A rhizomatic learning process to create collective knowledge in entrepreneurship education: Open innovation and collaboration beyond boundaries

Abstract

Entrepreneurship literature has proven the efficacy of an experiential and collaborative learning approach that promotes entrepreneurial capabilities, that is, risk-taking, positive thinking, vision, intuitive decision-making, creative problem-solving, managing interdependency, tolerating ambiguity and innovation. To advance this, we propose a Deleuzian-inspired theoretical framework for entrepreneurship learning around innovation based on a rhizomatic perspective. We offer an illustrative case and identify the advantages and challenges of a rhizomatic approach to learning.

Keywords

Co-creation Deleuzian perspective entrepreneurship innovation rhizomatic learning

Introduction

Today’s entrepreneurs must contend with difficult, complex and problematic environmental conditions. Literature highlights that entrepreneurs who survive and thrive in this environment are able to deal with fierce competition and to continuously innovate (De Jong and Vermeulen, 2006; Isenberg, 2008; Shane and Venkataraman, 2000). As Schumpeter (1934) notes, value is created from unique combinations of resources that produce innovations.

More recent critical studies of entrepreneurship distance themselves from the heroic conception of entrepreneurs and propose a broader concept of entrepreneurship that includes the survival tactics, self-reliance and creative practices of those whose first fundamental aim is subsistence, since they live at the margins of the neoliberal economic world. In a context of marginality, entrepreneurship grows through novel and valuable experiences that allow injecting unexpected innovation into this domain (Banerjee and Tedmanson, 2010; Imas et al., 2012). Although such stories of people carving out a living contrast with the ‘elite great man’ narratives depicted in mainstream entrepreneurship studies, a common trait of successful entrepreneurial ventures in both perspectives is their innovative content. This establishes the importance of supporting and reinforcing the development of a new entrepreneurial learning approach towards innovation in a changing environment. To address this, we propose a Deleuzian-inspired theoretical framework based on the rhizomatic perspective to develop an original approach to entrepreneurship learning around innovation.

The rhizome is the subterranean stem of some plants that propagate in unexpected directions, thus finding a way to go beyond obstacles and produce shoots above and roots below. Beyond its meaning in botany, the rhizomatic approach is a philosophical perspective that looks at reality as formed by structures that continuously move, connect and transform through the flowing interplay of their components (Deleuze and Guattari, 1987). The rhizomatic flow develops in an unpredictable way and progressively takes shape while continuously avoiding the obstacles it meets. Robustness epitomizes the rhizome as it attempts to survive despite the environmental conditions, advancing in directions that allow it to avoid any obstacles it its path. Similarly, the learning process in the rhizomatic perspective develops step-by-step in a continuously evolving path to pursue the learning objective while avoiding the obstacles it encounters. The rhizome connects each point to other points and is collective in nature, even if the emphasis remains on the movement. Thus, adopting the rhizomatic approach implies a collective conceptualization of innovation that can offer a new form of entrepreneurship learning.

Cope (2005) reframes entrepreneurship as the ‘contextual process of “becoming,” where the entrepreneur is continually learning and developing in relation to his/her business and the wider environment’ (p. 374). We follow this by introducing an experiential and collective learning approach that enables prospective and actual entrepreneurs to develop innovative capabilities even under challenging conditions: a rhizomatic learning/becoming/organizing process (Clegg et al., 2005).

We use an experimental postgraduate entrepreneurship education project as an illustrative case to exemplify how the rhizomatic perspective can inform a new learning approach and elucidate the main challenges and opportunities in adopting this rhizomatic perspective to design entrepreneurial education initiatives. The illustrative case is the ProSIT programme (from the Italian Programma di Sviluppo e Innovazione del Territorio, which stands for Program for Territorial Development and Innovation). It is rhizomatic because it promotes co-creation and open-learning among several different actors (universities, professionals and employees, potential entrepreneurs, enterprises, local authorities and other institutions).

We first discuss the Deleuzian-inspired rhizomatic and the open innovation framework. Using the illustrative ProSIT case, we propose and discuss five principles inherent in the design of an education programme that aims at enhancing a rhizomatic learning approach for innovation. The last part of the article examines the benefits, challenges and drawbacks of this approach.

Innovating in difficult times: a Deleuzian rhizome perspective

To meet the increasing challenges that now characterize the entrepreneurship context, contemporary entrepreneurs need to be highly knowledgeable and able to innovate and build relationships that allow them to adequately develop their projects (Imas et al., 2012; Nijkamp, 2003). Some scholars suggest that the locus of firm innovation necessarily shifts from individuals to the interaction of collectives (Bain et al., 2001; Schippers et al., 2015) where collaboration becomes open and extremely flexible in order to be able to implement tangible or radical innovations in entrepreneurial Small Medium Enterprise (SMEs). This requires combining the knowledge, efforts and abilities of people with diverse backgrounds (Hargadon and Bechky, 2006), as well as individuals within the organization and outside of it (Dahlander and Gann, 2010). Therefore, the open innovation framework or the resources and/or ideas to enhance innovation that flow across the firm’s boundaries from and towards the organization would seem particularly useful (Chesbrough, 2003). We argue that revisiting open innovation theory through a Deleuzian rhizomatic perspective offers a useful way of supporting learning around entrepreneurship innovation under complex conditions.

A rhizomatic approach

A rhizome is a

horizontal, underground plant stem capable of producing the shoot and root systems of a new plant. This capability allows the parent plant to propagate vegetatively (asexually) and also enables a plant to perennate (survive an annual unfavourable season) underground. In some plants […], the rhizome is the only stem of the plant (Encyclopaedia Britannica online).¹

The rhizome stems from the free and expansive movement of grass, constantly connecting random and infinite points (Lawley, 2005).

Deleuze introduced the philosophical concept of rhizome to indicate structures that are constantly moving, connecting and transforming through the flow of interplay of their components: they are not fixed entities characterized by connection and heterogeneity, ‘any point of a rhizome can be connected to anything other, and must be’ (Deleuze and Guattari, 1987: 7).

