As an experiment in seeing whether ChatGPT4o could build on a classic book in political and social history by Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (1983), I posed the following question to it: “it seems to me that Benedict Anderson’s thesis could be extended to help people studying entrepreneurship understand how a business/industry could emerge, such as a social media platform, that could be socially constructed to appeal
Category Archives: Entrepreneurship
The Evolution of US Makerspaces: A Decade of Growth and Decline
Please join us at the Annual Meeting of the Academy of Management in Chicago in our symposium on “Early Stage Entrepreneurial Action in Maker Spaces: the Habitats, the Inhabitants, and Their Social Impact,” Tuesday, August 13, 2024 11:30 – 13:00 CT (GMT-5/UTC-5) Location: Hyatt: Skyway 272).
Here’s a preview:
In our paper, “The Thrill Is Gone,” Russell Browder, Jacob Conley, Stella Seyb, and I analyze the evolution of the US makerspace population from its start in 2005 until the
An in-class exercise for our post-pandemic world: learning about the role of luck in generating social inequality
Here is an in-class exercise for our post-pandemic world. It illustrates how sociological concepts can increase a student's understanding of the social world and supplement individual explanations.
What I learned about virtual conferences from AoM 2020 (click on title to read full post)
[Excerpt] As a first-time experience, I would have to admit that there was much about the virtual AOM that I enjoyed. Regarding the issues I raised in my introduction, I would say that my education was enhanced. I was reminded of ideas that had lain dormant and I was introduced to new ideas that were easy to find in the online format. I truly enjoyed being able to jump in and out of sessions. I think the two-dimensional nature of participants’ involvement was a great equalizer. When managed well, I think this meant that organizers were able to give voice to many participants who otherwise might not have attended or might’ve been implicitly shut out of the discussion. By not having to spend money on traveling to the site and paying for meals and accommodations while there, I believe that many people participated who otherwise would have been found it prohibitively expensive. As for sustainability, I believe that the AoM’s carbon footprint was much reduced, compared to what would’ve happened if we’d all converged on Vancouver in August.
How Makerspaces in the United States Are Responding to the COVID19 Crisis
This blog lists a small sample of the makerspaces contributing their community’s time, energy, and resources to making products that help health care workers in their attempt to contain the COVID19 virus.
Derek Lidow’s Terrific New Book on Entrepreneurship
Derek Lidow’s book, Building on Bedrock: What Sam Walton, Walt Disney, and Other Great Self-Made Entrepreneurs Can Teach Us About Building Valuable Companies, is a welcome corrective to the overhyped promotion these days of high capitalization, high-technology, and high-risk businesses. Bedazzled by the wild hype surrounding gazelles and unicorns, entrepreneurship researchers have continued to focus on the black swans, even though the total IPOs in any given year would fit comfortably into a large lecture hall, as on average just over 100 U.S. firms went public annually between 2001 and 2016. The number of new ventures receiving venture capital funding annually in the United States has not changed appreciably in the last 20 years, hovering around 1400 per year. Nonetheless, business books and prominent entrepreneurs continue whipping up enthusiasm, encouraging entrepreneurs to take big risks in anticipation of big gains.
Meeting at the Centre, by Robert Davidson
In contrast, Derek Lidow points to “bedrock entrepreneurs” as the true foundation of economic prosperity in the United States. Every year, hundreds of thousands of ordinary businesses are started in the United States, many by people who have no idea what they are doing and who are not prepared for the challenges they will face. Martin Ruef and I wrote about these “mundane entrepreneurs” in our book, Organizations Evolving, and Paul Reynolds has diligently documented their existence through large scale representative samples of business starts. Lidow offers sage advice to would-be entrepreneurs, suggesting that many of them would be better off taking wage and salary jobs. But, for those who are willing to prepare themselves for the challenges, he recommends going for it.
But, “going for it” does not mean in the reckless way encouraged by entrepreneurial self-help books, but rather in a mindful, reflexive, and experimental way. He shows that successful entrepreneurs are not differentiated from the rest of us by any inherent talents, but rather by their willingness to learn from their experiences. He recommends that entrepreneurs continue experimenting until they either get it right or realize that the venture they’ve planned will not work.
This is a delightful book, written by somebody who has had a productive career running a family business, starting his own business, being CEO of a listed company, and then transitioning to a university position. He has the life experiences and educational training, including a PhD in applied physics from Stanford, to offer valuable advice. He readily admits his mistakes and is humble about his successes.
I highly recommend this book to anyone who’s contemplating entrepreneurship and to anyone who is consulting, teaching, or otherwise involved in the entrepreneurial community.
Family Businesses as Boundary Objects
Boundary objects are arrangements that permit people to work together without needing to achieve consensus, as Susan Leigh Star explained. The figure below displays a collection of small dots that represent different manifestations of some phenomenon of interest, with three of them labeled with capital letters. Object A is clearly at the center – it is probably the central tendency in this group. In contrast, Objects B and C are at the edges of the cluster. People could say, “I’m studying this phenomenon by examining C.” Somebody else could say, “I’m studying this phenomenon as well; I’m examining B.”
Cluster of objects that might be classified into the same category
Objects A, B, and C are in different parts of the overall domain, but a key feature of a boundary object it is that scholars don’t actually have to agree on what specific characteristics put something inside or outside of the definition. They just have to have some degree of overlap in their conceptions. Boundary objects are not about sharp edges; boundary objects are about overlap and working together even in the absence of consensus. I think that’s a very good characterization of the family business field.
Considering the diverse scholarly community that makes up the field, it is apparent that the field of family business studies includes people from many disciplines. Each discipline, and sometimes each person within a discipline, offers a different definition of a “family business.” Distilling a single definition is highly unlikely. Nonetheless, it’s possible to have a conference with “family business” in the title at which scholars work together, as long as they recognize that the goal is not consensus. Instead, the objective is to talk to one another rather than worrying about the things that might divide them.
Observers could still ask, why do so many different definitions exist? Why does field of family business exhibit such diversity? What is it about the phenomenon that has led people to come up with such different conceptualizations? I believe that the fuzzy set comprising the multiple definitions stems from scholars attempting to take account of the historical changes that have transformed the phenomenon generically labeled “family business.” Even in periods as short as a few decades, they could well be talking about very different phenomena.
Holly Straut Eppsteiner and I am currently working on a paper that uses findings from research on the history of family forms in the United States over the past several centuries. Much of this research is based on life course and family demography models. The paper focuses on the formation and composition of families from around 1800 until 2015, using long-term trends derived from US Census data and other sources. Steven Ruggles’ 2015 Population Association of America address was particularly helpful to us. We urge family business scholars to bring into their work what we have learned about the economic and social transformations in the US that have produced fundamental changes in the ways in which family units form and are sustained. Studies of “family business” in the 21st century need to take account of the new reality.