Although entrepreneurs are commonly depicted as risk-takers, the literature on entrepreneurshiphas so far seldom asked whether this means that they conduct their business affairs wholly by therulebook.
off-the-books entrepreneurs don't get the same respect ...
Table 1 summarises the qualities that Burns (2001) finds most lists suggest entre-preneurs possess, along with their antonyms. These qualities construct what is in effect a romanticportrait of the entrepreneur as a wholesome and virtuous heroic figure, as can be clearly seen whenthese qualities are inverted to depict the dualistic opposite, the ‘non-entrepreneur’
Check out this table. Who wouldn't want to have the qualities of entrepreneurs? They sound globally positive. The opposite of those qualities is not something anyone would "desire" (to use a term from the other reading). Thus the entrepreneurial personality is the fantasy of the independent, achieving, confident, fabulous figure.
a marked discrepancy between theideal-type representation of entrepreneurs as legitimate and wholesome super heroes and thelived practice of entrepreneurship
kind of a thesis statement ... the lived practice of entrepreneurship isn't the experience of the squeaky clean, wholesome hero...
Off-the-books work, or what has been variously called ‘informalemployment’, the ‘underground sector’, ‘shadow work’ and the ‘hidden economy’, reflecting thestrong consensus in the literature, is here defined as the paid production and sale of goods andservices that are legitimate in all respects besides the fact that they are unregistered by, or hiddenfrom the state for tax and/or benefit purposes
setting the stage with a crucial definition
s is, in the main, inevitable in the new world of the devices and gadgets that increasingly mediate our lives. What made this article about Boomtrain distin
The language of risk and uncertainty that has always accompanied entrepreneurial activity has today become generalized.
risk again! Highlighted here because I've included an example of this idea of "universal risk and uncertainty" in the "food for thought" forum this week (managing a pandemic and the '2020' Tokyo Olympics...)
The affect attendant to entrepreneur-ialism is not one that dissipates the energies for change through a faux rec-onciliation with the present, as mediated by optimistic fantasies of the future. Rather, it affirms the desirability of the present circumstances that enable entrepreneurialism and equates subjects’ systems of attachment with an ideal system of belonging and behaving such that, even as entrepreneurs insist on the significance of their contributions in shaping the future, they occupy an ahistorical social landscape in which time stands still.
This is some really "heavy" language (and seemingly awfully fatalistic too).
Don't worry if it twists your melon a bit.
We are all entrepreneurs now; everyone will have to become an entrepre-neur.
I've provided an example of this in the "food for thought" forum for this week. You can, of course, do the same... There are so many examples of "everyday" entrepreneurialism ...
the traits required for the kind of celebrated entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley and Waterloo, Ontario, are just as necessary for the hawkers, import-ers, bootleggers, market merchants, restaurateurs, scavengers, mechanics, and other entrepreneurial subjects whose labor takes place off the books all over the world
This statement stood out and made me say hmmm!
This foreshadows subsequent weeks of the course (Entrepreneurialism, innovation, and self-reliance are crucial elements of what Baron calls “Tools Entrepreneurs Need for Converting Dreams To Reality—And Achieving Success.” And these are also key to "unconventional entrepreneurship").
It also begs the question, "can anyone be an entrepreneur?" and "can anyone be entrepreneurial"? We easily give the label 'entrepreneur' to people like Bill Gates, Elon Musk, or even less known business successes like Sarah Blakely, but what about hawkers, scavengers, etc? By this logic, who isn't an entrepreneur (or at least entrepreneurial)? Can anyone be an "informal" entrepreneur? This really underscores Szeman's earlier comment/thesis statement that we're all entrepreneurs now (or will have to act or think along those lines) even if we're not aspiring to be prototypical success stories like Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Elon Must, etc...
The concept of entrepreneurship extends back to the eighteenth cen-tury, when economist Richard Cantillon (2010) famously described the term “entrepreneur” as a “bearer of risk.”
