Regional development through entrepreneurial exaptation: Epistemological displacement, affordances, and collective agency in rural regions

The creation of growth and development in rural regions presents a key challenge for both researchers and policy makers. In this paper, we explore entrepreneurial exaptation as a mechanism for creating regional development in rural regions characterised by organisational thinness. Exaptation as a source of innovation involves the adoption of one or more resources for a different purpose than it was originally intended or designed for. Using a longitudinal field study of a region in rural Sweden and a garden-themed new venture based on the exaptation of local resources, we show how exaptation can initiate a positive development path in a hitherto lagging rural region. Through collective agency, involving entrepreneurs and locals, the exaptation creates an epistemological displacement that discloses concrete and abstract affordances in local resources. Overall, our study points to the importance of entrepreneurial exaptation as a source of innovation in rural regions and suggests that regional development paths are not determined by lock-in effects and path dependencies related to existing resource bases.