Entrepreneurship as re-sourcing: Towards a new image of entrepreneurship in a time of financial, economic and socio-spatial crisis

The purpose of this paper is to develop an understanding of entrepreneurship that can help researchers, policymakers and practitioners develop entrepreneurial responses to the current economic, environmental and socio-spatial crisis.

The paper adopts a conceptual approach. Hudson’s diagnosis of the current patterns of production is applied to the two dominant streams of theorising on entrepreneurship: the opportunistic discovery view and the resourcefulness view of, for example, effectuation.

The analysis indicates that the opportunistic discovery view and, to some extent, the resourcefulness view are both inadequate as conceptual platforms for entrepreneurial responses to the economic, environmental and socio-spatial crisis. Instead, an alternative perspective on entrepreneurship is developed: Entrepreneurship as re-sourcing. The perspective emphasises the importance of building regional-level resilience through entrepreneurial activity that sources resources from new places and uses these resources to create multiple forms of value.

The paper draws attention to dysfunctions in the current theorising on entrepreneurship in light of the economic, environmental and socio-spatial crisis. Instead, the authors offer an alternative. In doing so, the paper also points to the difficult trade-offs that exist between, for example, long-term resilience and short-term competitiveness and growth on a regional, as well as firm level.

This paper adds to research by offering an alternative view of entrepreneurship grounded – not in economics – but in economic geography, thus highlighting the importance of productions’ grounding in material reality and the importance of addressing non-economic concerns in our way of thinking about entrepreneurship.