Exploring the new spaces of entrepreneurship: an illustrated report of a learning expedition in Montreal

On May 15th, 2018, the Montreal’s RGCS (Research Group on Collaborative Spaces) chapter organized a learning expedition through coworking spaces and start-up incubators chosen for their diversity (technological and social entrepreneurship) and their location in the city, in order to propose a 1-day walkable itinerary through 3 different neighborhoods of Montreal: downtown, Mile-End and Mile-Ex. We experimented some of the OWEE method’s principles, by walking together in the city, collecting visual and written data, sharing it on social media and having informal and semi-directed discussions.

This post is a collective illustrated report of this learning expedition.

1. Welcoming the participants in MTLab

On the same week, ESG UQAM was holding an international conference on entrepreneurship, the Journées Georges Doriot 2018, providing the opportunity to form a group of 20 participants interested in new forms and spaces of entrepreneurship (scholars, students and practitioners).

Paul Arsenault and … Read more

Academia in the Mirror of Street Art: Back to a Recent Walk in Paris

This was a rainy day. On June, 14^th, an alternative academic network (RGCS ) has organized a great learning expedition about street art in the 13^th district (« arrondissement ») of Paris.

This Open Walked Event-Based Experimentation (OWEE) was an opportunity to mix academics with entrepreneurs and street artists. A group of 20 people thus walked in the grey and cold streets of Paris this day. The context helped us to realize how colored and warm street art can be!

We started with a meeting point and a first discussion at the town hall of the 13th arrondissement. The deputy major explained us the history and context of street art here. We then walked around from one point to another (see the hashtag #oweesa and our album) before the final destination at les Frigos.

In this post, I want to focus on an encounter … Read more

Track about coworkers, hackers and makers, EGOS 2018 in Tallin

The European Group on Organization Studies (EGOS) organizes an annual conference about organizations, organizing and society. The event is interdisciplinary and covers numerous intellectual and scientific debates about the dynamic of organizations and organizing.

A sub-theme (convened by Janet Merkel, Stefan Haefliger and me) was about « Co-workers, Hackers & Makers: Transforming and Making Visible Work Practices« .

22 papers discussed how collaborative communities, collaborative spaces, collaborative movements transform and/or make visible (new) work practices. Researchers in Management & Organization Studies, Economic Geography, Urban Sociology, MIS… participated to the discussion.

Introductory ppts can be accessed here

Summary of the concluding discussions and avenues for further research, in this Framapadd: https://annuel.framapad.org/p/ST13EGOS2018

Looking forward to your feedbacks!

Janet, Stefan & François, convenors of the sub-theme

Art & coworking: opening event of RGCS Stockholm

We are pleased to share with you the program of our opening event which will take place in Stockholm on June 13th:

9 am Visit at Transit http://transitsthlm.se

Transit is both a site and a collaboration partner for freelance film makers, musicians, performing artists, fine artists and designers. We who work at Transit know that a dynamic and accepting environment helps many artists and their companies to develop both artistically and economically

We will meet outside their building at LM Ericssons väg 14, Stockholm10.45 am

Visit to Goto at 10 AM (https://www.goto10.se)

Goto 10 is the only free start and meet up space in Stockholm for anyone who wants to develop their internet ideas – with or without a business idea or start-up plans. We have space available for free for all our members to work during regular office hours. We also offer space for free lectures, seminars, networking events … Read more

Walking the Talk, Talking the Place: Three Research Protocols for Learning Expeditions

Walking the talk, talking the place: Three research protocols for learning expeditions

Jeremy Aroles, Hélène Bussy-Socrate and François-Xavier de Vaujany

Managers, customers, citizens, entrepreneurs and researchers are being transformed into knowledge tourists but more rarely into ‘knowledge voyageurs’. Field trips, learning trips and learning expeditions epitomize a new trend in embodied explorations of places likely to bring learning and new knowledge with them. These transformative experience mainly consist in a set of visits to places and territories, between one day and one week, integrated into a program and narrative giving an orientation to this partly walked experience. Being ‘outside’ traditional frames and context of life and work is expected to produce something particular.

Most of the time, the visit starts at a meeting point where organizers introduce the agenda of the day. Participants are then guided to the first place where they meet the owner of the place (i.e. … Read more

A learning expedition about street art: why?

Back to an initial dream: walking together, collaborating together…

In September 2016, a small network of scholars and practitioners (RGCS) experimented a first learning expedition in Barcelona. This event gathered students, artists, designers and academics interested in the new places for entrepreneurship and innovation.

