Elena Bruni
Dept. of Management, Ca' Foscari University of Venice
Sara Bonesso
Associate Professor
Dept. of Management, Ca' Foscari University of Venice
Fabrizio Gerli
Associate Professor
Dept. of Management, Ca' Foscari University of Venice
ABSTRACT
While the connection between entrepreneurship and innovation is widely acknowledged in literature, limited effort has been devoted to the understanding of how entrepreneurs linguistically represent their endeavour in generating and implementing different types of innovation. This paper addresses this void by bringing metaphor analysis into the field of innovation and entrepreneurship. We argue that the sensemaking and sensegiving role of figurative language is important in describing the complexity and ambiguity that characterize the innovation process. Specifically, this paper provides insights about how episodes of innovation are linguistically elaborated and transmitted through ex post narration. Adopting semi-structured interviews, we found that entrepreneurs highly rely on metaphors to explain events of innovation. Moreover, each type of innovation (product, marketing, process, organizational, and strategic) is simplified differently through the use of metaphorical language in an attempt to differentiate innovations and to provide a rational structure to events. This research advances the literature providing a conceptualization of the different meanings entrepreneurs ascribe to innovation and discusses practical implications on how entrepreneurs’ mental models can be analysed and interpreted for improving the innovation process.
INTRODUCTION
Entrepreneurs play a central role in generating and adopting innovations (Pérez-Luño et al., 2011), thus contributing in important ways to economic development (Nissan et al., 2011). The identification and implementation of novel and successful ideas are the “lifeblood of entrepreneurship” (Ward, 2004: 174), where entrepreneurship itself has been considered a more specific form of innovation (Shalley et al., 2015: 2). By definition the innovation process is often unpredictable and associated with high levels of uncertainty and complexity (Damanpour, 1996; Cardon et al., 2005; Garud et al., 2014, Seidel and O’Mahony, 2014). Unlike managers, who usually introduce novel ideas in their specific business areas concentrating their effort on some types of innovation, “the scope of entrepreneurial innovation is so wide-ranging as to cover any activity related to the creation and management of enterprises” (Manimala, 2008: 120). Indeed, entrepreneurs not only innovate the company strategy developing new business models, but they usually promote and handle different types of innovation at the same time, introducing changes at product, process, marketing, and organizational level as well (Schumpeter, 1934; OECD, 2005; Armbruster et al., 2008; Santandreu-Mascarell et al., 2013). A recognized challenge in both innovation and entrepreneurship literatures is the understanding of how entrepreneurs cope with this different degree of complexity and ambiguity, and therefore how they rationalize it ex post their decisions and actions related to different types of innovation.
As argued by Hill and Levenhagen (1995: 1057) “to cope with these uncertainties, the entrepreneur must develop a “vision” or mental model of how the environment works (sensemaking) and then be able to communicate to others and gain their support (sensegiving)”. Metaphors are critical linguistic devices for entrepreneurs, as much as they facilitate communication at both sensegiving and sensemaking levels (Hill and Levenhagen, 1995), by explaining one thing in terms of another. As for sensemaking, metaphors function as mental models because they accelerate the comprehension of ambiguity emerging during entrepreneurial activities (Hill and Levenhagen, 1995; Nonaka and Yamanouchi, 1989). As sensegiving devices, metaphors
are often used by entrepreneurs to explain such ambiguity about organizational processes to external actors (Hill and Levenhagen, 1995: 1062).
Thus, the understanding of how entrepreneurs linguistically describe their effort toward innovation is salient since not only it provides insight on how entrepreneurs cognitively interpret events, but also offers guidance for their action. In this regards, metaphors are linguistic devices that help in framing something that is perceived as obscure (Lakoff and Johnson, 1980; Ortony, 1993). Language reflects the conceptual system of the speaker, and metaphorical language is its foundation because we think and we act by metaphors (Lakoff and Johnson, 1980). Metaphors indeed provide a large amount of information about cognitive, behavioural, and emotional dimensions (Sackmann, 1989: 482) and, due to their explicatory and generative impact, illuminate a particular phenomenon (Grant and Oswick, 1996; Weick, 1979; 1995).
