Anticipation and Emergence in Entrepreneurial Practice

1. Anticipation and Emergence in Entrepreneurial Practice

2. Anticipation and Emergence in Entrepreneurial Practice • Ted Fuller, University of Lincoln, UK • Elena Antonacopoulou, Liverpool University, UK • Second International Conference on Anticipation University College, London • November 2017

3. “How does the future get made?” • This paper explores functions and characteristics of anticipation in shaping innovation and innovative practices; in contexts typically referred to as ‘entrepreneurial’.

4. Abstract Innovation • Anticipation is inherent in and necessary to the practices of entrepreneurial activities..[that] give rise to the generation of novelty • Innovation emergesfrom practices that are highly interactive between the agent and its environment (comprising other agents). • Our suggestion is that ‘entrepreneuring’ is practiced in an anticipatory mode. Emergence

5. Practice Micro-interactions • Practice-based studies tend to focus on reproduction and institutionalization (Gherardi, 2009). There is an inherent innovation within a practice in the way it is transformed every time it is performed by social actors.

6. Anticipation and the practise of practice Reflexivity • Practising is a practiceitself; it entails deliberate, habitual and spontaneous repetition, reflective of the dynamic process of rehearsing, reviewing, refining, and changing different aspects of one’s practices and the relationships amongst them (Antonacopoulou, 2008).

7. Entrepreneuringand innovation • A ‘travelling concept’ • ‘(Steyaert 2007, p456) • There are ‘no technical innovations without innovations in practice’ (Shove, E. et al 2012:11)

8. Anticipatory practices Situated • Foresight is situated practising by entrepreneurs as a combination of processes, guided by a sense of producing both regularity and value, for example as a ‘business model’ which, when formed, is relatively stable and creates exchangeable value. (Fuller and Warren 2006b; 2008). • Combinations of intersubjective processes relating to (1) Experimenting, (2) Reflexive Identity formation, (3) Organising and (4) Sensing (responses to perceived environmental change) (Fuller, Argyle, & Moran, 2004; Fuller et al., 2008). • The processes are inter-connected and part of the anticipatory coupling between the enterprise and its environment, mediated by intersubjective interpretation of the actors in the enterprise and of course, the other actors with whom they inter-act. Practising

9. Modeling relations • In an anticipatory system the modeling relations synthesize entailments in a natural system by inferential entailments in a formal system. The relational model is a set of inferential entailments. • Inference is a judgmental process Judgement Rosen 1985, p72

10. “Anticipatory coupling” • Practising entrepreneuring is an anticipatory mode of coupling of the actors. • Such couplings are central organising features of perception, cognition, affect, memory, motivation and action which may be conscious prospection occurring spontaneously and continuously (Seligman et al., 2013). Indeed, even when social actors engage in conscious prospection, their intuitive sense of the value of alternatives may be underwritten by unconscious simulation (Railton 2014).

11. Emergence • The appearance of an emergent property produced through interactions of something other than the emergent property, and that the emergent property has features which are novel from the features that produced them. • See Humphreys (2016:26) for further explanation.

12. Emergence in social structures Materiality of ephemeral emergents The Emergence Paradigm (Sawyer 2005:211), showing the ‘circle of emer-gence’ (p220), i.e. that area which is subject to social emergence

13. Causation and emergence • Micro-interactional mechanisms (Sawyer 2005) • Relational Morphogenesis (transformation) / Morphostasis (Archer 1995) • Redescription Principle (Elder-Vass 2008) • The emergent form has causal power because the parts and their relations are contained within it. • Norm group/circles (Elder-Vass 2008/2010) • The only representations or beliefs held in social institutions are the individual normative beliefs of the individuals concerned […] • mutual commitment to endorse and enforce the practice concerned

14. Causal mechanisms • Bhaskar identifies real causal powers with ‘relatively enduring structures and mechanisms’ that are ‘nothing other than the ways of acting of things’ [and these things] ‘are complex objects in virtue of which they possess an ensemble of tendencies, liabilities and powers’(Bhaskar 1975:50-1) in (Elder-Vass 2010:45)

15. “Eros” processes that give birth to novelty • Experimenting: trial and error, “let’s see if it works” attitude, is the creative process of assemblage, requiring considerable competence • The reflexive identity work: of the entrepreneur and the business is a powerful stabiliser • Organisingis the everyday dynamic allocation and use of resources and the connections between them in patterns so as to be able to replicate and reproduce useful activities • Sensing: is, in short, the coupling with the environment mediated through many connections and senses Entrepreneuring Practices – ways of acting (Fuller and Warren 2006b; 2008).

16. Anticipation as causal mechanism • We suggest that future value is anticipated through the interactions between the actors and mediated by the materiality of the ephemeral emergent. • The causal power of anticipation comes from the motivation it generates amongst the actors to fulfil an absence, to address disharmony, to create, capture value or consume value. • The interpretation by actors is ‘shot through’ with emotional and sensational experiences and actions

17. Anticipation is a ‘causal mechanism’ in the process of emergenceThe natural disposition to anticipate can be causal Action Stability Instability Anticipatory Judgement of future value

18. Anticipation prior to emergence and inherent in emergence process • Anticipation, as a process, is prior to emergence (of some novel form of behaviour), and has causal effect on that emergence. • Anticipation is processual and inherent in practising entrepreneurship • (and probably more generically)

19. Case study • Anticipating Technological Futures in Rural Enterprises

20. Research Question • What pro-active explicit forms of anticipation are used by the small firm, i.e. what anticipatory workis undertaken by the SME? • The ephemral emergent notion of Anticipatory work may be akin to Identity Work.

21. Key findings Amazon/ Google algorithms Power over customers Co-evolving Identity Envisioning the enterprise in different conditions • Principals had not used ‘business model’ as an explicit framework. • Their anticipatory work was located at the structural conditions bounding their enterprise: • Focussed on relational dynamics • Formulating new patterns or practices in relation to these • … actively testing and expanding boundary conditions.

22. Anticipation mediates knowledge and action • Anticipation, we tentatively suggest, mediates between knowledge and action. • The anticipation of value is a filter or evaluative construct to • guide the interpretation of knowledge and to design, perform and evaluate actions and their effects. • stabilise emergents (in this study, a business model.).

23. Anticipatory work in entrepreneurial contexts • Anticipatory work is a continual reflexive forming and reforming (encoding) of modelling relations via • Analogy • Experimentation • Contact • Direct communications Modelling Coupling

24. Anticipation as causal mechanism; The disposition to anticipate as cause • From a critical realist perspective, anticipation is a causal mechanism in the process of emergence. • At the same time, the state of an anticipatory system: involving inferential logic, modelling relations and actions of effectors, is dynamic, emergent and inherently formative of emergent practices.

25. спасибо tfuller@lincoln.ac.uk @fullerfutures