Drawing on design theory, this study examines sensemaking at university entrepreneurial support programs, called Campus-Linked Accelerators (CLAs). Questions yield thematic findings emerging from a grounded theory approach.
Qualitative analysis is conducted on a corpus of CLA document and interview data. Publicly available documents come from four CLAs at three universities in Toronto. Interviews were conducted with five participants who consist of administrators and mentors, and past, present and prospective users, of CLA programs.
CLA infrastructure retains most meanings about entrepreneurial identity and support needs that are compatible with “mission-free” personal, generic and situational, narratives. Sanctioned historical or conventional narrative backdrops also affect the affordances for social enterprises at CLAs. Relatedly, narrative friction and affordance issues for social enterprises are also to do with ambiguous, often slippery organizational and supra-organizational status of CLAs in universities.
Cohen Kappa tests were in the “almost perfect” range of inter-rater reliability but only assessed with two coders. Data are limited to the context of CLAs in Toronto. Related to geographic limitation, CLAs are not necessarily representative of all entrepreneurial support programming available across Toronto, Ontario or Canada. There is tension between “design-as-entrepreneurship” for pragmatic management and co-evolutionary organizational and learning sensemaking. Much of this tension has to do with power directed properties, seen through intertextual sensemaking in CLAs.
There is discrepancy between individual and collective sense at CLAs. Training and mentorship for start-up founders conflicts with or contradicts the proclivities that CLAs present as important to their normative arc of success. These are also challenges associated with weaving missions into personal-generic-situational narratives.
Addressing discrepancy between CLA documents and experiences can provide better service to start-up founders and achieve good value-for-money for the public. CLAs could improve the representativeness of their programming for ventures of hybrid or social typology that follow “mission achievement” success arcs.
This study expands organizational learning sensemaking work. It explores intertextuality of narrative sensemaking in university start-up support contexts, which are lightly studied. It incorporates first-hand experiences of user cohorts, with regional focus on Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
