Generating spaces for exploration: The creative transitions of EU necessity entrepreneurs

Abstract

As the old English proverb states, ‘necessity is the mother of invention’. In this paper, we show how necessity forces the unemployed in three EU countries to engage in entrepreneurial activities in a bid to creatively achieve sustainable outputs – e.g., an income, a living or a job/company – in conditions of austerity and constant crisis. As the term ‘necessity entrepreneur’ infers, it is necessity, rather than opportunity (Hessels et al., 2008), that is pushing, rather than pulling (Amit and Muller, 1995; Gilad and Levine, 1986; Poschke, 2013), them to become entrepreneurial, and the transition they experience is relatively poorly understood. By focusing on necesity entrepreneurs, we seek to contribute to the emerging, alternative tradition that recognises entrepreneurship as a diverse phenomenon (Gartner, 2008; Mitchell, 1997; Shane and Venkataraman, 2000; Venkataraman, 2002), as a process rather than an ideal state to be reached and goes beyond a focus on wealth and business creation (e.g., Imas and Weston, 2012; Ogbor, 2000; Özkazanç-Pan, 2009). In doing so, we also hope to present a more nuanced understanding of both entrepreneurs and the entrepreneurial process.