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Despite the gains that have been made by adopting contemporary theories of practice in entrepreneurship studies, the field still lacks a comprehensive practice theory of entrepreneurial learning. In this article, we develop a practice theory of entrepreneurial learning by elaborating on the relations between practicing, knowing and learning.

Using a video ethnography of a two-day “Startup Weekend for Refugees” event in Amsterdam, our aim is to further theorise the relational, material and embodied nature of entrepreneurial learning through analysing video fragments of naturally occurring practices.

Our findings demonstrate that entrepreneurial learning transpires through, and is emergent from, practices and their relations. On the one hand, practitioners learn to competently participate in various practices by sensing, observing and experimenting with the meaning of others' gestures and utterances. On the other, the learning of new opportunities for value creation emerges as practitioners connect various practices to one another through translation.

This article contributes by illustrating and explaining real-time instances of learning to develop a practice theory of entrepreneurial learning. This contributes to the literature by detailing the relations between learning, knowing and practising entrepreneurship, which leads to a novel alternative to existing individual- and organisational-level learning theories.

This paper seeks to advance research into entrepreneurial uncertainty. Few researchers have attended to the endogenous means by which entrepreneurial teams account for uncertainty in context. This article begins to unpack the concept of uncertainty as an entrepreneurs’ phenomenon by investigating entrepreneurial teams’ situated ways of verbally attending to and accounting for uncertainty in their routine work.

The study draws on the ethnomethodological traditions of Conversation Analysis and interaction order to analyze naturally occurring interactions that have been recorded by entrepreneurial teams in context. It considers entrepreneurial uncertainty as a matter that teammates draw upon and orient to in the process of their naturally occurring workplace interactions.

First, it suggests that the endogenous means by which entrepreneurs recognize, account for, and respond to uncertainties is identifiable in a team’s naturally occurring conversations. It transforms entrepreneurial uncertainty as a matter of cognition into a matter of practice that is observable in the structure and order of authentic interaction. Second, it reveals the “epistemic engine” that entrepreneurial teams use to demonstrate greater or lesser levels of knowing and to move to closure that is not marked by the full elimination of uncertainties but by the establishment of a shared sense of not knowing.

By adhering to the detailed interactional focus of Conversation Analysis, this article emphasizes the value that the structure and order of entrepreneurial conversations can offer to research on entrepreneurship as practice. It points to future research on matters of effectuation and expertise that will be relevant to scholars and educators of entrepreneurship. It also helps to bridge the gap between scholarly research and entrepreneurial work as experienced by practitioners.

This article shows the mundane verbal means by which entrepreneurs account for uncertainties in their everyday work. It reframes entrepreneurial uncertainty, transforming it from a matter of cognition to an accomplishment of practice. It suggests that entrepreneurial uncertainty is a practical matter that is recognized by and accounted for in the conversations of entrepreneurial teams in context.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate, through practices and capabilities, how entrepreneurs use microfinance in a context of serious constraints.

The chosen methodology for this paper is longitudinal. A three-and-a-half-year study was conducted to be able to capture the entrepreneurial journeys of ten entrepreneurs at a micro-level in the developing economy of Ghana. This was augmented by a further 15 interviews with entrepreneurs and loan officers. This data is used to develop a theoretical model of entrepreneurial practices in this context.

The paper identifies two distinct pathways for understanding the recursive nature of entrepreneurial practices. It highlights how entrepreneurs generate capabilities through microfinance resources through convergent or divergent venturing in response to the serious constraints they face. This is identified as a generative recursive mechanism for the process, representing the “chain of actions” and how entrepreneurs engage with their “settings” and “intended relations” in practice.

The research is limited by its focus on one nation in Sub-Saharan Africa and therefore how the findings may be transferred to other contexts.

The paper contributes to a practice approach in entrepreneurship by identifying how mechanisms of practice relate to entrepreneurial action in this context. It also provides an important contribution to discussion at the intersection of entrepreneurship and the capabilities approach by using Amartya Sen's concepts of process and opportunity freedom to understand practices.

The purpose of this paper is to explore empirically and theoretically collaborations, which small entrepreneurial firms establish with other firms, stemming from innovation processes within the original firm.

The article advances “entrepreneurship as practice” (EaP) using practice theory, employing specifically the concept of constellations. Three specific constellations emerge, each characterized by particular practices, purposes and outcomes. The empirical material stems from a collective case study of 32 entrepreneurial firms regarding 40 innovation projects.

The findings suggest that innovation practices in entrepreneurial firms stimulate new collaborations forming specific constellations, which in turn lead to learning and further innovation.

The theoretical framework developed extends EaP and practice theory by casting light on how constellations are, their forms, shapes and outcomes. The findings extend existing research on collaboration for innovation and contribute to practice theory by modeling different constellations and their structures.

The practical implications of the findings for entrepreneurial firms arise from understandings of how different constellations may influence further learning and innovation.

