Conditions for business model innovation in a rural community

This paper departs from an interactive research project in three small rural communities in southeast Sweden aimed at promoting regional development through interaction between local stakeholders, academic researchers and undergraduate university students. Objective - The objective with this paper is to analyse the conditions for business model innovation in the small rural community of Urshult, Småland, in Southeast Sweden. The theoretical concept of ‘space of opportunity’ is used to analyse two main types of context-sensitive conditions, historical-structural conditions and discursive-communicative conditions. Prior Work and its Relation to this Study - The academic discourse on rural development is somewhat homogeneous both when it comes to definitions of problems and the suggested solutions (Johansson, 2011; Gaddefors, Johansson,Lundberg & Rosell, 2013). Business model innovation research is also somewhat homogenous as it focuses heavily on the re-configuring of existing (big) companies and the actions and concerns of top management (Bucherer, Eisert & Gassmann, 2012). Relative to prior work and with the objective outlined above, this paper aim to contribute to rural entrepreneurship research by targeting a less common unit of analysis (collaborative efforts by a rural community engaging in strategic re-configuring of their community as a whole rather than targeted efforts by top management to reconfigure their firm or parts of it) as well as a less common temporal focus (a focus on nascent processes that explores and so some extent establishes the conditions for a new business model for the community, upon which “conventional entrepreneurship” later on may take place (if to scan, seize and exploit a market opportunity, there first needs to be a market to act upon). With such a unit of analysis and such a temporal focus, the conditions for business model innovation in a Swedish rural entrepreneurial enclave are analysed. Approach - Data was generated through a six-month long field study where interactive methods were used to mobilise entrepreneurial energies in the community of Urshult. Data was analysed with a discursive narrative methodology called ‘communicative entrepreneurship’ (Lundberg, 2009), which is a methodology applied to entrepreneurship more specifically derived out of a broader approach on discursive and narrative methods within entrepreneurship research developed by Hjorth (2004) called ‘genealogical storytelling’. Results - An outline of conditions for business model innovation in a rural community is presented. Implications - The paper provides a different analytical focus relative to established paradigms within ruraldevelopment research and practice and within business model innovation research and practice. Value - The fields of rural development (located mainly in SME research, family business research and entrepreneurship research) and business model innovation (located mainly in strategy research and innovation research) has at large not been connected before why the core value with this paper is the attempt of connecting the two fields in search for novel insights and findings.Entreprenöriella enklave