After an opening event in a coworking space, we had the opportunity to spend two days in Barcelona visiting coworking spaces and makerspaces. We walked a lot together, shared numerous ideas, had fun, tweeted while walking and commenting what we just saw. Entering into spaces, visiting them, and then going out and sharing long walk in the city was both something very simple and very complex at the same time. At the end, isn’t it what we do all day? Coming in and out, walking? But quickly came the idea that this could also be a method, a set of techniques and routines we … Read more

$New PhD: Boukje Cnossen ! \o/$

New PhD: Boukje Cnossen ! \o/

On January 16th, Boukje Cnossen defended her PhD thesis at the Tilburg School of Economics and Management of Tilburg University, the Netherlands.

!!!!! CONGRATULATIONS !!!!

The main focus of her thesis concerned organizing practices between solo-entrepreneurs in the creative industries. The thesis is positioned in the field of organisation studies, more specifically in the stream of research known as CCO, or the communicative constitution of organisation, which regards organisations as temporary outcomes of discursive and material practices. The thesis engages with various literatures, such as actor-network theory and autonomist philosophy.

Empirically speaking, the thesis consists of different qualitative case studies into creative spaces and a collective of cultural entrepreneurs and artists in Amsterdam.

The three chapters deal with:

(1) the politics of self-organizing practices between independent workers in creative spaces, and their relation to the institutional context affording such spaces,
(2) the role of material objects in constituting communities

1st RGCS OOSE” Organization and Organizing in the Sharing Economy” as an off of the 33rd EGOS

By Marie Hasbi (Université Paris II), Albane Grandazzi (Université Paris-Dauphine), Stéphanie Faure (Université Paris-Dauphine), François Delorme (Université Grenoble II, CERAG),Roser Pujadas (LSE) & Aurore Dandoy (Université Paris-Dauphine)

Acknowledgements:

We would like to express our great appreciation to the following persons who have generously offered their help in the organization of this event.

Jonathan Schmidt (Phd student at CBS), Mogen Pedersen (Professor at CBS), Frederik Tauber (CCO of BLOXHUB), Rasmus Vestergrard (Coordinator of Copenhagen Fablab)

On the 5th July 2017 at Copenhagen, CBS hosted the first OOSE event. The main topic of this year is related to contradictions and paradoxes of the sharing economy. Indeed, sharing economy has a contested nature.

Our event was divided into three parts.

First Part

The first parts took place in Bloxhub. It started by a presentation of this innovative place by Jonathan Schmidt and Frederik Tauber.

BLOXHUB Copenhagen is an innovation space … Read more

Enquête FNEGE 2018 « Nouvelles pratiques de travail »

The FNEGE (Fondation Nationale pour l’Enseignement de la Gestion d’Entreprise) will launch in January 2018 a study about new work practices.

It will be an opportunity to explore the relationships between the new world of work (e.g. collaborative entrepreneurship, freelancing, mobile work, remote work, coworking, makers, DIY…) and the old, secular world, of academia. Participants will analyze the possible role of universities and business schools in the transformation of organizations and society, what they do and what they could do to participate to these transformations. They will also analyze how new work practices could be adopted further by universities and business schools.

Pierre-Yves Gomez (EMLyonbusinessschool, IFGE) and François-Xavier de Vaujany (PSL, Université Paris-Dauphine, DRM) will be the coordinators of this project whose results will be presented in front of deans in June 2018.

L’enquête FNEGE 2018 will be in partnership with l’IFGE and RGCS.

For more information: Enquête FNEGE … Read more

Opening and re-inventing research practices in management? Around learning expeditions

By François-Xavier de Vaujany, Université Paris Dauphine

Between the 11^th and 15^th June, a group of French academics participated to a learning expedition in Tokyo called #visualizinghacking2017. This event was organized by an academic network (the Research Group on Collaborative Spaces) focusing both on the study of third-places and collaborative spaces (e.g coworking spaces, makerspaces, fab labs and hackerspaces) and their use as possible boundary-spanners and levers for change in academic practices.

Numerous places were visited, from Lodge (at Yahoo Japan) a coworking space on Monday to Creww an accelerator on Thursday. Based on all the questions and online/offline reactions we received , here are a couple of first quick thoughts based on this experimentation and other ones organized by the same network (#collday2107, #visualizinghacking2016, #RGCS2016 and 2015/2016 RGCS live events). These are just first, intuitive and exploratory ideas. More systematic research about the online … Read more

1. Welcoming the participants in MTLab

!!!!! CONGRATULATIONS !!!!

Acknowledgements:

************ First Part ************

First Part