and Lindholm Dahlstrand that programmes aiming at encouraging and supporting economic development should always be initiated from within the region (Hjorth & Johannisson, 2003). This means encouraging processes involving commitment to place, evoking pride as regards local practices and acknowledging competence as embodied in people and artefacts. As demonstrated by Bill et al., intervention in regional settings with the ambition to provide support or aid in terms of formal technical and managerial knowledge may even undermine the district s entrepreneurial potential (Johannisson, 2000b). Bill et al. in their contribution suggest that support actors may have their own agenda and perhaps also a limited understanding of the business world and the realities facing SMEs in their everyday activities. On the one hand, there seems to be a need for a more intense dialogue between the small-business community and public-sector stakeholders while, on the other hand, the owner-managers seem to resist such exchange. Owner-managers in micro-firms obviously want to keep authorities and organizations at an arm s length. A way to solve this paradox may be to encourage owner-managers to reveal their concern not just for their business and for themselves and their families but also for the community where they are located. Ylinenpää is very clear in his contribution when he recommends that in order to make full potential benefit of the innovative potential, policy support measures should also consider if, and in that case how, ERIS-based innovation systems may be supported. Since there is a clear division of labour between policy organizations supporting and stimulating the development of innovation systems and entrepreneurship, he concludes his chapter by arguing for joint support initiatives. Especially, he says, the challenge is how to stimulate ERIS-based regional innovation systems, although they are more distanced from the present support structures. Here we see a very distinct example of a necessary dialogue between the functional and territorial rationales. Berggren and Lindholm Dahlstrand argue that the translation processes of university research clearly demonstrate how the contributions of universities go far beyond narrowly defined technology transfer, and this need for contextual knowledge is elaborated on by Gaddefors and Cronsell in a rural setting. An important implication for policy-makers is to pay less attention to the knowledge transfer process and instead acknowledge the role of translation. This means that they must encourage those implementing the policy to become more deeply engaged in individual projects, realizing that together with the

10 1114 B. Johannisson & Å. Lindholm Dahlstrand firms concerned they jointly create the outcome of the policy measure as a product of mutual learning. Inevitably, such an intense dialogue in concrete cases will help bridging the functional and territorial rationales. Finally, both Lindholm Dahlstrand (2005, 2009) and Johansson (2009) enforce Clarysse et al. s (2005) argument that society needs both a great number of entrepreneurial activities and firms, as well as (some) expanding ones. Johansson recommends that both profit-seeking entrepreneurs cultivating the Gesellschaft dimension of entrepreneurship and entrepreneurs cultivating the Gemeinschaft dimension of entrepreneurship need to co-exist or be combined. He recommends that a recipe for policy-making should be to encourage entrepreneurship on many arenas instead of trying to pick winners. Such a policy is likely to create many more winners in the long run. Thus, a final implication for policy-makers should be that rather than relying solely upon the dominant version of the heroic entrepreneur, policy-making and public interventions must incorporate a potential to encourage different understandings of entrepreneurship within a region. A policy for developing entrepreneurship must ally itself with education policy in order to find ways to preserve the entrepreneuring practice that all children nurture. An inclusive concept of entrepreneurship has the potential of contributing substantially more to regional development in line with the idea that all humans are potentially entrepreneurs. References Allen, J., Massey, D. & Cochrane, A. (1998) Rethinking the Region (London: Routledge). Alvesson, M. & Sköldberg, K. (2000) Reflexive Methodology. New Vistas for Qualitative Research (London: Sage). Audretsch, D. B. (2004) Sustaining innovation and growth: Public policy support for entrepreneurship, Industry and Innovation, 11(3), pp Baker, T. & Nelson, R. (2005) Creating something from nothing: Resource construction through entrepreneurial bricolage, Adminstrative Science Quarterly, 50(3), pp Berggren, E. & Lindholm Dahlstrand, Å (2009) Creating an entrepreneurial region: Two waves of academic spinoffs from Halmstad University, European Planning Studies, 17(8), DOI: / Bill, F., Johannisson, B. & Olaison, L. (2009) The Incubus paradox: Attempts at foundational rethinking of the SME support genre, European Planning Studies, 17(8), DOI: / Clarysse, B., Wright, M., Lockett, A., Van de Vele, E. & Vohora, A. (2005) Spinning out new ventures: A typology of incubation strategies from European research institutions, Journal of Business Venturing, 20(2), pp Czarniawska, B. (2004) Narratives in Social Science Research (London: Sage). Czarniawska, B. & Joerges, B. (1996) Travels of ideas, in: B. Czarniawska & G. Sevon (Eds) Translating Organizational Change, pp (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter). Gaddefors, J. & Cronsell, N. (2009) Returnees and local stakeholders co-producing the entrepreneurial region, European Planning Studies, 17(8), DOI: / Hjorth, D. & Johannisson, B. (2003) Conceptualising the opening phase of regional development as the enactment of a collective identity, Concepts and Transformation, 8(1), pp Hjorth, D. & Johannisson, B. (2007) Learning as an entrepreneurial process, in: A. Fayolle (Ed.) Handbook of Research in Entrepreneurship Education, Vol. 1. A General Perspective, pp (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar). Hjorth, D., Johannisson, B. & Steyaert, C. (2003) Entrepreneurship as discourse and life style, in: B. Czarniawska & G. Sevón (Eds) The Northern Lights: Organization Theory in Scandinavia, pp (Malmö/Copenhagen/ Oslo: Liber/Copenhagen Business School Press/Abstrakt). Johannisson, B. (2000a) Networking and entrepreneurial growth, in: D. L. Sexton & H. Landström (Eds) Handbook of Entrepreneurship, pp (Oxford: Blackwell). Johannisson, B. (2000b) Modernising the industrial district: Rejuvenation or managerial colonisation?, in: E. Vatne & M. Taylor (Eds) The Networked Firm in a Global World: Small Firms in New Environments, pp (Ashgate: Aldershot).

