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Complexity, Cultural Evolution, and the Discovery and Creation of (Social) Entrepreneurial Opportunities: Exploring a Memetic Approach

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Complexity in Entrepreneurship, Innovation and Technology Research

Part of the book series: FGF Studies in Small Business and Entrepreneurship ((FGFS))

Abstract

The central contribution of this chapter consists in exploring the implications of a memetic perspective for dealing with complexity in (social) entrepreneurship. The line of argument can basically be divided into four aspects. First, it is argued that memes, especially their mental representations, can be conceptualized in the context of (cultural) schemata that have an impact on the perception and discovery of entrepreneurial opportunities. Second, a memetic view of creativity also suggests that opportunity creation strongly depends on memes. Third, viewing social entrepreneurship as a meme(plex) allows us to compare it with related concepts. Moreover, we argue that by focusing on the properties of social entrepreneurial opportunities we can get to the core of the social entrepreneurial process. In this chapter, we are focusing on social entrepreneurial opportunities that can be understood as the intersection of the set of ‘opportunities to solve a societal problem’ and the set of ‘profitable business opportunities’. This conception represents the vantage point for the fourth part of this contribution, where we argue that, in order to facilitate the propagation of the social entrepreneurship meme within (for-profit) organizations, a systematic analysis of the firm’s social network as well as its memeplex is advisable.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    At this juncture, it should be sufficient to point to the definition of a meme in the Oxford Dictionaries: “An element of a culture or system of behaviour passed from one individual to another by imitation or other non-genetic means.” http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/meme. For a readily accessible introduction to memetics also cf. http://www.practicalmemetics.com/index.php/memetics-101.html.

  2. 2.

    Hence, for example, McKelvey (2004) explicitly proposes a complexity science approach to study entrepreneurship.

  3. 3.

    See also Wilkins and Hull (2014) on the notion of replication and replicators or Hodgson and Knudsen (2010) on “generative replication and the evolution of complexity”.

  4. 4.

    However, Sue Blackmore’s distinction can be regarded as a differentiation on yet another level than the others cited above. “In fact, it is an attempt to diffuse aspects of these arguments completely. In … [Blackmore’s] view, there are two completely different kinds of system. Those that copy-the-instruction (most of biology) do have a replicator/interactor (or vehicle) distinction but those that copy the product do not. Hence … [, the] soup example in The Meme Machine [(Blackmore, 1999a)]—if you watch the cook and try to emulate her [, then] the process is low fidelity and no such distinction can be made. If you use a written recipe [, then] it can” (S. Blackmore, personal communication, July 14, 2015).

  5. 5.

    In this way, we can also argue that cultural schemata may be listed among the factors contributing to homophily in social networks.

  6. 6.

    Note that Sarasvathy et al. (2010) view opportunity recognition as a third perspective. However, in our chapter, we tend to follow Alvarez et al. (2013, endnote 1) by regarding opportunity recognition as a special case of discovery.

  7. 7.

    Cf. http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/.

  8. 8.

    “They received $470 million (12 times the book value and a multiple of 261 times their paid-in capital!). This puts them in the top 1.7 % of venture capital investments, earning returns of more than 100 times the paid-in capital” (Ashta & Hudon, 2012, p. 335).

  9. 9.

    Note that there already exists a simulation model with so-called kenes, which “represent the aggregate knowledge of an organisation” (Ahrweiler, Pyka, & Gilbert, 2014, p. 2). These kenes (as the individual knowledge base of an agent in the model) contain “a number of ‘units of knowledge’” (Ahrweiler et al., 2014, p. 2) and it can, therefore, be argued that there appears to be a conceptual relationship between kenes, memes, and the notion of schemata presented above, especially since Nigel Gilbert, who first coined the notion of ‘kenes’ also explicitly mentions the intentional similarity to ‘genes’ (Gilbert, 1997). Consequently, it may be rewarding to have a closer look at the relationship between memes, kenes, and schemata in subsequent works in order to evaluate if it proves feasible to integrate findings from the “Simulating Knowledge Dynamics in Innovation Networks (SKIN)” model (Gilbert, Ahrweiler, & Pyka, 2014) with implications from (organizational) memetics (or vice versa).

  10. 10.

    According to David Hansen, Thomas Lumpkin, and Gerald Hills, “a number of authors have described the opportunity recognition process either as being influenced by creativity or more specifically as a creative process in-and-of itself” (Hansen et al., 2011, p. 517). This influence is depicted by the dotted arrow from (culture-based) creativity to alertness in Fig. 3, since, as we have noted in footnote 6, we tend to regard opportunity recognition as a special case of discovery.

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Acknowledgments

We have benefited from presenting earlier versions of this chapter at the 18th Annual Interdisciplinary Entrepreneurship Conference (G-Forum), November 13–14, 2014 in Oldenburg, Germany, and the European Academy of Management (EURAM) Annual Conference, June 17–20, 2015 at Kozminski University in Warsaw, Poland. We are grateful for helpful questions, criticism, and suggestions from participants of both events. Special thanks to Elisabeth Berger, Sue Blackmore, Anna Comacchio, Jameson Gill, Ilfryn Price, and four anonymous reviewers (two for EURAM, two for this book) for their valuable comments. Moreover, we would like to thank Nicholas Terry for voluntarily pointing out a couple of spelling and punctuation errors. All remaining confusion and mistakes are exclusively our own.

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  1. Department of Business Ethics, Institute of Economic and Business Education (560), University of Hohenheim, Wollgrasweg 23, 70593, Stuttgart, Germany

    Michael P. Schlaile

  2. Konstanz Institute of Corporate Governance (KICG), Hochschule Konstanz University of Applied Sciences (HTWG), Brauneggerstr. 55, 78462, Constance, Germany

    Marcus Ehrenberger

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  1. University of Hohenheim, Stuttgart, Germany

    Elisabeth S.C. Berger

  2. Inst Marketing & Management, University of Hohenheim, Stuttgart, Baden-Württemberg, Germany

    Andreas Kuckertz

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Schlaile, M.P., Ehrenberger, M. (2016). Complexity, Cultural Evolution, and the Discovery and Creation of (Social) Entrepreneurial Opportunities: Exploring a Memetic Approach. In: Berger, E., Kuckertz, A. (eds) Complexity in Entrepreneurship, Innovation and Technology Research. FGF Studies in Small Business and Entrepreneurship. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-27108-8_4

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