The originality of the study is the identification and exposition of distinctive constellations of collaboration stemming from entrepreneurial innovation. This study exposes that innovation is differently open, whether the collaboration is interdependent, incorporated into the collaboration or independent from the other collaborative partners, with implications for learning and for innovation outcomes. The findings give insight into the enabling and limiting factors of each constellation, factors which may facilitate or hinder learning and innovation.

The study seeks to shed light on the generative principles of enterprising by examining the practices of enterprisers in six lifestyle enterprises in Sweden. It presents a fresh approach to the study of lifestyle enterprises, resolving a nuanced treatment of the concepts of capital and habitus as often drawn upon in studies using the social theory of Pierre Bourdieu.

This study uses a grounded theory approach to examine enterprising practices in six lifestyle enterprises in Sweden. Study materials are derived principally from ethnographic observations and active interviews. The analytical procedure follows that of grounded theory, the analysis proceeding from the first field contacts and developing iteratively as the corpus expanded, with empirical themes giving way to formative concepts and sensitizing to the theoretical architecture of Pierre Bourdieu.

The findings offer insights into lifestyle enterprising, revealing how resourcing practices of capital deployment give shape to its practice. The findings reveal that capital deployment practices are not simply about conversion but may also involve practices, without substantive change to capital forms. Furthermore, the findings highlight that habitus significantly influences capital deployment practices.

Although the findings are limited to the study context, the study offers theoretical implications for study of enterprising. One is to highlight the importance of cultural capital in enterprising practices. Another is to highlight the variable construction of capitals, arising in connection to habitus. In pointing to the central generative role of habitus, the study suggests that cultural capital may underpin the formation of social capital. Overall, the findings indicate that researchers need to consider the mediating effects of habitus when investigating enterprising practices. More widely, this study responds and lends weight to, recent calls for more holistic and integrated treatments using Bourdieu's theory to further understandings of entrepreneurship as practice.

This study offers implications for policy relating to enterprising practice. In particular, findings suggest that it might be wise to consider the alignment of habitus between those who provide and receive support, or in other words, having providers with the right cultural competence to offer useful help. It may be important for policy agents to be able to relate to the worldviews of those they seek to support.

The study directly responds to recent calls for more holistic and integrated approaches to the nascent line of inquiry using Bourdieu’s theory to gain insight into entrepreneurship as a practice, particularly in relation to the undertheorized phenomenon of lifestyle entrepreneurship. In doing so, the study serves to advance the practice-oriented conceptualization of lifestyle entrepreneurship as lifestyle entrepreneuring. The paper also offers a conceptual framework to assist researchers investigating enterprising practice.

The purpose of the present paper is to explore entrepreneurial learning at the centre of communities of practice.

Learning perspectives from the community of practice concept are applied to interpret and discuss results from an in-depth empirical investigation using a novel qualitative method, the Zaltman metaphor elicitation technique (ZMET), to study the entrepreneurial learning behaviour of ten coaches in a student venture incubator. The coaches are students with a certain level of entrepreneurial experience. Given their coaching roles and practices, the coaches are considered “community insiders”.

The findings show how the socially situated entrepreneurial learning of community insiders could be considered an adaptive process following multiple learning trajectories depending on with whom and about what the entrepreneur involves in social relationships.

Policy makers seeking to facilitate communities of practice should enable learning activities for community insiders and organic development in addition to networking events and support for the entire ecosystem in order to enable bridging of communities of practice.

The present paper focuses on the entrepreneurial learning of community insiders using a novel qualitative method, ZMET. The paper empirically demonstrates that community insiders learn through an adaptive process and participation in multiple communities of practice. This is both in interaction with the nascent entrepreneurs whom they coach as well as when interacting with other community insiders.

Entrepreneurial intentions have traditionally been linked to an entrepreneur's personal ability to take advantage of opportunities. Yet, entrepreneurs' perceptions of contextual factors, which extend beyond one's control, deserve equal attention. This paper looks at the role played by cultural intelligence and the institutional environment in shaping entrepreneurial intentions.

The role played by cultural intelligence in entrepreneurial intentions and the mediating role played by the institutional environment were studied quantitatively by analyzing 224 young potential entrepreneurs who had participated in a business plan competition. This study used cross-sectional data, developing an original full collinearity assessment approach to check for any common method bias.

This study reveals a positive relationship between cultural intelligence and entrepreneurial intentions. Likewise, any favorable perceptions of the institutional environment tend to increase the probability of engaging in entrepreneurship and further strengthen the positive effect of cultural intelligence on entrepreneurial intentions.

This study provides a holistic view of the relationship between the entrepreneur and the context in which ventures are created, explaining the role played by cultural intelligence in entrepreneurship based on evidence drawn from a developing country. This contributes to a critical reflection on personal and environmental factors and the antecedents of entrepreneurial intentions.