The concept of managing risk (and welcoming it, vs. avoiding it in a more secure job working for an institution rather than for yourself) is a major theme of entrepreneurship...
You'll see how this keeps coming up in this article (as well as many others we'll be reading this semester). It is obvious at the bottom of pg. 475 and implicit in the later discussions of (flirting with) failure.
the designation of entrepreneur as a new ideal of contemporary subjectivity has produced a change in how the poor understand themselves. Many now feel that they have no way to escape poverty other than by becoming entre-preneurs,
I'm curious what you think of this statement -- this also applies to all sorts of precarious employment or people like yourselves seeking a better job, or a permanent job and being told that looking for a job is a full time job ... so one protects oneself by becoming one's own source of income (side-hustle or entrepreneurial initiatives are posited as the only (or the surest) way to escape one's current position...
We are all entrepreneurs now
This is the "modus operandi" for the whole course! What does this mean (for you)?
p.s. - this refrain is repeated at the bottom of pg. 474...
Entrepreneurs are both dreamers and doers,
Elsewhere in the academic literature on entrepreneurship, this idea of mindset is defined more explicitly when it comes to asking the question, 'Why are some individuals able to identify and successfully act upon opportunities in uncertain environments while others are unable to do so?' In Entrepreneurial Cognition: Exploring the Mindset of Entrepreneurs, Shepherd and Patzelt argue the following:
An entrepreneurial mindset [is] the ability to rapidly sense, act, and mobilize, even under uncertain conditions. Such a notion implies the ability to both notice and adapt to uncertainty is a key skill. When conceptualizing the notion of an entrepreneurial mindset, Ireland et al. (2003) described cognitive tasks, such as interpreting opportunities as goal change, continually reflecting on and challenging one’s “dominant logic” in changing environments, and reconsidering “deceptively simple questions” about what one believes to be true. The cognitive tasks associated with an entrepreneurial mindset embody what we more generally call cognitive adaptability. Cognitive adaptability refers to the degree to which people are dynamic, flexible, self-regulating, and engaged in developing numerous decision frameworks aimed at sensing and processing environmental changes and then choosing from those various alternatives to successfully understand, plan, and implement an array of personal, social, and organizational objectives in a shifting world (120-121).
Whew! That was a mouthful. Fundamentally, though, this "mindset" is crucial to understanding the centrality and the power of entrepreneurship in contemporary society. If you have it, you're a "winner" and if you don't have it, you're consigned to a lesser fate, less likely to flourish in today's society, unable to grasp the opportunities that come your way or unwilling to put yourself in a position to make your own opportunities (or so the story goes).
What specific qualities do you think are associated with an entrepreneurial mindset and the capacity to both dream something and to do it, to make it happen! ...?
And where have you seen these trumpeted or underscored in your own experience?
“cruel optimism”
I think this is a very powerful concept -- as a former student said, entrepreneurs must have cruel optimism, individuals must be able to adapt and ride out whatever wave or obstacle comes around.
Berlant uses the term cruel optimism to refer to our our investments in “compromised conditions of possibility whose realization is discovered to be impossible, sheer fantasy.” (i.e., we keep cheering for a team we know will lose; we maintain hope in an unattainable romantic ideal promulgated by Hollywood or pursue happiness based on unrealistic beauty standards; we engage in small acts of environmental stewardship like recycling or buying a hybrid in the face of potentially unstoppable climate change...) Berlant basically means that the thing we seek to achieve, the thing (or state of being) that we desire (or the act of seeking and desiring itself) might actually threaten our well-being (that's what makes it cruel!). As she put it succinctly, “a relation of cruel optimism exists when something you desire is actually an obstacle to your flourishing.”