In Deleuzian thought, desire begins from connectivity, which is ‘the minimum real unit of the world’ (Deleuze and Parnet, 1987) and is generative since the intrinsic need for connectivity leads to creating connections to deal with desires. This is completely opposite to the more common conception of desire as something that is lacking and has a negative connotation. Desire is thus a creative and productive flow. In this sense, the minimum real unit of the world is this assemblage or co-functioning of elements that always arises in a unique and reciprocally transforming flow. Deleuze’s emphasis is not on the components that originate and contribute to the development of the movement but the unique process emerging from the relations among the components. ‘There are no points or positions in a rhizome … There are only lines’ (Deleuze and Guattari, 1987: 8), which continually develop and enable multiplicity to grow or change in nature so that unique new possibilities are continually created during this process (Lawley, 2005). These cannot be defined in advance as rhizomatic motion is ongoing, ephemeral and ‘has neither beginning nor end, but always a middle (milieu) from which it grows and which it overspills’ (Deleuze and Guattari, 1987: 21). This approach implies a collective dimension, which is valuable in designing education projects that develop collective knowledge and foster innovative entrepreneurial initiatives (Deleuze, 1988).

Because a rhizome ‘ceaselessly establishes connections …’ (Deleuze and Guattari, 1987: 7), evoking a sense of fluidity and continuous movement, connecting random and infinite points that can arise in all directions, it continuously transforms through the flow of new lines and emerging connections and is therefore heterogeneous. This suggests there are no boundaries and that introducing limitations are incompatible with such a perspective. This is corroborated through another important Deleuzian (1983) concept: the body without organs, which is ‘a constantly-shifting entity, continually remade by the connections of desiring machines’ (Lawley, 2005: 38). It is a matter of ‘endless becoming’ leading to considering each actual body together with its potential becoming (its virtual dimension) with a vast reservoir of potential traits, connections, affects and movements (Thanem, 2005), so that ‘you never reach the Body without Organs, you can’t reach it, you are forever attaining it, it is a limit’ (Deleuze and Guattari, 1987: 149–150). The rhizomatic perspective therefore challenges us to open up to all kinds of actual and potential connections regardless of where they come from.

We propose that a rhizome perspective offers interesting and powerful opportunities to redesign learning around entrepreneurship innovation.

An open innovation approach

Open innovation has become a central topic in innovation research (Dahlander and Gann, 2010; Huizingh, 2011). Chesbrough (2003) originally defined open innovation as ‘a paradigm that assumes that firms can and should use external ideas as well as internal ideas, and internal and external paths to market, as firms look to advance their technology’ (p. XXIV). Mainstream literature on the open innovation framework has increasingly developed around the degree of openness (e.g. Dahlander and Gann, 2010; Huizingh, 2011; Laursen and Salter, 2006) and the identification of different types of open innovation with the aim of highlighting the possibility for firms to opt for one or the other while considering the advantages and drawbacks of each type of open innovation (e.g. Lee et al., 2010; Lichtenthaler, 2011; Terwiesch and Xu, 2008).

Chesbrough et al. (2006) define open innovation as ‘the use of purposive inflows and outflows of knowledge to accelerate internal innovation, and expand the markets for external use of innovation, respectively’ (p. 1). Therefore, the main assumption of open innovation is that opening up organizational boundaries can increase the amount of knowledge exploration, retention and exploitation (Lichtenthaler, 2011; Wallin and Von Krogh, 2010) and that participation in external knowledge-sharing allows firms to partake in networks that can assume different forms based on the actors involved and the nature of their relationship (Grant and Baden-Fuller, 2004; Lee et al., 2010). Revisiting open innovation theory through a Deleuzian rhizome perspective brings out new aspects.

First, rhizomatic connectivity implies overcoming the notion of (organizational) boundaries in open innovation, highlighting different degrees of openness and consequently the distinction between different types of open innovation strategies. Knowledge advances around the initial entrepreneurial idea with the aim of accomplishing and developing the initiative non-sequentially, thus connecting multiple points linked to one another and defining a constantly growing entity. Rhizomatic innovation is fostered through a constantly shifting flow of knowledge initially activated by the entrepreneurial idea but then evolving in multiple and unexpected directions and thus becoming a potentially endless path of innovation growth.

A second implication of rhizomatic innovation is that innovation becomes collective and collaborative in nature, developing naturally through its connections with suited knowledge domains (Lawley, 2005). Consequently, innovative ideas develop at different stages and to different aspects, regardless of the origin of those involved (e.g. scholars, professionals and entrepreneurs). After all, the rhizomatic perspective focuses on the flow that connections activate and not on the connected points or the boundaries between insiders and outsiders. The directions of the collaboration process are determined by the consistency and relevance of the connected points with the objectives and unexpected and unplanned developments of the initial entrepreneurial idea.

Third, rhizomatic multiplicity enables the rhizome to spread and overcome obstacles. Thus, when rhizomatic innovation develops, the knowledge-sharing and collective creative processes become stronger (Deleuze, 1988). Some lines sprout as a result of escaping from dead points while others grow in unexpected directions and unforeseen innovation streams emerge. The rhizomatic open innovation flow has the potential of turning into a contagious innovative flywheel effect, consistent with the endlessly becoming movement that the rhizome activates (Thanem, 2005). This differs from the mainstream concept of open innovation which does not seem to allow detecting and reaching all the possible development streams that rhizomatic non-sequential and unplanned connections instead enable.

Another implication of the rhizomatic perspective is that it unlocks the open innovation concept to multiplicity and endless flow because of its emphasis on process (rather than actors) and emphasizes the flexibility to develop emergent, non-linear and non-predictable paths which add resilience. This is of particular value when competition becomes more challenging, as is the case for today’s entrepreneurs. This does not ignore the actors, but their involvement is interchangeable (entering and exiting or ‘rolling’), and they are driven by an intrinsic motivation to participate in the co-creation of knowledge that feeds on itself and is capable of producing innovative and even unpredictable consequences.

We now illustrate how a rhizomatic approach to innovation can assist the design of an entrepreneurship education programme.

