Contingency as an Entrepreneurial Resource
Research Paper Title:
“Contingency as an entrepreneurial resource: How private obsession fulfills public need”
Authors:
Background:
This article examined contingency and entrepreneurial opportunity and then uses six narratives to show how both personal and historical contingencies become resources in the entrepreneurial process. This paper looks at how entrepreneurial contingency helps us to better understand the role of time in management scholarship.
Methodology:
Sample: Entrepreneurial narratives that includes initial personal contingency, historical contingency, and entrepreneurial artifact
Sample Size: Six narratives
Analytical Approach: Qualitative explorative narrative examination
Proposition:
Personal and historical contingencies become resources in the entrepreneurial process.
Results:
What will be accepted at one moment will be ignored at another, which places contingency, both personal and historical, at the center of the entrepreneurial process.
The entrepreneur’s initial idea, a contingent, historically situated “private obsession,” if it is eventually brought to market, either fulfills a public need- or fails to do so.
Truthmaking and worldmaking as described by the pragmatists, where the private individual with his own inner thoughts and experiences interacts with the public he inhabits, forms the basis of entrepreneurial creation.
Conclusion:
While there is still clearly a role for those who seek to find common threads across industries and markets, another fruitful path may lie in generating specialized domains of study organized around particular industries or markets, suitably defined. Not only does the entrepreneurial playing field change as practice evolves to solve important problems (historical contingency), but that tomorrow’s problem solvers are being educated with today’s truths (personal contingency). Therefore, understanding both the historical and the personal aspects of contingency is critical to understanding the process of value creation and how new markets emerge.