This thesis explores emergent knowledge dynamics in innovation in the context of ebusiness
entrepreneurship. Based on a critique of the dialectic interpretation of
knowledge dynamics, it forwards a perspective that stresses the creative force of
emergence that disrupts existent meanings and produces new potentialities for
innovation. It suggests ways of using such a perspective in policy-targeted research.
The first part elaborates on the traditional uses of concepts of knowledge in
explanations of entrepreneurial innovation and on the need to account for a dynamic
perspective on emergent knowledge. The thesis employs work by Deleuze and Guattari
as meta-theoretical vehicle to expand the conceptual potential of social representations
theory beyond its traditional focus on a dialectic ontology of becoming. It highlights a
dynamic which does not exclusively assume conceptual difference as the source of the
novel and which allows for patterns of becoming other than the triadic continuity of
dialectics. Together, this provides new possibilities for an understanding of knowledge
dynamics taking into account both adaptive and creative dynamics of emergence.
The empirical part combines thematic analysis of interviews and a focus group with
Deleuzian analysis of participant observation to facilitate an exploration of emergent
conditions for innovation in a particular milieu of e-business entrepreneurship. The
exploration shows how changes in shared evaluative dimensions guided – and
constrained – the creation of new concepts. Simultaneously, distinct assemblages
arising from novel connections of affect and technology in networks created the
conditions of fluidity and ambiguity required for new knowledge: in the aftermath of
the dotcom crash, new concepts of network leadership and trust in business interaction
were emerging.
This study forwards new insights on the study of emergent knowledge dynamics as
oscillating between rhizomic opening and dialectic closure. It is in the disruptive
encounters between the two that new conditions for innovation can assemble