A rhizomatic education programme: ProSIT

ProSIT is a post-graduate entrepreneurial programme intended as an opportunity to experience and activate a rhizomatic learning process. The programme ran from 2012 to 2014 and was funded by the Cariplo Foundation to educate people to become entrepreneurs, to develop innovation and foster openness to collaboration in the Insubria region in north Italy through a new learning approach. This region is facing a difficult crisis and gradually losing its entrepreneurial identity: 21% of firms collapsed in 2013, the overall unemployment rate has risen by around 7% each year since 2010 and the rate of the so-called NEET (i.e. Not in Education, Employment or Training, 15- to 29-year-olds) today stands at around 19%.²

With the aim of upholding the region’s long-standing entrepreneurial culture, nine established Italian entrepreneurs were selected to join the programme. They were chosen according to criteria consistent with the aims of the ProSIT programme: (1) they had to be from the Insubria region and their innovation projects had to specifically relate to this region, (2) they had to be willing and able to actively participate in the education process (i.e. to tutor graduates) and (3) their ideas had to be ground-breaking and self-standing (i.e. a new product or service and/or new market). Their proposals were then structured into nine innovation projects.

Nine young graduates were selected from 33 applicants, based on their potential ability to positively and actively participate in an unstructured and intensive postgraduate programme, their interest in innovation and entrepreneurial venturing and their approximate alignment with the technical needs of the proposed projects. The selection process involved interviews, attendance at a full day’s activities where the nine innovation projects were presented and participants asked to discuss at least three projects. We observed their interest in each project and their ability to act innovatively and contribute in an open-discussion setting.

The students were assigned to a specific project and organized into nine open project teams composed of at least one young graduate, one scholar and one entrepreneur. Other team members varied according to the project objectives and phase and came from academic, private and public sector organizations and entrepreneurial associations. Each had different roles (producers and recipients of the learning process) at different stages. They interacted to produce innovation aimed at developing specific ideas and emerging activities while learning collectively and individually.

Figure 1 depicts (considering the ephemeral nature of the rhizome) the growing and transforming nature of the education programme involving different actors and diverse elements in an endless becoming process. It also highlights the rippled effects of ProSIT in relation to different stakeholders.

Figure 1.

ProSIT (Programma di Sviluppo e Innovazione del Territorio) as a rhizome. Stakeholders, elements and effects.

The project results were expressed in different forms including a prototype product (heating elements with various fields of application), an operational service (anti-usury assistance and support), a technical and commercial feasibility study (marketing and communication strategies for services and solutions on the fire resistance of materials) and an engineered business process (technical drawings management) (see Table 1 for a complete overview of the projects).

Table 1.

The ProSIT (Programma di Sviluppo e Innovazione del Territorio) projects.

Proposing firm sector	Summary of the innovative ideas structured into projects
Virtual technology/IT*	• Device integration, prototype in a virtual environment
Fire management	• New services based on a database system to measure the effects of fire on products and structures
Biotechnology	• Innovative and ‘green’ packaging for food (ready-to-eat)
Industrial machinery and equipment	• Customer-oriented process optimizing relationships between the commercial and technical departments
Textile	• Technical drawings storage method
ICT** service	• Software for people optimization in SMEs
Energy	• Heating elements (prototype)
Public institution	• Process to develop the SME’s capacity to access credit and financial resources (against usury)
Public enterprise	• Fundraising and optimization of locations of merit for local tourism and cultural development

IT: information technology; **ICT: information and communications technology.

Projects had no hierarchy, and most of the educational content was not planned in advance, although some courses and seminars were offered on behavioural and relational competencies, such as teamwork, effective communication, lateral thinking and collective creativity. Beyond these, the young participants – in some cases advised by other team members – had the opportunity to propose further courses on topics they deemed useful to fulfilling their projects.

A shared path of content thus gradually developed in accordance with the rhizomatic approach. The resulting portfolio of courses was highly interdisciplinary. As participants asked for technical topics that were virtually common to all, some technical content emerged as essential (e.g. innovation management practices, basic elements of economics-management/key scientific subjects, project organization and management, business planning, materials science, basic industrial and commercial criminal law and biology). The young graduates were expected to attend all the basic courses, could request specific topics and could also attend all the initiatives of the ProSIT programme including those requested by other participants. The other actors involved in each project (e.g. entrepreneurs and employees of other collaborating institutions) could attend courses in line with the emerging collaborative logic.

Similar to the free and expansive movement of grass that constantly connects random and infinite points of the rhizome, we designed the programme using an emerging process with entrepreneurial ideas at its core. The academics initially intervened to develop relational competencies and foster collaborative behaviours, thereafter mediating as required to share content across projects. The education path was structured rhizomatically around the projects and adhered to the flow of connections that led to their tangible implementation. By considering emerging proposals and engaging the intricate set of connections among participants, a non-predictable and non-linear collective learning process emerged among project collaborators, as we describe in the following section.

ProSIT uniqueness

ProSIT supports a rhizomatic learning approach by going beyond the analytical approach and linear process of most mainstream education programmes (Mustar, 2009). The originality of the ProSIT project is not in its purpose and content, but in the learning process guided by rhizomatic theory and the open innovation framework.

The programme did not focus on content and knowledge but rather aimed to develop a method, that is, a way of thinking and acting based on a set of assumptions using a portfolio of skills, approaches and techniques useful to enhance productive entrepreneurship (Kirby, 2004; Van De Ven and Johnson, 2006). In this perspective, entrepreneurship education is mainly focussed on boosting participant creativity to enable them to develop viable innovative ideas and create innovative ventures. This is considered the essence of being an entrepreneur and the only real competence that is essential and useful in highly uncertain environments (Kuckertz et al., 2010). The pedagogy tends to be highly focussed on practice and adopts design-based learning and reflective practices (Fayolle, 2013). Consistent with a current trend in entrepreneurship education, the pedagogical focus of our education programme is project-based learning: an experiential pedagogy that deeply involves participants and is seen as essential to developing creative thinking and educating to be entrepreneurial (Kirby, 2004; Kuckertz, 2013; Rideout and Gray, 2013). Indeed, the entrepreneurial projects ran through the entire education programme, constituting the learning path of each participant. The ProSIT programme therefore differs from other entrepreneurship education initiatives by way of its rhizomatic approach, which considers innovation as a collective flow emerging from unexpected generative collaborations and leading to unplanned developments. This emphasizes learning to ‘persistently pursue innovation’ and collectively innovate under difficult conditions by thinking rhizomatically – bypassing obstacles and following unexpected directions to trigger a continuously growing innovation flow that is able to become a generative force of collective innovation.