Past research shows that metaphors contribute in the theorizing about entrepreneurship (Clarke, Holt, and Blundel, 2014; Anderson, 2005; Cardon et al., 2005; Hyrsky, 1999). Entrepreneurship research is itself rich with metaphors. For instance, entrepreneurial identity has often been described through metaphorical images such as warrior, superman, explorer, battler (Down and Warren, 2008: 7), or as mythical figures and magicians (Nicholson and Anderson, 2005). Furthermore, entrepreneurs use analogies and metaphors during new venture construction due to their advantage in comparing the new experience with a context which is familiar and comforting (van Werven et al., 2015; Cornelissen and Clarke, 2010). Metaphors accelerate the comprehension of any ambiguity emerging during entrepreneurial activities (Hill and Levenhagen, 1995; Nonaka and Yamanouchi, 1989) and they are often used by entrepreneurs to explain the uncertainty occurred during organizational processes (Hill and Levenhagen, 1995). However, these studies have mainly used metaphors to describe and construct entrepreneurial identities, paying less attention to how entrepreneurs rationalize their own world.
As highlighted in the literature, “metaphors are particularly useful in situations requiring novel concepts and approaches” (Hill and Levenhagen, 1995: 1057). However, only a few studies
have analysed metaphors as devices in the innovation process, for instance investigating their role when creating new products (Seidel and O’Mahony, 2014), when dealing with novelty at team level (Hargadon and Sutton, 1997), and in clarifying innovative ideas to others (Hargadon and Douglas, 2001). Notwithstanding the insights metaphors may provide to the understanding of the innovation process, to date these studies have not fully explored how different types of innovation are perceived and cognitively elaborated.
In order to fill these gaps, we have addressed the following research questions: i) how do entrepreneurs use metaphors to explain the innovation process? and ii) in particular, what can metaphors highlight about different types of innovation?
Our research is aimed at exploring how entrepreneurs rationalize their innovations ex post and how they cognitively elaborate different types of innovation. We have conducted our study on a sample of successful entrepreneurs, who have been able to resist during the economic crisis (2008- 2012), thanks to the generation and the implementation of innovations. As shown by a recent study (Devece et al., 2016), entrepreneurship can have better results during recession than during boom periods thanks to their ability to innovate. Specifically, we have focused our attention on entrepreneurs’ use of metaphorical language, because it provides more information – unconsciously expressed – than literal language, which is more controlled (Lakoff and Johnson, 1980). Data have been collected through semi-structured interviews using behavioural event interviewing (BEI) (Boyatzis, 1998; McClelland, 1998). Entrepreneurs were asked to relive and describe particular successful episodes in which they generated and introduced innovations in the past. The overarching goal of BEI is to elicit stories and narrations that illustrate the interviewee’s specific behaviours, thoughts, and actions in particular events. The analysis of the interview data relied on a method – MIP, metaphor identification procedure (Pragglejaz Group, 2007) – for identifying metaphorically used words. By using entrepreneurs’ narrations, we have identified the root metaphors that explain how entrepreneurs cognitively understood and processed different types of innovation.
This research contributes to both entrepreneurship and innovation literature because it enlarges our understanding of how innovations processes are elaborated by entrepreneurs. First, this paper explains how entrepreneurs use metaphors to give meaning to innovation, thus contributing to the literature that has so far analysed the role of metaphors in other dimensions of entrepreneurial life, such as new venture creation or entrepreneurial growth (Clark et al., 2014). Second, we offer insight into the understanding of cognitive processes that characterize each type of innovation. Despite it is widely acknowledged that each type of innovation carries a distinct set of knowledge, information, and practices (OECD, 2005; Vila et al., 2014; Dyer et al., 2008), the cognitive pattern behind it remains unclear. Our study provides a conceptualization of the specific root metaphors used by entrepreneurs to explain product, process, organizational, marketing and strategic innovations, highlighting how certain types of innovation show a higher recourse to figurative language. Finally, we provide a contribution from a methodological point of view, offering a detailed list of analytical steps that could be replicated to analyse metaphorical language accurately and in different organizational settings.
The rest of the paper is organised into four sections. First, past studies in entrepreneurship and metaphors are outlined. This is followed by presenting entrepreneurship and innovation literature on metaphor studies. The third part describes our research design and method. In the fourth section results are reported. We conclude presenting our main conclusions and discussing the potential role of metaphor analysis in future studies in entrepreneurship and innovation literature.