Table 2

Example of the analysis based on a snippet of Ginger’s story. CE refers to critical event, S to serendipity and E to effectuation

Examples of analyses in steps 2 and 3Quotes
CE: necessity relationship (Ginger was focused on her original idea)I … applied for this start up incubator … and my project was enrolled
S: prepared mind (she worked on business idea development in an incubator)
E: precommitments and alliances (support from the incubator)
CE: temporal boundaries (a discussion), contingency (an impromptu decision to go and talk to them), causal properties (finding about the expertise), necessity relationship (not finding about the expertise without this conversation)At this incubator there was this other team … and I just went up and talked with them and then we talked and talked and then this girl … asked what did I do before this and I told her … and she had this [business] idea …
S: unexpected event (an impromptu decision)
E: exploiting contingencies (a chance of a discussion and an impromptu decision to seize it)
CE: necessity relationship (had not thought about the idea before)… and I never thought about this idea before, because I thought I would be done with [the expert area of her previous job] and that not many Finnish [customers] would be interested in [those] markets
CE: causal properties (together they had the necessary resources), sufficiency relationship (if they hadn’t had the resources, the outcome would have been different)We can do everything by ourselves so it was like okay I will give it a try
S: recognising potential (with their combined resources they could do it)
E: experimentation (the mindset of giving it a go), affordable loss (relying on the resources at hand and testing the idea)
S: seizing the moment (taking action)Then I just started to work on this [the other girl’s idea] first, and it went well
S: amplifying effects (getting the others involved also in the original idea)At the same time, I was looking for a partner for my [original] startup. … I was like why don’t I ask the same partners from [the new business] to also be my partners in the [original] startup, so I just asked them, and they were very happy to join …
E: exploiting contingencies (not finding a suitable partner elsewhere, exploiting the current situation), precommitments and alliances (using the existing alliance in a different context)
S: outcome (one business running and another one developing)… the [original idea] requires a lot of work beforehand, so we are still working on [it] but [the other business] is working smoothly now
Source(s): Authors’ own work

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