Michael Lounsbury [University of Alberta]: Frontiers of Cultural Entrepreneurship
Michael Lounsbury Canada Research Chair, from School of Business
Abstract
Cultural entrepreneurship research has grown dramatically over the past couple of decades. This talk provides a brief overview of cultural entrepreneurship theory based on the speaker’s 2019 Cambridge University Press primer (co-authored with Mary Ann Glynn) entitled, Cultural Entrepreneurship: A New Agenda for the Study of Entrepreneurial Processes and Possibilities, and discusses some new opportunities for scholarly development. This approach to cultural entrepreneurship builds upon research on creative industries and the production of culture to develop a general theoretical approach to the study of entrepreneurial processes that emphasizes the constitutive nature of culture as well as how it can be agentically drawn upon to create novel products and organizations. The book reviews research on the role of entrepreneurial storytelling to legitimize new ventures and lays out a forward-looking agenda on the sources of entrepreneurial possibilities in institutional fields. While the speaker is no expert on the creative industries in Africa or Asia, he highlights how developments in those regions and globally, especially with regard to platforms and digitization, suggest important new research directions. He concludes with a brief discussion of relational methods, leveraging illustrative examples on nanotechnology and video games to suggest fruitful analytical directions.
About the Speaker
Michael Lounsbury is the Canada Research Chair Professor of Entrepreneurship and Innovation at the University of Alberta School of Business where he is the Academic Director of the Technology Commercialization Centre. His research focuses on the relationship between organizational and institutional change, entrepreneurial dynamics, and the emergence of new industries and practices. In addition to serving on a number of editorial boards, Professor Lounsbury is the series editor of Research in the Sociology of Organizations. He has previously served as Chair of the Organization and Management Theory Division of the Academy of Management. His Ph.D. is in Sociology and Organization Behavior from Northwestern University. Recent publication: Michael Lounsbury and Mary Ann Glynn, 2019, Cultural Entrepreneurship: A New Agenda for the Study of Entrepreneurial Processes and Possibilities. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press.