The ProSIT programme was also rhizomatic in

Following a non-planned approach in developing the list of courses.

Deriving the schedule and content ex-post and according to stimuli arising from the learning process. As mentioned earlier, basic seminars were supplemented by courses requested by participants. These were open to all ProSIT stakeholders but attendance was not compulsory. At the end of the programme, each participant had attended a different portfolio of courses and education activities resulting in a highly transdisciplinary agenda.

The participants varied across time and roles, and the various multi-stakeholder teams were organized accordingly.

Lasting effects of ProSIT

The programme has produced considerable – and rhizomatic – results for the students, entrepreneurs, other participants, including the university.

To better evaluate the challenges and effects of the ProSIT programme, we systematically gathered and analysed data during, immediately afterwards and 9 months following the closing date of the programme. The evaluation was mainly based on semi-structured interviews with all programme stakeholders (the nine participants, the entrepreneurs, programme faculty, most of those involved in the programme activities, including ProSIT institutional partners (i.e. Como-Next representatives and managers of the local municipalities)). Between 2012 and 2015, we conducted, recorded and transcribed 86 semi-structured interviews which were integrated with informal meetings and reflective feedback sessions with students and entrepreneurs.

Nine months after the programme, all graduates worked in the region. Three are still collaborating with the entrepreneurs to develop projects they began within the programme, three have started their own businesses, one is involved in a commercial business while maintaining a relation with the entrepreneur to continue the project and two have dedicated themselves to research. All participants reported a high degree of satisfaction, engaging in fruitful professional relationships and appreciating the relevance for innovation, for enhancing their creative competence and for translating creativity into innovative projects, products and services. They felt ProSIT triggered an entrepreneurial approach and practical experimentation.

The entrepreneurs declared their desire to continue collaborating with the university and seven continued working with the programme participants. The nine projects developed during the programme were completed to the satisfaction of the entrepreneurs who explicitly recognized the innovative contribution of each of the nine projects. Six projects are still underway with further and unexpected developments in relation to new ventures and activities. For instance, a participant collaborating in a tableware industry project was able to exploit the competencies developed during the ProSIT programme in a packaging enterprise, where he is currently in charge of a new R&D project. One entrepreneur reported that ProSIT provided an opportunity to strengthen his innovation capabilities that led to an ‘unexpected development of one of his old ideas’. Finally, a manager of the municipality reported that the main value of the ProSIT programme was its ‘changing power towards innovation’ because the project activated circumstances and opportunities for collaborations among local enterprises, constituting a completely new way of operating for the local SMEs.

Another rhizomatic outcome relates to the ongoing ProSIT effects on the Insubria University administrative staff who had to deal with new issues: numerous procedures were re-engineered, and a new empowering mindset is gradually diffusing, promoting a huge organizational and cultural change in an unforeseen way. Insubria University now shares its expertise in administrative issues and changes with other staff units in other academic institutions, organizing knowledge-sharing workshops across the region.

Other additional effects suggest that the project also contributed to galvanizing the attention of different actors distant from the original stakeholders. Other learning projects acknowledge having been inspired or informed by the ProSIT approach; for example, the MVIMWA project’s use of the ‘rhizomatic approach’ to develop social entrepreneurial initiatives around the Mvimwa community in Tanzania (Africa). Ongoing interest in the ProSIT approach suggests an ongoing relevance that may be taken as a partial indicator of some enduring consequences of the project.

A rhizomatic approach: the five ingredients

Five principles synthesize our theoretical proposal and provide new insights to entrepreneurship education literature. A rhizomatic education programme for collaborative innovation needs (Table 2) (1) ‘transdisciplinarity and heterogeneity’ of its components to enable movement in all possible directions, (2) ‘open teams’ to develop collective innovation through the interactions and the absence of hierarchy among the points involved in connections, (3) ‘emergent education process’ to support the divergent thinking and the deductive and inductive approach, (4) ‘external place’ that can support innovation development through the absence of boundaries and openness to contamination and (5) ‘playful and challenging’ learning environment, as an integrator and catalyst of innovation efforts.

Table 2.

Summary of the key assumptions that underline the educational ingredients from the rhizomatic and open innovation perspectives.

Rhizomatic features	The ingredients of the educational design	Open innovation features
• Movements in all possible directions	Transdisciplinarity and heterogeneity	• Innovation and creativity as complex and multidisciplinary activities
• Generative connection among different points		• Questioning the game itself
• Changing team composition• No hierarchy• Co-creation	Open team	• Sharing with others and encouraging their participation
		• Collective knowledge
		• Involving dialogue
• Fluidity	Emergent process	• Design thinking
• Unexpected evolution		• Divergent thinking
• Nonlinear, complex emergent path		• Deductive, inductive and abductive logic
• Endless becoming
• No boundaries• Neutral place• Body without organs	External place	• Inclusive (vs. exclusive) spaces to encourage participation
		• Permeable company boundaries
		• Open to contamination
		• Spaces penetrable ‘from’ and ‘towards’ the outside
• Rhizome survives in unfavourable conditionsUnthought into actionConnectivity as desire• Provocation	Playfulness and challenge	• Playfulness as integrator and energy catalyst• Challenging environments lead to innovation

Transdisciplinarity and heterogeneity

Transdisciplinarity literally means going beyond all disciplines while remaining connected to each through a unifying issue or topic of inquiry. This is consistent with the Deleuzian rhizome and entails the concepts of movement in all possible directions and the generative connections among different points (see Table 2). To obtain a novel and unexpected development, different points of view and going beyond what is stated are essential prerequisites (Alves et al., 2007). Innovation benefits from an organizational settings supporting confrontation and practising exchange and cooperation skills where interaction of different points of view and technical competencies can develop (Gully et al., 1995; Hargadon and Bechky, 2006; Mumford et al., 2002).

