Understanding Biosphere Entrepreneurship through a Framework Approach With Implications for Entrepreneurship Education (original) (raw)
Related papers
The emergence of biosphere entrepreneurship: are social and business entrepreneurship obsolete?
This article combines entrepreneurship, economics and sustainability to build a new theory of biosphere entrepreneurship. Going beyond business and social entrepreneurship, which add value to economic and social spheres, respectively, biosphere entrepreneurship adds value to the biosphere. The purpose of this article is to define biosphere entrepreneurship, and to devise and extend mental models (frameworks) relating entrepreneurship and climate change in order to facilitate theory building. Using images and visual depictions, the article elaborates a series of illustrative candidate frameworks that suggest a theoretical model of biosphere entrepreneurship. The article aims to show how the Earth, humanity, and the economy are connected through negative and positive entrepreneurship. It extends extant frameworks from the fields of financial and capital, entrepreneurial allocation, risk and survival, value and disvalue creation, growth and de-growth, socio-cultural frameworks, and entrepreneurial opportunity in order to substantiate the existence of entrepreneurial activity that adds value to Earth. The article concludes with implications for entrepreneurship education. What should educators be doing to help our young entrepreneurs come to grips with existential and catastrophic risks to the planet? (Includes 11 colour figures)
Entrepreneurs are burning Earth: Toward a theory of entrepreneurial ecology
This article consists of original musings based upon the sparse literature of ecopreneurship toward the foundation of a general theory of entrepreneurial ecology. Rather than drawing upon empirical research, this paper comes more out of the normative vein. Normative theory comprises hypotheses or other statements about what is right and wrong, desirable or undesirable, just or unjust in society. In addition there are three short cases compiled from the literature that illustrate my thinking. Human-induced climate change is one of the greatest challenges facing the human race in the 21st century. Entrepreneurs have played a major role in contributing to our current dilemma. For example, small-scale entrepreneurs have made their contribution to the planetary crisis by helping to destroy areas of rainforest. Nonetheless, entrepreneurs could actually help save the planet. The article draws upon the literature that attempts to define ecopreneurship. It examines the concept of sustainability and distinguishes between industrial entrepreneurship and sustainable entrepreneurship. It proposes a simple functional equation to describe the interrelationship of the biosphere, sociosphere, and econosphere. The paper proposes a model of entrepreneurial ecology showing how these three spheres, mediated by entrepreneurs, and must extract a constant source of energy and materials to maintain their self-organised state and to process materials. Up until the present, some entrepreneurs have not valued nature as a living ecosystem. This is characterised as negative entrepreneurship. A positive entrepreneurship would generate positive impacts through value adding and eliminating designed waste, duplication, disposability, planned obsolescence and wasteful end purposes. Positive entrepreneurs create net positive-impact loop systems and innovations that create levers for biophysical improvements and social transformation. Finally, the paper reviews some candidate frameworks in entrepreneurial ecology and presents three cases compiled from other sources that illustrate my thinking.
International Journal of Entrepreneurial Venturing, 2018
In this essay, I discuss the current boundaries and potential promise of environmental entrepreneurship research. I argue that environmental entrepreneurship provides a unique lens to study how to effectively address human-induced climate change. However, for such studies to be effective, we need to understand: 1) why some individuals choose to pursue environmental entrepreneurship; 2) how organisations pursue integrated economic and ecological goals; 3) when does such action have a significant impact. I propose these three questions provide an agenda for understanding the simultaneous pursuit of economic and ecological benefits through the creation of new products, services, and markets.
Can ecological entrepreneurship address ecological anxieties?
2020
Abstract: This study calls into question the effectiveness of Ecological Entrepreneurship (EE) as a solution to abuses on the natural world in the absence of political will power and appropriate governance and visionary clarity at the macro-level of society. This article uses a range of literature on EE to discuss the limitations and ideological underpinnings of EE. Findings support that EE is rooted in mainstream science and technology and, therefore, offers predominantly market-based solutions. The study critically examines the limitations of EE as a concept as well as practice.
Responsible Society and the Liberating Discourse of Ecological Entrepreneurship
International journal of engineering research and technology, 2019
Entrepreneurs are the innovators who provide the innovation or creative destruction that gives society a new way of addressing problems. Entrepreneurship also involves practices beyond mere wealth-creation. However, the dominant entrepreneurial discourses linked to the neo-liberal economy and related modes of production leave little space for alternative interpretations of entrepreneurship. Thus, new entrepreneurial discourses, especially those built upon the idea of sustainable and inclusive development, are required to stimulate social change. Ecological Entrepreneurship (EE) is an offshoot of the concept of ecological modernization linked to the idea of sustainable development of the 1990s. This article uses a broad range of literature and case studies to discuss some of the key drivers of the discourse of ecological entrepreneurship. The role of ecological communication in promoting eco-entrepreneurial action and discourse is analyzed. Agency issues with relation to the faster promotion of the discourse of ecological entrepreneurship are discussed. The objective is to forward the transformative discourse of ecological entrepreneurship that can prepare a roadmap to green social economy.
PROLEGOMENA TO A NEW ECOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE IN ENTREPRENEURSHIP
This paper offers preliminary discussion of a new ecological perspective in entrepreneurship research. Six principles of this perspective are developed. These principles are: (1) The new ecological perspective embraces two ontological platforms: ecosystems and ecological succession, (2) The new ecological perspective operates at multiple levels of analysis, (3) Ecological problems are complex and often non-reducible, (4) The new ecological perspective requires a holistic approach to understanding, (5) The new ecological perspective embraces theory and political reality, and (6) Ecosystems have their own rationality. Implications for researchers and practitioners of entrepreneurship are discussed.
This article explains how entrepreneurship can help resolve the environmental problems of global socioeconomic systems. Environmental economics concludes that environmental degradation results from the failure of markets, whereas the entrepreneurship literature argues that opportunities are inherent in market failure. A synthesis of these literatures suggests that environmentally relevant market failures represent opportunities for achieving profitability while simultaneously reducing environmentally degrading economic behaviors. It also implies conceptualizations of sustainable and environmental entrepreneurship which detail how entrepreneurs seize the opportunities that are inherent in environmentally relevant market failures. Finally, the article examines the ability of the proposed theoretical framework to transcend its environmental context and provide insight into expanding the domain of the study of entrepreneurship.
Entrepreneurship And Sustainable Development: Entrepreneurship as if the planet mattered
Sample Chapter 5: Entrepreneurship And Sustainable Development. We have, it seems, entered the entrepreneurial century. When I first started talking about inspiring a twenty-first century renaissance powered by entrepreneurial thinking – what I came to call the Entreprenaissance – I mostly received blank looks of incomprehension. Few people, even entrepreneurs themselves, saw innovative small-to-medium business as the answer to our social woes. Let alone a global phenomenon that is set to literally revolutionise how we work, live, play and communicate.
Let's take the entrepreneurial ecosystem metaphor seriously
Journal of Business Venturing Insights, 2019
The notion of entrepreneurial ecosystems (EEs) has garnered considerable attention in the academic discourse. However, quite often this notion is treated as just a biological metaphor that should not be taken too seriously. I challenge this view and ask in a thought experiment what could be learned from the management of natural ecosystems to assist the development of EEs. The outcome is a novel, service-based definition of EEs and five suggested principles for the management of EEs that might advance theorizing on them and future empirical analysis.