Narratives of entrepreneurship: A video-game rhetorical epic?

Kars-Unluoglu, Selen; Gaggiotti, Hugo; Jarvis, Carol

Abstract

In this paper we explore stories mobilised by budding entrepreneurs in the creation and maintenance of an entrepreneurial identity. We explore how budding entrepreneurs, studying on an undergraduate, project-based, practice-led entrepreneurship degree, reconcile their entrepreneurial selves with discourses of entrepreneurship. We outline how they individually and collectively attempt to make sense of entrepreneurship and their entrepreneurial-ness through (co)storying narratives. These stories were fully elaborated, with plots, characters, actions and events, which oftentimes replicated the rhetorical elements of a platform videogame. We show how the imperative of becoming entrepreneurial is enacted among students when they develop narratives to negotiate, modify or resist the entrepreneurial self in their educational context. By analysing the discourses mobilised by these students in their constructions of the concept of entrepreneurship and their entrepreneurial selves, we highlight the tensions budding entrepreneurs experience in identity construction between competing and collaborating, action and reflection, the hero and the community. Through examination of narrative discourses of budding entrepreneurs, we see how the extraordinary heroism of platform games coexists with their ordinary educational lives. These complexities and tensions lead us to rethink the meaning and conditions of entrepreneurial identity work in entrepreneurship education. We add to the extant research by providing new insights into how students come to view the struggles of entrepreneurs and themselves as epic, not tragic, as some literature suggests (Hamilton, 2006) and explore implications of this image for entrepreneurial learning and entrepreneurship education.

• Presentation Conference Type: Conference Paper (unpublished)
• Conference Name: BAM 2021 Conference
• Start Date: Aug 31, 2021
• End Date: Sep 3, 2021
• Deposit Date: Sep 29, 2021
• Keywords: entrepreneurship; identity; narrative research; creative methods
• Public URL: https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/7449236