Pluralism signifies the value of drawing on multiple sources including science, art and economics to build an integrated framework that transcends the rules of the game, thereby questioning the game itself (Armitage, 2008; Kurucz et al., 2014). Transdisciplinary collaboration furthers collective understanding of an issue by including multiple disciplines and ‘all validated constructions of knowledge and their worldviews and methods of inquiry’ (Brown et al., 2010: 4).

Transdisciplinarity is a relevant part of the ProSIT framework. It transformed the pluralistic approach into a feature that enabled developing technical, behavioural but also managerial competencies through specific courses while allowing each participant to request courses in an emerging way and according to perceived needs. All courses were open to all participants and to other interested actors such as entrepreneurs and external collaborators. Moreover, the ProSIT participants – but also all the stakeholders on a voluntary basis – engaged in a specific 3-day course to support their transdisciplinary approach to problem-framing and solving, helping them escape from their cognitive frames. This approach pushed the involved scholars into translating very technical content into easy-to-understand concepts, considering the diverse backgrounds of the students. These efforts resulted in a new common sense and language that produced unexpected innovations in unplanned directions, such as new products but also new ventures outside the ProSIT programme, including new joint projects amongst some scholars planning and designing original joint courses and programmes for graduate students (see Figure 1).

In addition to the innovation resulting from the pluralism of disciplines, the rhizomatic approach also signals the importance of heterogeneity as one of the essences of the rhizome that enables developing sustainable innovations (Deleuze and Guattari, 1987; Knott, 2003). Numerous studies highlight heterogeneity as a source of innovation (Owen-Smith and Powell, 2004; Rodan and Galunic, 2004; Shin and Zhou, 2007). Heterogeneity spawns a pool of different resources not only in terms of disciplines but also the actors’ characteristics (attitudes, abilities and moods) and potential traits, connections, affects and movements (Thanem, 2005).

The ProSIT programme is characterized by transdisciplinarity and by heterogeneity (Table 2). The various ProSIT participants collaborated in activities and events with the aim of exchanging and combining not only different backgrounds but also perspectives, knowledge, moods, spaces, problems, products and tools towards a new overarching approach generating new connections across various people and elements, such as physical and virtual objects, spaces, processes and knowledge that evolved in directions and solutions that were not foreseen. For example, transdisciplinarity and heterogeneity were manifest in the project consisting in a technical and commercial study of forms of industrial heating elements: the technical team included people from the proposing enterprise, a graduate participating in ProSIT and researchers from a university in north-central Italy (see Table 3). This is one of the projects that best highlights the combination of perspectives, experiences, coordination mechanisms, technical tools and prototypes, using the design thinking approach (Johansson-Sköldberg et al., 2013).

Table 3.

Summary of the main ProSIT (Programma di Sviluppo e Innovazione del Territorio) features and examples of the five ingredients.

The educational design ingredients	ProSIT features	Examples from ProSIT
Transdisciplinarityand heterogeneity	• Multi-disciplinary skills (technical, behavioural, managerial) and opportunities for continuous debate and exchanges.• Participants requested specific multidisciplinary topics in an emergent way• Different actor perspectives (e.g. participants and employees of institutions who cooperated in single projects)	One of the project consisted of a technical and commercial study of industrial forms for the production of heating elements for industrial use. The technical team consisted of people from the company, a graduate participating in ProSIT and researchers from a university in north-central Italy who in part interacted in face-to-face meetings and in part with specific design technologies. This is one of the areas that best highlights the need to co-design and lends itself to using the operating logic of the design approach
Open team	• The actors were free to interact as needed around and across each entrepreneurial project• No hierarchy among the actors who interlinked democratic connections• Contacts and exchanges were established with different parties when the need emerged (such as consulting firms, public institutions, professionals).• The composition of teams working on each project differed according to the project objectives and the activities to be undertaken, also in a longitudinal dimension	Two entrepreneurs (virtual reality project and new packaging project) met thanks to ProSIT during an open session. They recognized the opportunities for cooperation that also brought the two project teams to work together, giving shape to the development of a joint project not originally planned. The process generated the joint definition of the concept for marketing activities
Emergent process	• No pre-established project scheme that defined the phases and the most appropriate activities. Courses were not established a priori.• Each business idea was developed in a unique and emerging process created by the connections established among the parties involved and/or those external to the project (co-design).• Emergent interactions between projects also took place, with participants helping each other	An emblematic example of the ongoing ProSIT effects is the skill development and organizational changes of the administrative staff of Insubria University. Due to the original ProSIT features, they had to face new issue, many procedures had to be re-engineered and a new empowering mindset is gradually diffusing, promoting a big organizational and cultural change in a very unpredictable way. Moreover, in endlessly becoming, Insubria University now shares its expertise in administrative issues and changes with other staff units in other academic institutions, organising knowledge sharing workshops across the region. Currently, thirty universities have joined these workshops.
External place	• No project had a single location where activities took place• An ‘open environment’ enhanced sharing and collaboration, where a growing number of actors met and worked	Local institutions offered the opportunity of teaching courses in their buildings in historical and prestigious places where the lessons became visible to their public and the entire city. The innovation park offered innovative tools (e.g., software for 3D design and high-performance data analysis) and dedicated some rooms to ProSIT, which participants could access without time restrictions and where they could work, meet and discuss their work in progress, making them visible to innovation park attendees since these rooms are on the ground level with mostly glass walls. Moreover, the innovation park as well as the university disseminated continuous information on ProSIT activities, contributing to making it well known in the Insubria region
Playfulness and challenge	• Original and lateral occasions and events to stimulate the production of ideas as well as debates and entertainment• Tournaments among participants• Participants were encouraged to organise discussion groups, activities and events, not necessarily strictly related to their projects and also using the ProSIT structures for leisure	Participants engaged in a competition that was organised as a fun event such as a fair in the city, with symbolic awards, open to the public to creatively present ideas and projects

However, the heterogeneity of actors and the diversity of elements can also entail interpersonal conflicts and communication difficulties especially in an ‘open’ context that is not stable over time, generally involving long periods of preparation, mutual understanding and the ability to recognize and pursue unconventional connections among unconventional elements. These considerations suggested introducing a mandatory course on relational competencies and conflict management in the ProSIT programme.

