4.3. Implications
The social-commercial-ecological trifecta in SE is not simply about overlapping circles, as the infamous triple bottom line model would lead us to believe. The SE process, including the decision and practices implemented as the venture unfolds, is getting closer and closer to intimately interact with biophysical and societal systems and their inner rhythms, and our field has been slow (at best) in reacting to this more nuanced and integrated framing. One of the major implications of our findings and theorization pertains to our current understating of process in SE and entrepreneurship more broadly, still dominated by an “opportunity development” narrative (i.e. pursuit of perceived opportunities to bring into existence x,y,z for the sake of the planet and people) (Patzelt and Shepherd, 2010; Shepherd and Patzelt, 2011), despite recent efforts to re-conceptualize it (e.g. Davidsson, 2015). Entrepreneurship is essentially a journey, yet the process orientation in entrepreneurship research has been surprisingly absent (McMullen and Dimov, 2013). So far, attempts to explain such a process have relied on chronological accounts, narratives and event-based journeys that articulate how actions, social interactions, and learning (Dimov, 2007) occur from idea to market. In the current conceptualization, the market operates as the single interacting agent that gives feedback to the entrepreneur regarding whether the idea at hand will work or not. By introducing entrepreneurial synchronicity within social-ecological systems we address the absence of time and timing in SE scholarship in connection to its two main points of reference (i.e. nature and society). Surprisingly, SE scholars to date have largely overlooked timing and venture rhythms despite being essential to better understanding how social organizations function (Ancona et al., 2001).