This relates to entrepreneurialism in so many ways: Engaging in the gig economy or a side-hustle as a way to increase one's income (or security) in uncertain times is cruel and optimistic. Similarly, we encounter aspirational labour in the form of internships or any form of unpaid labour while looking for a "real" job. Perhaps you feel the pressure of cultivating a sense of employability. According to Frayne (2015), today, students are expected “to improve their prospects by training, acquiring educational credentials, networking, learning how to project the right kind of personality, and gaining life experiences that match up with the values sought by employers.” In other words, they have to act entrepreneurially even to get a non-entrepreneurial job. As Hawzen et al. (2018) assert, this incites anxiety and results in a colonization of one’s entire life by work-related demands as students feel the need to separate themselves from the competition, doing things like volunteering to gain an advantage or to get a "foot in the door"... We also see it to a certain extent in the example of entrepreneurial vloggers in the sense that the fantasy of a “good life” through fame and fortune is rarely realized. The cruel conditions of precocity are, for most, more of a reality than the fantasy... and we take up this theme explicitly in two weeks hence with digital 'autopreneurs'
Overall, this also highlights one of the reasons I chose this article -- rather than just highlighting how entrepreneurs are certain types of people (or motivated by certain types of things), it emphasizes how entrepreneurship is a mental orientation, not just a business concept but a way of living. But it's not all sunshine and happiness. Cruel optimism, indeed!
What about you? Are you familiar with the feeling of 'cruel optimism'? Does it define the current times or your current disposition?
“Starting a company has become the way for ambitious young people to do something that seems simultaneously careerist and heroic
foreshadowing next week...
what has changed is the status of the entrepreneur,
fascinating stuff -- also foreshadowing the 2nd last week in the course when we talk not just about the mental health (and happiness) of entrepreneurs, but emphasize how an entrepreneurial attitude may not be the secret to the meaning of life but can help give life meaning... money isn't everything...
enterprising citizens free to take up and solve any challenge outside the constraints of race, gender, sexuality, class, and his-tory.
Is it really the case that enterprising citizens are so powerful, such agents of change and emancipation? How straightforward is it to transcend one’s personal circumstances and systemic conditions and make your life better (much less, the world, a better place)? Is anyone free to do so (or more importantly, equally empowered to do so)? Obviously not. What then, does this say about entrepreneurial culture?
Is "enterprising citizen" a synonym for entrepreneur?
FYI -- this is a potentially interesting subject for a final paper if you're interested in addressing the question of systemic imbalances of power and opportunities when it comes to the intersection of race, gender and entrepreneurialism. Specific sub-populations experience entrepreneurialism differently...
thought to exist outside of the sphere of business and labor, such as artistic and cultural production, have been colonized by discourses of entrepreneur-ship
Can you relate this to your own experience or to news and information from beyond the reading? Can you find an example of this?
Please note - this is connected to a later question (can anyone be an entrepreneur or entrepreneurial). This is also an explicit foreshadowing of subsequent course content when we address cultural and creative entrepreneurship.
We can see this misrecognition of the lived realities of contemporary society
Szeman's point of view being ably emphasized...
Even fields commonly
“ideology of micro-entrepreneurship” that sees the poor as creative entrepreneurs
discourse of social entrepreneurship (again)
contemporary life is lived in increasingly difficult and precarious circum-stances
this notion of precariousness should be a recurring theme in the third week of the course too (when we put neoliberalism into greater focus)
But it also begs the question -- do you agree? And do you think entrepreneurialism is the solution to this problem or one of the root causes of it?
the world is not replete with divisions of power and privilege that skew one’s opportunities within it, predetermining possibilities through a game of social and economic fate
this statement highlights the "can-do" attitude of the entrepreneurial subject. Szeman isn't describing reality, but the way that entrepreneurs see it and process it ...
the sharing economy via companies like AirBnB, Uber, Lyft
what do you think of the idea of these operators as "micro-entrepreneurs"? Definitely not the same as "mom & pop" shops...
a better, more fulfilling world peopled by autopoetic microentrepreneurs
foreshadowing "social entrepreneurship"
entrepreneurship is a mindset
We will be dealing with this idea all semester long (as we talk about the traits/characteristics of entrepreneurs and the mentality of being entrepreneurial). Szeman's critical cultural studies approach highlights the "subjectivity" of entrepreneurs which is another way of saying the same thing...
