Entreprenörskapets Vidunderliga Resa - En Dramaberättelse om Skapandet av Två Webbplattformar : The Winding Road of Entrepreneurship - A Narrative Drama on the Becoming of Two Web platforms

Sammanfattning: Innovations are all around us, often taken for granted. But before they come to life they must first be created and these entrepreneurial processes happen in fragmented, non-linear paths of activities. While the end product is many times visible for the eye, the journey from idea to realization needs to be emploted into a story. In this dissertation, two entrepreneurial initiatives – the Ideabank and Competence Arena West – are followed over a timeperiod of almost three years. Both of them have the aim to build web-based platforms for knowledge exchange and in order to achieve this quest, they continuously seek legitimacy and resources from their environment while building IT-infrastructure and structuring an increasing amount of content. This requires a lot of involvement work toward human and non-human elements. Rhetoric is mixed with crafting and future dreams are blended into present chaos, as the drama of entrepreneurship unfolds. The thesis aims to give a rich qualitative account of the thoughts and feelings in the establishment of new web-based platforms. The empirical data are based on ongoing interviews with the entrepreneurs behind the ventures, coupled by a vast number of related documents produced over the years. The two cases are discussed using the American literary theorist Kenneth Burke’s so called “pentad” as framework for reflection. By having a narrative approach to entrepreneurship, the author wishes to contribute to the emerging academic movement which views entrepreneurship as a process of “becoming” rather than “being” and putting language in the center of attention for describing and understanding everyday entrepreneurial practice over time.