What if, in order to understand entrepreneurship, we had to approach the subject in a different way? This is the central question proposed by Christophe SCHMITT (IAE Metz/CEREFIGE) in his latest book which has been labelled at the national level by the Collège de Labellisation of the FNEGE.
This is the sixth book by Christophe SCHMITT to be awarded the FNEGE label, including one that received the national prize for the best management essay.
In this book, the author shows that, since the emergence of effectual logic with the work of Sarasvathy around the 2000s, entrepreneurship research is built around an implicit model of communication: the Shannon telegraph model. This model, based on the decision paradigm, mechanises the representation of entrepreneurship to such an extent that it no longer corresponds to the situations that entrepreneurs encounter on a daily basis.
The book therefore proposes a new theory of entrepreneurship, this time through the paradigm of entrepreneurial action and the orchestra model of the Palo Alto School, making it possible to link entrepreneurial action and decision. In this perspective, a theory that is still not very present in entrepreneurship research is mobilised: the theory of communication, which is essentially interested in interactions between individuals in a situation. These may be conscious, unconscious, explicit or implicit, but always linked to the subjectivities involved. In this context, the mobilisation of the orchestra model of the Palo Alto School, which is systemically inspired and deals with the complexity of human interactions, seems more appropriate and leads to the following conclusions:
- there is no entrepreneurship without a project leader;
- there is no entrepreneurship without projects;
- there is no entrepreneurship without actors of the ecosystem (funders, support structures...);
- there is no entrepreneurship without communication between the three elements mentioned above.
In short, entrepreneurship is the expression of the interaction between the 3 elements: the entrepreneur, the project and the ecosystem.