Open teams

Open teams are the locus where people learn about relationships and interact to spread and generate collective knowledge across boundaries (Cope, 2005; Taylor and Thorpe, 2004), combining many elements of the rhizomatic perspective and the open innovation theoretical approach (see Table 2).

The rhizomatic theoretical approach calls for a ‘continuously changing team composition’ as a condition of ‘co-creating’ and exploring emergent connections but also enshrining the need for interaction ‘regardless of hierarchy’ and social structures (Strange, 2002). The open innovation theoretical approach suggests that ‘sharing knowledge with others’ enables generating ‘collective knowledge’ in various phases of the programme, thus supporting continuous ‘involving dialogue’ among all participants (Chesbrough, 2003).

The ProSIT programme sustained team collaboration among different and changing actors: events, social and professional occasions were organized to encourage participation and the generation of new ideas across and between teams (planned working sessions, exhibitions and public presentations in different venues in the region). Collaboration was non-hierarchical, all team members had the same power and their roles varied over time so that the projects’ point of reference moved from the entrepreneur, to the student, to other actors including technical experts or scholars (see Table 3).

Team openness also means that the knowledge co-created through the rhizomatic flows in each project reaches the various actors via concentric circles even outside the teams. Those who contributed more to the different connections and were more active in certain phases of the process added more to the development of collective knowledge but also had the opportunity to learn more. Nevertheless, the effects of the intricate assemblage of lines overlapping in the continuous transformation gradually reached people who initially just bumped into the flow of a wider circle of people. Moreover, participants changed their positions in the collective learning circle. Albeit with differing intensity, they remained involved and continuously participated in the generative dialogue around the projects, becoming progressively aware of the value of the connections and open interaction, also thanks to the feedback sessions (see section ‘Lasting effects of ProSIT’ for a more detailed explanation of the feedback sessions). For example, two entrepreneurs (proposing the virtual reality and the new packaging projects) met in one of the open sessions and recognized the opportunity to collaborate giving shape to a joint and unplanned new venture (see Table 3). The process collectively generated new knowledge through defining the underlying theme of their marketing campaigns.

Emergent process

The rhizomatic process combines the production of collective knowledge through non-linear, complex and emergent paths (Teal, 2010). Moreover, the system of rules that underpins the actions of each organization must be able to interact, allowing the necessary dynamism of mutual contamination that leads to emerging innovative knowledge (Chesbrough et al., 2006). These considerations entail an emergent process as one of the ingredients of entrepreneurship education design (see Figure 1).

Emergent movements can also cause errors and social risks, forcing people to deal with uncertainty and ambiguity, stepping outside a linear education path and thus creating emotional exposure that is relevant to entrepreneurship learning. In the rhizomatic perspective, the emergent learning process leads to extreme fluidity and the initial deconstruction of the education programme (e.g. not all courses were established a priori). The learning approach must focus on emergent non-linear directions (e.g. the project issues are at the centre and all the possible connections are cultivated to find the most innovative solution). This leads to emergent solutions that frequently foster unexpected developments and new collaborations while advancing collective knowledge and innovation in an endless becoming beyond the educational programme.

In the open innovation perspective, the emergent process triggers the effectiveness of the design logic (design thinking) to increase the creative content of collective action (Martin, 2009). Design thinking can support the rhizomatic process in fulfilling innovative ideas and implementing their outcomes simultaneously admitting the deductive, inductive and abductive thinking approaches and allows a non-linear iterative path while the reasoning underlying each approach is structured and designed. Moreover, by following the conjecture logic and suggesting that something may be, the abductive approach enables questioning both the formulation of the idea and the outcome of implementing the idea (Sarasvathy et al., 2008). As a consequence, abductive reasoning leads to new or different knowledge than when applying the inductive and deductive approaches on their own (Dubois and Gadde, 2002; Ungaretti et al., 2008).

These features were manifest in the ProSIT programme. The learning process was emergent and non-linear as the participants and teams were not given plans but merely allocated a period of time to complete the project and achieve its objectives. The activities were driven by the interactions and communication of the parties and the emerging requirements of the project with the objective of co-designing the innovative content.

An example is the ProSIT project aimed at developing a drawings storage system (see Table 3). During the project, the classification criteria were first conceived by drawing on archiving literature and cognitive maps theory. The project team thereafter developed a software prototype. Although the prototype enabled simultaneously applying different search criteria (e.g. colour, fabric, price and subject), it still identified too many samples, some of which did not correspond to the user aims. The project team subsequently came up with the idea of contacting a well-known team of interior designers and conducted some interviews with fashion industry professionals. This resulted in developing another prototype with two search key orders: the first order consisted of scenarios (e.g. downtown, countryside, seaside, etc.), trends (shabby-chic, contemporary, Italian classic, Occitan, etc.) and building styles (rationalist, historical, neo-classical, etc.), while the second included those adopted in the first prototype.

External place

Research demonstrates the importance of the ‘space’ design to support innovativeness in the workplace and learning processes (Magadley and Birdi, 2009). Creativity and innovation are stimulated by workspaces ‘outside’ of the usual working environment. Inspiring spaces support lateral thinking, decontextualization, democratic interaction and help people depart from routine (Kolb and Kolb, 2005).

These considerations are amplified by the open innovation framework, which suggests the importance of designing inclusive (vs. exclusive) spaces to encourage participation also from the outside, or rather, penetrable ‘from’ and ‘towards’ the outside, thus designing permeable boundaries that are open to contaminations (Wallin and Von Krogh, 2010) (Table 2).