What do you think about this? Is entrepreneurship less a mode of being/acting and more a mode of engaging with the world and seeing it through a certain lens?
a space of unfettered possi-bility and excitement
entrepreneurial culture seems to be just this -- filled with perpetual promise, fuelled by your own attitude.
Do you find this encouraging or unrealistic?
In the entrepreneurial imaginary, we all start on equal footing.
What do you think of this?
“everyone will have to become an entrepreneur”
Do you agree? Is this good or bad?
entrepreneurial individualism,
not only are we all expected to be entrepreneurs today, we are all expected to like it; from the perspective of entrepreneurial common sense, there are no unhappy entrepreneurs.
This sentence foreshadows our later week on mental health (where we highlight happiness!)
But seriously -- Whoa! I think that this statement is (potentially) controversial and ought to be queried/challenged. Clearly, this is not true when it's taken at face-value; there are many unhappy entrepreneurs who have not realized the success they envisioned or who have not recovered from their previous ventures beset by mistakes and misfortunes (having failed to learn the lesson inherent in their failed venture).
What do you think of Szeman's statement?
perhaps the common sense of entrepre-neurial success that I have been describing through much of this introduc-tion, with its belief in freedom to achieve on a level playing field that exists outside the constraining barriers of privilege, in fact occupies the most priv-ileged position of all
this statement should serve as ample evidence that Szeman isn't trumpeting entrepreneurialism as a beneficent force for equity. He's highlighting the very opposite!
entrepreneurial subjects embrace and even seek out failure as an important, even essential, dimension of their activ-ity
When he says this, he also foreshadows our subsequent week on grit and perseverance...
But definitely check out the memes -- I start out with this Beckett bit....
For the entrepreneurial subject, failure might well be more important than success.
He's talking about the entrepreneurial mindset. We highlight this again in the week on "successful intelligence" later on.
For now, though, ask how is this possible? Do you agree?
women accessing microfinance
foreshadowing the week on social entrepreneurship
Entrepre-neurs have unrealistic ideas of success and unhealthy fantasies about the productivity and necessity of failure
What do you think about this statement? (Check out the memes that distill this into sound-byte culture...)
A student last year asked, "Is normalizing failure a way of conditioning people to never expect real success?" Yowza!
Still, there is a kernel of political possibility, a hint of imaginative self-reliance and rejection of the status quo, in the desire to produce one’s own life, failure or no, against the dictates of class or origin, that speaks to political inventiveness and possibilities just over the horizon.
His final words lead us to conclude that amongst all the fear, the caution, and the critique, there is still some hope to be found, some inspiration to be taken from the philosophy and the psychology at the root of entrepreneurial culture. This is why entrepreneurialism is everywhere and why it is the subtext of so many self-help books and inspirational content online. The dream of a better tomorrow can motivate us to get past the trials and tribulations of today. Both bane and boon, entrepreneurial culture promises that our ability to transcend the mundane is entirely dependent upon our own efforts. This means we don't have to depend on anyone (or anything) else (such as governments or communities, or corporations) to generate happiness or success; we are entirely free agents, constructing our own future. This also means that we have no-one to blame but ourselves if that future turns out less rosy than we hoped...
Entrepreneurship would appear at first glance to exemplify such a mode of indirect control sans responsibility.
Yep - so much of entrepreneurship is Neo-liberalism writ large! You're in it for yourself because you can't count on anyone else (especially the state). Collective forms of entrepreneurship are the exception, rather than the rule (here I'm thinking in particular of indigenous versions...)
We have now all been given the freedom
He doesn't mean this as a good thing...
The production of subjects responsible only for themselves
Clearly, Szeman is critical of our contemporary condition in which the figure of the entrepreneur is cast as the salve for all our problems yet also produces "subjects responsible only for themselves" We ought not be fooled into thinking Szeman is advocating for entrepreneurialism -- instead, he's alerting everyone to how it's a tsunami overtaking culture (and advocating that we stay alert to its potential dangers...)
