Place in Entrepreneurial Storytelling: A Study of Cultural Entrepreneurship in a Deprived Context

We extend the cultural entrepreneurship perspective by investigating how entrepreneurs in deprived contexts gain legitimacy by leveraging proprietary and public places in their entrepreneurial storytelling. Inspired by the sociology of place, we present a longitudinal study of ten new venture journeys over four years in Kasoa, Ghana. We identify three distinct ways places are used in entrepreneurial narratives: projective significance of place, connective significance of place, and authoritative significance of place. We show how impoverished entrepreneurs construct and communicate places in diverse ways, not only as locations, but also as material and symbolic resources that provide legitimacy for their venturing activities. Drawing from our findings, we generate a model of place-based cultural entrepreneurship and elaborate place as a central resource in cultural entrepreneurship and new venture creation in deprived contexts.

Automated summary

This research extends the cultural entrepreneurship perspective by investigating how entrepreneurs in deprived contexts gain legitimacy through leveraging proprietary and public places in their entrepreneurial storytelling. We present a longitudinal study of ten new venture journeys over four years in Kasoa, Ghana, inspired by the sociology of place. The study identifies three distinct ways places are used in entrepreneurial narratives: projective significance of place, connective significance of place, and authoritative significance of place. The findings demonstrate how impoverished entrepreneurs construct and communicate places in diverse ways, as material and symbolic resources that provide legitimacy for their venturing activities. Based on these findings, a model of place-based cultural entrepreneurship is generated, emphasizing the central role of place as a resource in cultural entrepreneurship and new venture creation in deprived contexts.