In the rhizomatic framework, the notion of an external place dedicated to the innovation process and independent from the contributing actors is reinforced by the absence of boundaries, thus allowing the process to remain at the core and supporting the concept of the rhizome as a ‘body without organs’. Moreover, a neutral place does not allow any actors to consider it specifically theirs, so that hierarchical structures among contributors are also avoided, different parties become aware of it by chance and hence facilitating changing the team composition. Being ‘uncoupled’ from a specific space can promote open collaboration among individuals who spontaneously take an interest in the projects.

The ProSIT programme proposed the development of such an all-encompassing space and was achieved through different solutions (see Table 3). No project had a single location where activities took place; part of the process took place on the premises of the companies involved, other parts were implemented in specific locations. The university provided learning spaces, rooms for group discussions, as well as laboratories for testing the activities. Local institutions offered the opportunity of teaching courses in their buildings in historical places where the lessons became visible to their public and the entire city. The innovation park offered innovative tools (e.g. software for three-dimensional design and high-performance data analysis) and dedicated some rooms to ProSIT that participants could access without time restrictions and where they could work, meet and discuss their work in progress, making them visible to innovation park attendees (these rooms are on the ground level with mostly glass walls). Moreover, the innovation park as well as the university disseminated continuous information on ProSIT activities. The symbolic value of space also played a role in the project: the location contributed to inserting the entrepreneurship projects into the region and allowed it to spread outside the university–company relationship.

All these solutions allowed developing ProSIT in an ‘external environment’ where a growing number of actors met and worked according to the logic of optimizing the innovative content of each single project, but also promoting collaboration among the projects and resulting in the development of a joint process (see also Figure 1).

Playfulness and challenge

Playful yet puzzling learning environments are able to activate and release energy towards new ideas and then channel them (Frey et al., 2011; Hjorth, 2011; Hunter et al., 2007).

In an open innovation context, playfulness can act as an integrator and catalyst of talented professionals and successful organizations while quickly and smoothly facilitating divergent thinking and relations and interactions (Amabile et al., 2005). Furthermore, according to the rhizomatic approach, creativity is a process that brings the ‘unthought’ into action as a play (Deleuze, 1988; Hjorth, 2011). Desire is a creative and collective flow found in happenings. Connectivity is a desire that enables a rhizome to survive and grow in a challenging environment (Deleuze and Parnet, 1987).

In view of these considerations, a playful environment can support social creativity and energy activation (Table 2). On the other hand, pleasantness can also entail risks, including time and resources used to activate and maintain the organizational climate, distractions, leisure time and a low focus on objectives (Lamm and Meeks, 2009). However, the concurrent opportunity to collaborate in a playful yet challenging and provocative context outweighs these risks and emphasizes the functional aspect of creative occasions, allowing emotional exposure but also action-orientated and proactive behaviours.

Entrepreneurship innovation flows from the need to constantly challenge our assumptions (Bingham and Spradlin, 2011). Hunter et al. (2007) find that challenges positively affect creativity. Provocation changes the stable state by means of affect. According to Hjorth (2011), ‘provocations have the power to transform context into carnivals understood as time and spaces where multiplicity is the dominant form’ (p. 52). They produce affects where habitual thoughts are suspended, and thinking needs to be created again (Deleuze and Guattari, 1987).

To enhance playfulness and challenge, ProSIT participants were encouraged to organize discussion groups, activities, events and tournaments also using the ProSIT facilities for leisure. For instance, participants engaged in a competition organized as a fun event including a fair in the city with symbolic awards, open to the public to challenge them to creatively present their ideas and projects with the further aim of provoking reactions from the territory (see Table 3).

Reflections on the drawbacks of rhizomatic learning

The ongoing network developments and transformation of structures persisting after the end of the first edition of the programme confirm the value of the rhizomatic perspective towards a learning/becoming/organizing framework and encourage continuing with such an education design approach (Clegg et al., 2005).

Nevertheless, this approach and experience suggest some limitations and drawbacks that should be addressed in future research. The first concerns the scaling and replication of the education projects. The unpredictability of the education plan and the unfeasibility of predefining the education agenda highlight the difficulty of organizing and managing such a programme where almost none of the activities can be formalized in advance. This lack of formalization implies great difficulty in scaling and replicating the success of such initiatives.

A second drawback is the substantial investments that such education projects require, including time, energy and emotion, a unique approach and dedicated people and structures in the start-up and development phases. This type of project is expensive when compared to more traditional education programmes and implies heterogeneity and conflicts.

Another drawback lies in the institutional and organizational constraints and the requisite change in mindset. The original and radically new structure and processes impose a new way of designing and managing the education programme and need to be understood and embraced by all stakeholders. For example, at the launch of the ProSIT programme, two entrepreneurs who had presented two project ideas that were selected for implementation, despite numerous discussions decided not to participate as they felt that participation would be too time-consuming for them and their organization. This is probably because they were used to more traditional training initiatives requiring only their marginal involvement and limited to evaluating the quality of the project compared to their expectations.

Finally, the unpredictability of the learning development path could suggest that there is no turning back when the rhizomatic process has been activated as it grows by itself and cannot be controlled, in the same way as a rhizome that can become infestant.

Conclusion

This article puts forward the adoption of the open innovation approach revisited in a rhizomatic perspective to support entrepreneurial learning for innovation in changing and difficult circumstances. In entrepreneurship education literature, these features primarily position our proposal among education initiatives with the goal of educating people to become entrepreneurs. Amongst others things, this implies giving them the opportunity to change their perceptions so they perceive the entrepreneurial career option as attractive (Kuckertz, 2013; Rideout and Gray, 2013).

Through the rhizomatic open innovation approach, such an education programme also allows established entrepreneurs and others involved in various ways (e.g. teachers and local institutions) to learn and acquire entrepreneurial innovation competencies, involving them in a self-directed innovation flow based on knowledge co-creation and emergent developments. More generally in the entrepreneurship education panorama, our programme is part of the education for entrepreneurship option, which differs from initiatives more focussed on education about entrepreneurship and entrepreneurs (Kirby, 2004).

The strong anchoring in a theoretical framework is another distinguishing characteristic of our education project. This supports the internal consistency and originality of the proposal and responds to calls in literature for more theorization in entrepreneurship education (Fiet, 2000).