It is a mechanism of self hood and subject formation that begins from the premise that there is no one to count on, no one who can do anything for you other than you yourself.
This certainly seems to sum up the attitude of a lot of entrepreneurs -- and seems to describe the "common sense" reality of their endeavours. Do you think that this describes your reality?
The endless drive to exceed one’s capacities across hitherto distinct spheres of life activity
this is what I was referring to earlier ... gotta get more, be more, be fitter, healthier, happier, wealthier.
Is the "entrepreneurial self" a constant work-in-progress exemplifying the ethos of the Daft Punk song "harder, better, faster, stronger"? In fact, the lyrics have a definite Neo-liberal twist to them (something lost in the recycling of the song by Kanye West with his version, "Stronger"):
"Work it harder Make it better Do it faster Makes us stronger More than ever Hour after Our work is Never over
hould we not welcome the cracks that might appear in the operations of biopolitics at its fullest oper-ation?
Even with all of the criticisms he's outlined, Szeman ends on a conditional but hopeful note. This reminds me of a song lyric:
Leonard Cohen sang "Ring the bells that still can ring Forget your perfect offering There is a crack, a crack in everything That's how the light gets in."
Which leads me to my final note...
Governments cannot be entrepreneurial, nor can NGOs.
This is a contested statement. Certainly some governments and NGOs would say the exact opposite!
The demand to produce ever more is part of a system in which an imperative exists to enjoy and to become ever more.
remember this when we deal with the latter weeks that highlight themes of self-actualization, well-being, and wellness. Are we ever content with what we have? What does it mean to be constantly striving for more? Does entrepreneurship encourage only this (or anything approximating a sense of "balance" also...)?
creating an enterprise and creating a self is the same activ-ity.
This strikes me as really important for my vision of the course. Part of what we're going to be examining this term is how this idea of "the entrepreneurial self" is constituted. A passion project or a side-hustle isn't the only thing an entrepreneurial person is building (or working on). They're also constructing themselves...
The status of entrepreneurship as a new common sense of subjectivity and economic practice
Remember at the beginning of the article (when Szeman says "we are all entrepreneurs now") (p. 472)? He doesn't mean that we are all creating business start-ups. Rather, he's suggesting that there is a spirit-of-the-times wherein entrepreneurship has become this new common-sense reality. It is both a dominant way of thinking about how we ought to act, AND an informal rulebook for how economies (and other forms of practice) ought to function too... In other words, entrepreneurship isn't just about undertaking profit-making (and risk-inducing) economic practices in capitalism. Rather, it's about undertaking a new subjectivity, a new identity when it comes to how we think of ourselves, how we relate to others, and how we respond to our wider social, cultural, political, and economic environment.
the entrepreneur is the neo-liberal subject par excellence
remember this term (neoliberal) for two weeks hence!
The figure of the entrepreneur embodies the values and attributes that are celebrated as essential for the economy to operate smoothly and for the contemporary human being to flourish.
remember this rhetorical nod to "flourishing" (which we'll revisit in earnest in the 2nd or 3rd last week of the semester...)
the entrepreneur is abstracted and universal-ized into a model for all citizens
definitely stay tuned in week 3 (when we talk about the "auto-preneur") as the success vs. hardship struggle becomes paramount. Also, passion projects are the very root of "unconventional" entrepreneurs (perhaps even more so than "conventional" ones...)
Gary Vee is a fine example! You've also linked perfectly to next week (as we idolize such figures, making them into heroes of either capitalist achievement or pinnacles of success in other fields (like sports -- some of which aren't necessarily roads to financial success, like a lot of Olympic pursuits...).
This is the "modus operandi" for the whole course! What does this mean (for you)?
I love this comment. It links brilliantly to next week's content...
To quote a silly Netflix series about baking escapades, you "nailed it"