“I Think You Should Explore the Kinky Market”: How Entrepreneurs Develop Value Propositions as Emergent Objects of Activity Networks

ABSTRACT

Successful value propositions can be productively analyzed as emergent cocreated objects: co-created at the intersection of multiple activities with varying interests and cycles, and thus incrementally revised to address cross-activity tensions. These objects are also represented across multiple genres; entrepreneurs must keep these different representations coherent during the co-creation process. Drawing on a nine-month qualitative study of 50 firms enrolled in entrepreneurship training, I illustrate this process of co-creating value propositions and keeping them coherent. I conclude by suggesting necessary theoretical extensions to improve how we study emergent cocreated objects.

Notes

1. Here, Engeströmian or “third-generation” activity theory (cf. Y. Engeström, 2001).

2. Bakhurst (2009) critiqued Engeströmian activity theory as a useful heuristic for modeling organizations, but one that has “minimal predictive power.” Although Bakhurst’s critique is well placed, I think it misses this key shift in orientation from explanation to design.

3. Y. Engeström (1987/2014) interpreted Bakhtinian heteroglossia as a variation of dialectic that can help us understand expansive transitions in social terms, rather than in terms of individual thought (p. 248). But Bakhtinian dialogism is substantially different from the Engelsian dialectic on which Leontiev’s work is based: It is unfinalizable; it resists the monologism implied in first- and second-generation activity theory; it acknowledges different understandings without validating one over another. It is, in short, a better fit for addressing emergent objects in multistakeholder deliberations.

4. This issue has been explored outside of the CHAT literature, however, in the warfare theory of John Boyd (Boyd, 1986, 1987; Osinga, 2007).