Social capital and entrepreneurial behaviour advancing innovativeness in interaction between small rural entrepreneurs and researchers: a phenomenographic study

Summary

Innovation processes between entrepreneurs and researchers are activated by interaction. Social capital increases the efficiency of action, for example, information dissemination by minimizing redundancy. To learn more about how to build and develop social capital assumes that we understand how entrepreneurs behave and what their expectations of interaction with researchers are. In this study we adopt a theoretical approach thet combines social capital and entrepreneurial behaviour. The firms in this study are located in the South-Savo region of Finland and operate in food production. As a result of interviews with 15 entrepreneurs a system of categories was compiled as the phenomenographic method assumes. It became obvious that the key dynamics of the cooperation between entrepreneurs and researchers is embedded in a common understanding of entrepreneurial behaviour and learning as well as a trust-building process. As a practical implication we could further suggest that researchers are expected to modify their behaviour to the specific features of entrepreneurial behaviour in order to pave the way to enhance innovativeness of rural entrepreneurs.