Venturing together! Cross-disciplinary network on the micro-dynamics, activities and development of entrepreneurial groups

创业领域正处于范式转变的边缘：我们观察到多个研究线索，这些研究强调创业过程是由创业团体采取的集体行动。这些群体被定义为共同发现、评估和利用机会的一组个人。人们对研究集体参与创业的兴趣日益浓厚，这很容易掩盖这样一个事实，即关于创业群体、其微观动态、活动和发展的经验和概念知识充其量也是支离破碎的。考虑到这种经验现象并不新鲜，而且它与理解经济和创业过程的相关性早已被认识到，对创业群体的这种不令人满意的研究状况尤其令人惊讶。目前，有两个主要问题制约着对创业作为集体活动的系统性反思：首先，我们看到在创业研究中占主导地位的管理学者、社会心理学家和社会学家之间的交流停滞不前。其次，研究企业家群体需要增加研究设计的复杂性。这个研究网络是由来自德国和瑞典的15名社会学、创业学和社会心理学的研究人员合作建立的，他们正在对创业群体的动态进行实证研究。我们的工作计划包括三次研究和三次知识转移会议。更具体地说，我们在两次为期一天的会议和一次研究会议上讨论创业团体的微观动态、活动和轨迹问题。在这些活动中，我们反思我们的研究成果，与国际演讲者进行讨论，并交流我们的方法知识。拟议网络的第二阶段包括三次1天5天的会议，专门将知识转移到组织理论、创业教育和政策制定领域。总体而言，这一网络将有助于填补有关创业群体的概念和经验知识的重要空白，将社会学方法纳入对这一现象的研究，并提高人们对研究集体创业在社会学领域的相关性的认识。

The field of entrepreneurship is at the verge of a paradigm shift: we observe multiple strands of research that emphasize the process of entrepreneuring as collective action undertaken by entrepreneurial groups. These groups have been defined as sets of individuals that jointly discover, evaluate and exploit opportunities. The increased interest in studying collective engagement in entrepreneurship easily obscures the fact that the empirical and conceptual knowledge about entrepreneurial groups, their micro-dynamics, activities and development is fragmented at best. This unsatisfactory state of research on entrepreneurial groups is particularly surprising given that the empirical phenomenon is not new at all, and that its relevance for an understanding of economic and entrepreneurial process has long been recognized. At present, two main issues constrain a systematic rethinking of entrepreneurship as collective activity: First, we see halting exchange between management scholars, that largely dominate entrepreneurship research, social psychologists and sociologist. Second, studying entrepreneurial groups requires a heightened complexity of the research design. This research network is a collaboration of 15 researchers in sociology, entrepreneurship and social psychology from Germany and Sweden who are empirically studying the dynamics in entrepreneurial groups. Our work plan includes three research and three knowledge transfer meetings. More specifically, we address the issues of micro-dynamics, activities and trajectories of entrepreneurial groups in two 1,5 day meetings and a research conference. During these events, we reflect upon our research findings, engage in discussions with international speakers, and exchange our methodological knowledge. The second phase of the proposed network features three 1,5 day meetings dedicated to transferring knowledge into the areas of organization theory, entrepreneurial education and policy-making. Overall, this network will contribute to fill important gaps in the conceptual and empirical knowledge about entrepreneurial groups, integrate sociological approaches into the study of this phenomenon, and raise awareness for the relevance of studying collective entrepreneurship in the field of sociology.