Competitiveness and Competitiveness in the Context: Sustainable Entrepreneurs and the Unsustainable Amenity Transition

Keywords: entrepreneurship
Session Type: Virtual Paper Abstract
Day: Monday
Session Start / End Time: 2/28/2022 03:40 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 2/28/2022 05:00 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 61

Abstract

Many entrepreneurial opportunities come from satisfying needs that are traditionally not in the market domain. This is especially true for sustainable entrepreneurs who create environmental and social goods to increase the quality of life. Since such entrepreneurs are embedded in not only markets but also natural and social systems, how and why these systems become the source of opportunities to achieve entrepreneurial rents becomes the center of concern. This paper answers the following research question: how entrepreneurs create monetary market value from nonmonetary natural and cultural contexts to gain competitiveness. Through conducting in-depth interviews with entrepreneurs and other stakeholders (such as competitors, suppliers, local governments, and NGOs) as well as doing participant observation to analyze interactions among different types of stakeholders, this study reveals how traditionally nonmonetary natural and cultural heritages function in the market monetary value creation process, which makes the uncompetitive business competitive in the context. This study adds to the sustainable entrepreneurship literature by exploring how sustainable entrepreneurs profit from a business model that enables the environmental and social crisis inflicted by the previous production format to become the source of market value creation. By emphasizing how human and nonhuman actors interact in the natural and cultural contexts, this paper reveals the dynamic commodification process of natural and cultural resources in which the business’s competitiveness is embedded.