Participatory Research, Impact Entrepreneurship, Relationships and Ecosystems – REPEIRE

Socio-economic and ecological stakes, methods of empowerment and personal fulfillment, or even tools for public policies, entrepreneurship and its education are at the heart of concerns in all territories. As historical agents of change, entrepreneurs deeply modify our economies and certain rules of our individual and collective functioning. The desire for impact and the quest for meaning are notable elements of the latest generation of student entrepreneurs. Driven by their values and convictions, these entrepreneurs seek a local economic, social, and ecological impact that is essential in the context of major transitions. They propose different projects in their business models as well as in the performance criteria they emphasize. These changes in substance and form are very recent and raise questions for potential stakeholders in entrepreneurial ecosystems. Reluctant to overly radical changes in business, these actors wish to take into account current issues, but implementation seems difficult and student entrepreneurs' projects often end in failure. New ideas require a new unifying language, one that carries meaning, cohesive power when shared by stakeholders, and marginalization when it is insufficient.

The difficulties for student entrepreneurs seem to concentrate on three levels: the micro level, that of the entrepreneur, their convictions, and their project, where financial dimensions are no longer the most important; the meso level, that of interactions with members of the entrepreneurial ecosystem when seeking essential resources from stakeholders; and the macro level, that of territories and their regulations, and the representations associated with entrepreneurship.

To understand what is at stake at these three levels, we propose a collaborative research involving, on one hand, professionals involved in supporting student entrepreneurs in the AURA and BFC regions (the 4 PEPITE and Enactus), and, on the other hand, researchers from several disciplines to understand with their specific methodologies the dynamics in place at the three levels of interest to us. The protocol for this participatory research is based on student entrepreneurs as active participants in their projects, as they are best positioned to describe their journey, the events experienced in ecosystems, and the positive or negative consequences. Based on these identified trajectories, we propose to experiment with specific support modules to help student entrepreneurs interact within ecosystems, communicate more effectively to convince others of the validity of their approach, and the importance of the sought impacts. Identifying the skills to develop, both technical and non-technical, best practices, and territorial or sectoral specificities will contribute to feeding support networks with new knowledge based on solid methodological and theoretical foundations.

The first expected results in these two test territories will identify new research avenues to support student entrepreneurs in changing the rules of the game, business models, and generating the expected positive impacts. Impact is primarily a question of scale, and the subsequent projects will fit into the Horizon Europe agendas and/or be submitted to the OECD for a study on national specificities and broad dissemination.