11 Guest Editorial 1115 Johannisson, B. (2003) Entrepreneurship as a collective phenomenon, in: E. Genescà, D. Urbano, J. Capelleras, C. Guallarte & J. Vergès (Eds) Creación de Empresas Entrepreneurship, pp (Barcelona: Servei de Publicacions de la Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona). Johannisson, B. (2005) Entreprenörskapets väsen (Lund: Studentlitteratur). Johannisson, B. (2007) Enacting local economic development theoretical and methodological challenges, Journal of Enterprising Communities: People and Places in the Global Economy, 1(1), pp Johannisson, B. & Lindholm Dahlstrand, Å. (2009) Bridging the functional and territorial rationales proposing an integrating framework for regional dynamics, European Planning Studies, 17(8), DOI: / Johannisson, J. & Olaison, L. (2007) The moment of truth reconstructing entrepreneurship and social capital in the eye of the storm, Review of Social Economy, 65(1), pp Johannisson, B., Ramirez-Pasillas, M. & Karlsson, G. (2002) The institutional embeddedness of local interfirm networks: A leverage for business creation, Entrepreneurship and Regional Development, 14(4), pp Johansson, A. W. (2009) Regional development by means of broadened entrepreneurship, European Planning Studies, 17(8), DOI: / Keeble, D., Lawson, C., Lawton Smith, H., Moore, B. & Wilkinson, F. (1998) Collective Learning Processes and Inter-firm Networking in Innovative High-technology Regions, Working Paper No. 86, Cambridge: ESRC Centre for Business Research, University of Cambridge. Lindholm Dahlstrand, Å. (1999) Technology-based SMEs in the Göteborg region: Their origin and interaction with universities and large firms, Regional Studies, 33(4), pp Lindholm Dahlstrand, Å. (2005) University knowledge transfer and the role of academic spin-offs, Presented at the OECD conference on Fostering Entrepreneurship: The Role of Higher Education, Trento. Lindholm Dahlstrand, Å (2009) Innovative entrepreneurship: Commercialization by linking ideas and people, in: G. Marklund, N. Vonortas & C. Wessner (Eds) The Innovation Imperative National Innovation Strategies in the Global Economy, pp (Cheltenham, UK; Northampton, MA: Edvard Elgar). March, J. G. (1976) The technology of foolishness, in: J. G. March & J. P. Olsen (Eds) Ambiguity and Choice in Organizations, pp (Oslo: Universitetsförlaget). Morgan, G. (1980) Paradigms, metaphors and puzzle solving in organization theory, Administrative Science Quarterly, 25(4), pp Ramirez-Pasillas, M. (2007) Global spaces for local entrepreneurship. Stretching clusters through networks and international trade fairs, Dissertation, Växjö: Växjö University Press. Shane, S. (2003) A General Theory of Entrepreneurship. The Individual-Opportunity Nexus (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar). Shane, S. & Venkataraman, S. (2000) The promise of entrepreneurship as a field of research, Academy of Management Review, 26(1), pp Shaver, M. J. & Flyer, F. (2000) Agglomeration economies, firm heterogeneity, and foreign direct investment in the United States, Strategic Management Journal, 21(12), pp Spinosa, C., Flores, F. & Dreyfus, H. L. (1997) Disclosing New Worlds: Entrepreneurship, Democratic Action, and the Cultivation of Solidarity (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press). Steyaert, C. (2004) The prosaics of entrepreneurship, in: D. Hjorth & C. Steyaert (Eds) Narrative and Discursive Approaches in Entrepreneurship, pp (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar). Steyaert, C. (2007) Entrepreneuring as a conceptual attractor? A review of process theories in 20 years of entrepreneurship studies, Entrepreneurship and Regional Development, 19(6), pp Steyaert, C. & Katz, J. (2004) Reclaiming the space of entreprenueship in society: Geographical, discursive and social dimensions, Entrepreneurship and Regional Development, 16(3), pp Wellman, B. (2001) Physical place and cyberplace: The rise of personalized networking, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 25(2), pp Wigren, C. (2003) The spirit of Gnosjö: The grand narrative and beyond, Doctoral thesis, JIBS Dissertation Series No. 017, Jönköping: Jönköping University. Yeung, H. W. (1994) Critical reviews of geographical perspectives on business organizations and the organization of production: Towards a network approach, Progress in Human Geography, 18(4), pp Ylinenpää, H. (2009) Entrepreneurship and innovation systems: Towards a development of the ERIS/IRIS concept, European Planning Studies, 17(8), DOI: /

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