Open AccessEntrepreneurial imagining: How a small team of arts entrepreneurs created the world’s largest traveling carillon
Author(s) -
Sara R. S. T. A. Elias,
Todd H. Chiles,
Brett Crawford
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
organization studies
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 4.441
H-Index - 148
eISSN - 1741-3044
pISSN - 0170-8406
DOI - 10.1177/01708406211035501
Subject(s) - situated , futures contract , the arts , novelty , process (computing) , embodied cognition , sociology , aesthetics , unconscious mind , reflexivity , futures studies , epistemology , psychology , visual arts , social psychology , computer science , art , social science , business , psychoanalysis , artificial intelligence , operating system , philosophy , finance
Although imagination has been recognized as essential to entrepreneuring, the processes by which entrepreneurs imagine and generate novelty remain insufficiently understood. To begin addressing this oversight, we propose a rhizomatic process model of entrepreneurial imagining that comprises five elements: experiencing, early creating, reaching an impasse and gestating, (re)creating and evaluating imagined futures, and choosing and enterprising. To generate this dynamic process model, we undertook an abductive, 25-month case study, guided by enactive research, to investigate how a small team of arts entrepreneurs created the world’s largest traveling carillon. Our primary contribution is to offer new theoretical insights into entrepreneurial imagining as a complex, situated, relational performance that unfolds through conscious and unconscious, self-reflective and embodied processes.