In relation to other entrepreneurship education initiatives involving different categories of participants (e.g. Collins et al., 2006; Leicht and Harison, 1999), our programme formally admitted young graduates as learners, entrepreneurs as partners (as they proposed projects, provided business resources and contributed to the projects themselves) and as beneficiaries of the programme (as they hosted participants as interns), academics who in part participated as teachers or contributed to projects and in part responsible for the management of the overall programme. The reality is that the rhizomatic open innovation method goes entirely beyond the formal organization of projects involving different categories of stakeholders in an innovation flow that continuously evolves in unpredictable directions. This rhizomatic innovation flow also reaches others (e.g. employees of the entrepreneurs and from the public administration, consultants, academics originally not part of the faculty) who enter the flow due to the directions it takes. A further distinguishing trait of our proposal is that the formal roles of those involved are not relevant to the actual becoming of the flow that stems from the programme. Indeed, the actors intervening in the innovative flow collaborate on a non-hierarchical basis, each contributing and eventually leading the knowledge creation process associated with the different momenta of the innovation flow (see the Open team sub-section).

Based on the theoretical foundation and aims, our programme cannot but promote experiential pedagogy. In particular, within the pedagogical methods identified in literature on entrepreneurship education, our project adopts a pedagogical approach that can certainly be subsumed among action learning initiatives (Leicht and Harrison, 1999; Maritz and Brown, 2013; Pittaway and Cope, 2007). Action learning is especially suited to enhance ‘innovative learning’ or learning ‘for long-term survival, particularly through times of turbulence, change or discontinuity’ (Chan and Anderson, 1994: 29). In this context, the rhizomatic approach to entrepreneurship learning is characterized by some specific features. The first is the role of the business context as a learning arena. In action learning initiatives, participation in real entrepreneurial projects allows performing contextualized actions and partaking in actual activities so that participants can confront and reflect on these activities. In an education programme based on the rhizomatic approach, there are no instances where the learning process takes place outside of the actual business context as this learning process is embedded in the organizational processes and therefore does not involve reflecting on the organizational activities (Collins et al., 2006). There is no distinction between contextualized action and reflecting on such action (Clarke et al., 2006). The entire learning process is unique. The second distinction refers to the participants in the learning process. Action research requires a social dimension of learning composed of a closed set of participants with the same needs and the same goals in attending the programme (Carson, 1985; Clarke et al., 2006). Outside alliances are merely eventual and strictly functional to the programme. The rhizomatic approach completely differs to this approach. Networking is the essence of the rhizomatic learning flow and the concept of boundaries is irreconcilable with it; introducing limitations is even incompatible with such a perspective (Deleuze, 1983). Finally, the role of scholars also differs in the two proposals. While action learning in entrepreneurship education requires the role of scholars as mentors (Carson, 1985; Stewart and Knowles, 2003), the rhizomatic open innovation perspective instead does not assign them a peculiar role. In fact, apart from having conceived the education proposals and promoting them, their intervention merely followed from what emerged as useful for the ongoing learning flow (they were asked to either teach, consult as experts or suggest other colleagues who could help at a certain stage).

In the rhizomatic perspective adopted in the project presented, reality is a flow that continuously transforms and develops in an unpredictable way (Deleuze and Guattari, 1987). This dynamic nature of reality is also applied to the learning process led by a project around which different subjects interact and contribute, creating collective knowledge that defines the evolution of the flow. The collective knowledge needed to feed the flow is also created through academic courses, seminars (both academic and nonacademic), formal and informal meetings that the programme participants requested because they considered them useful and consequently attended. All these activities and those involved in the projects defined the continuously evolving structures that move, connect and consequently transform in the flowing reality (Deleuze and Guattari, 1987). All this clarifies the reason why in the context of action learning, the programme here presented can be defined as a project-based learning initiative, which is also considered a more effective pedagogical method to enhance participants’ performance and especially useful in helping them deal with uncertainty and ambiguity (Kuckertz, 2013; Maritz and Brown, 2013).

Compared to other project-based initiatives in entrepreneurship education (Collins et al., 2006; Leicht and Harrison, 1999), our programme differs with regard to open teams and their rolling composition and roles (in the ProSIT ingredients section, see Open team sub-section) as well as the programme of lessons and formal education activities that each project team attended. The rhizomatic approach to entrepreneurship education does not require the simultaneous presence of all the programme attendants in all the education sessions. As previously stated, each participant and his/her team requested academic courses, dedicated moments of dialogue and advice that they perceived critical to their further development, thus leading to different education schedules (see the section ProSIT uniqueness and the Emergent process sub-section).

Implications

These conclusions have a number of pedagogical implications for management learning. The ProSIT experience confirms the relevance of co-creation for entrepreneurship learning and survival. The importance of the collective dimension, essential to managing and competing in today’s complex economy, suggests its adoption starting from undergraduates. Young people would thus become accustomed to accepting discontinuity, conflict and diversity as intrinsic workplace variables and develop collective problem-solving and innovation capabilities, which are critical components of the mindset of new entrepreneurs (Alegre and Chiva, 2013).

An education project developed according to this logic must focus on ‘open’ projects where participants can interact with each other and with the environment ‘outside’ of the project. The knowledge generated in the process is the result of collaboration and becomes the legacy of the entire work programme.

The rhizomatic approach suggests that a significant part of the topics should not be planned but developed in an emergent way to produce innovation. Recipients and participants have the opportunity to draw on learning sessions where unexpected and varied technical, managerial and behavioural needs are combined.

The stimuli and ‘disorder’ activated through the open innovation approach and rhizomatic philosophy constitute tangible results and functional solutions through the adoption of a design approach that is typical of more physically oriented projects requiring the visualization of the output of each phase of the project (Dunne and Martin, 2006). This entails the design of a collaborative environment in which multiple technical competencies operate in a trial-and-error logic to implement a prototype or its engineering. In these situations, innovation develops in the constant exchange of technical knowledge and work progress is achieved with the use of typically co-designed technological systems.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to the three anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments and as well as to our editor, Ann Cunliffe, for her expert guidance on improving the quality of draft versions of the article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.

Notes

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