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This study used qualitative discourse analysis to explore how researchers use the concept of ingenuity to understand the everyday work of social entrepreneurs. Data were drawn from a sample of 69 research articles published across 41 academic journals between 1998 and 2018. The findings showed ingenuity to be an underdeveloped concept in the social entrepreneurship literature and revealed a paucity of research on the everyday work performed by social entrepreneurs. A framework for studying the work of social entrepreneurs at the “scale of the everyday” through the lens of ingenuity is proposed, and recommendations for future research are provided.

Entrepreneurs and their ventures face innumerous constraints (e.g., lack of funding, lack of business skills, and lack of social support) since the moment business opportunities are identified and chased, until the venture comes to reality. Scholars have conceptualized constraints as obstacles in nature, that is, as always undermining entrepreneurs’ behavior. Nonetheless, prior research has presented conflicting results. Specifically, a same constraint may or may not have a negative effect on entrepreneurs’ action. As advanced by Van Gelderen, Thurik, and Patel (2011), this suggest that “the nature of [entrepreneurial] problems is essentially evaluative, and therefore subjective.” Accordingly, a same constraint may be seen as a problem by one person but not by another. This chapter explores the evaluative nature of entrepreneurial constraints. Based on the cognitive appraisal framework (Lazarus & Folkman, 1984) – which argues that constraints are not the direct precipitating cause of a behavior, but rather the person’s appraisal of challenge and threat that determines the response – this chapter argues that distinct appraisals (i.e., challenge vs threat) of a same entrepreneurial constraint will be associated with distinct degrees of effort from entrepreneurs (i.e., enhanced vs reduced, respectively). This chapter provides a useful framework for entrepreneurship scholars to study the nuanced effect of entrepreneurial constraints on entrepreneurs’ behavior.

Igba-Boi model of entrepreneurship incubation among the Igbos in south-eastern Nigeria records outstanding and robust successes in producing entrepreneurs with global impact. Therefore, the need to understand its nature, process, driving force, challenges and make suggestions to reinvigorate it has become urgent and valid. Also, with the persisting overbearing influence of Western and lately Asian philosophies in the development of business theories and practice, it is long overdue to mainstream Africa's entrepreneurial philosophy into extant discourse; this chapter contributes to this effort. Such an attempt follows the belief that Africans with their indigenous systems hold higher hope for the development of the continent. Since the rest of the world had at some point in history leveraged on Africa's civilisation to forge ahead, this chapter argues that Africa stands to contribute to the global search for efficient incubation of entrepreneurs using the Igba-Boi model. The chapter is guided by and framed with reviewed publications, philosophies and theories that explain Igbos' construction of social realities and worldview. Structural functionalism and conflict theories offer in-depth insight in explaining the success story of the Igba-Boi institution. The chapter, in particular, adopts the Igbos' interpretation of their cosmos, its eschatological implications in explaining their tenacity and doggedness in successfully meeting all the requirements for graduating from Igba-Boi incubation system. By discussing Igba-Boi as a socioeconomic institution, this chapter draws attention to areas of neglect for improvement in order to harness its high potentials for enhancing its contribution to business practice in Africa and development of the continent.

This chapter primarily aims to revisit and explore the theoretical underpinnings of social entrepreneurship and dwell into what unfolds while amalgamating the conventionally considered to be dissimilar design of business entrepreneurship and the social impact? Can the prefix “social” of social entrepreneurship transform the innate characteristics of entrepreneurship? Is social entrepreneurship an essentiality in a ground-breaking playing field in the business research to facilitate new theories and concepts or a rehash of the corporate responsibility debate? Is it just an appellation or does the underscored social label and its construct allow for new possibility to be explored into the sociality of entrepreneurship along with the new-fangled entrepreneurialism in society? The chapter attempts to decode these more germane and interwoven issues like do we have to tell apart between a capitalist entrepreneurship and a non-capitalist one? Or between pioneering and replicative entrepreneurs. Can we sanctify the political in the social spheres and who (which actors) actually sets the discourse of social needs. The chapter also tracks multiple cases in the Indian locale to determine the robust application of the concept while unpacking the Indian context of social entrepreneurship. These cases are randomly selected from assorted sectors and are wide in its sweep and scope. These cases highlight on the lived experiences, where the task is truly played out. This adds to the sensibilities of new entrepreneurs and policy framers who face the challenges.

In Chapter 5, contemporary innovative conditions and environments are outlined. Particular attention is given to the description of the role of innovation in the new knowledge-based economy, as well as to the intersection of entrepreneurship and innovation.

Our prior work has identified a trade-off that new entrants face in obtaining favorable market reception, whereby initial entrants suffer from a deficit of legitimacy whereas later entrants suffer from a deficit of authenticity. This research has also proposed that a single mechanism is responsible for this trade-off: the tendency for customers and other stakeholders to assess the entrant's claim to originality based on the visible work that it has done to legitimate the new product or organizational form. This chapter extends and deepens our understanding of such “legitimation work” by showing how it can illuminate cases that seem in the first instance to defy this trade-off. In particular, we focus on two “off-diagonal” cases: (a) when, as in the case of “patent trolls” and fraudulent innovators, early entrants are viewed as inauthentic despite having a credible claim to originality; (b) when late entrants, as in the case of Dell Computers, mechanical watches and baseball ballparks, are viewed as authentic despite obviously not being the originators. We clarify how each off-diagonal case represents an ‘exception that proves the rule’ whereby audiences attribute authenticity on the basis of legitimation work rather than on the order of entry per se. The last case also leads to an opportunity to clarify why “cultural appropriation” can sometimes project authenticity and sometimes inauthenticity, why audiences bother to make inferences about a producer's authenticity on the basis of visible legitimation work, and why legitimacy is a universal goal of early movers whereas authenticity varies in its importance.