The Entrepreneurial Self

Critical Analysis

Chapter 1: Genealogy of subjectification

In this chapter, the author introduces the concept of subjectification: the process by which someone becomes a subject. The author explains that “the human becomes a subject because it needs to make itself what it already is, because it needs to lead the life that it lives” (1). This is a process of subjectification, as “coming into being coincides with being subjugated” (1). The external forces that are applied are absorbed, and “in self-exploration, self-modelling and self-expression, the self constitutes itself as its own object, makes an image of itself and gives itself its own shape” (2). These forces are moments of history, and so they can be considered genealogical: a subject becomes subjugated in a way consistent with specific qualities of a moment in time. It is ‘historically contingent” (3) and, as a genealogy, can be traced to indicate how people with specific identities have come to see and act as the people they do.

Subjectification is political. As a subject, this may be via force; “forcing people to become individuals also means they end up having to blame themselves for failing” (5) and living becomes “a series of strategic decisions”—a “politics of life” (5). The author describes the current moment of time as one where “the self is dictated to by self-government and, second, in its concern for the paradox of an obligation to be free” (5). Subjectification is concerned with conditioning this politic, through a governing (although not necessarily by a political governance).

The author introduces the idea of fictions—“real fictions”—of a force of economic governance, which “address the surrounding psychic systems as persons, using them as semantic tools for transforming their communication into activities attributable to agents” (11). This is a story of an entrepreneurial self, who “sees market mechanisms encroaching on other social areas… what is being posited here is an asymmetrical interpretation between the economic system and the other functional systems” (12). And while these are constructed through language, they “are not merely effects of discourse; they are the guises of an extremely practical imperative dictating how humans are to see themselves as people and how they are to act in order to participate in the marketplace” (12).

People do not simply engage with this subjectification, as “appropriating their rules always entails modifying them”—“regimes of forming the self and others do not provide a blueprint that needs simply to be followed” (13). Instead, a subject works through trial and error to establish their subjected self. They encounter contradictory rules, and those are encountered in blends. The author indicates this process as one of chemical alchemy: “regimes of subjectification require subjectification ‘regents.’ The regents lend the programs authority, define the tasks, disseminate the technologies required to fulfil them, provide motivation and sanctioning, feedback and evaluation of results” (14).

In an educational context, the subjectification is a question of “which institutions and people (including the pupil herself) attempt to get her to do certain things and abstain from others” (15). An exploration of subjectification as a historical moment (a genealogy) looks at the rules that are in place, delivered by specific people, to “move individual performances in a specific direction” (15).

Chapter 2: Tracing the contours of the entrepreneurial self

The language of entrepreneurial self does not refer to something that can be observed; instead, it is active: it constructs and alters the people to whom it refers. The author argues it as “not something that exists but something that ought to be brought into existence” (20). The language is active as encouragement or directive, indicating what people have to become; it is “not a tool for describing reality but for changing it” (21). The constructive nature of this discourse overlaps with the constructive and identity-development work done in design studio, where studio talk generates designerly selves. In both cases, the language is pressurized. The author speaks of this as a trick; this language is delivered through “the programmes and technologies that pretend to come to people’s aid by telling them how to live their lives” (22), and act as conditioning tools.

The author argues the connection between an entrepreneurial self and consumerism, as “consumers were to accumulate ‘pleasure capital’, showing themselves as innovative, risk-loving, and decisive” (23). In a sense, students are not only finding themselves encouraged to be entrepreneurial; they are learning to more seamlessly encourage others to do the same, by producing innovations, taking risks, and acting decisively in order to bring consumer products to life. Their creative ability should not recognize a distinction between working and private time, as they act as freelancers who “are at the market all the time” (26). They experience subjectification through a form of behavioral modification, and find “the spread of entrepreneurial demands and self-interpretations in other spheres of life” (28).

There are exception forces drawing subjects away from market culture; “many continued to adhere to values like equality and solidarity rather than join in the song of praise to excellence and competition” (28). But the author does not spend time further exploring these exceptions. These are the exceptions of cohort and community in studio, where a student is drawn towards constructs of both extreme individualism and performance, at the same time as being immersed in language of sharing and collaboration.

The author’s investigation describes a space where an entrepreneurial self finds themselves performing: the corporation. The space of a corporation is limited in its freedom, yet corporate managers are encouraged to establish “an environment in which ‘creative fanatics’ flourish, those enthusiastic and at the same time practical ‘champions’ whose innovations are so necessary to competing on the market” (29). This subject is “distinguished by a readiness to take risks and the drive to innovate” (30), and the environment in which requires “the autonomy to make decisions within set frameworks, having sufficient resources and generous time frames, abandoning the ‘home-run philosophy’ and petty territorial struggles, risk affinity, failure intolerance, [and] interdisciplinary teams” (31)—all of the qualities of design education and studio culture.

An entrepreneurial subject is constantly moving. This subject “should be a calculating administrator of its own life, on the other hand a source of motivational energy, untiringly striving for new achievements, and a firework spitting out innovative ideas” (34). And this work, in the context of a clear economic engine, is shameless: “it is not enough to merely possess abilities; the crucial thing is to come across as the authentic expression of an individual personality” (35).

The author concludes by emphasizing the important role skill development plays in constructing the entrepreneurial self. Self-development and self-care comes to life in a workplace, and “working on the self comes to coincide with job training” (35). Skills are the vehicle by which risk-taking, innovation and problem solving are manifest, yet retention of skill is paired with a “constant fear of not having done the right thing or not enough of it, the feeling of insufficiency” (36).

Chapter 4: The four functions of the entrepreneur

In this chapter, the author presents four qualities of entrepreneurialism: taking advantage of chance for profit, innovating, confronting insecurities of economic processes, and coordination of production and marketing. When viewed through a lens of design studio education and building creative confidence, these can be understood as: leveraging the serendipity of creative discovery, developing innovations, taking risks while others avoid them, and managing the creative process.

The author’s view of an entrepreneur as a speculator appears similar to Simon’s definition of a designer: “the acting man sees a state that he views as more favorable than the given state, and his action is directed towards realizing the state desired” (67). The process is continual, requiring “constant initiative and the willingness to take risks” (68); this relies on a certain type of initiative and the ability to see opportunity faster than others. This parallels synthesis in qualitative research, where research indicates an opportunity space, and then requires a designer to make sense of that space in ways where others haven’t. The author indicates that “the distinguishing feature of the entrepreneur is therefor his ‘alertness’” (69).

This differs, however, in the development of opportunity through creative activities. Problem framing is a generative activity, producing the opportunities, rather than simply finding them. The author briefly examines this as a creative quality of entrepreneurship, where the ability for differentiation is based on a form of continual discovery through curiosity” (69).

Both research and design require action beyond discovery, and similar to an entrepreneur, “no one can ever rest on their laurels… taking a well-earned rest would result in losing ground” (69). The urge to produce found in a studio makes sense through this lens. The ground-losing, however, only makes sense if the studio environment is to be competitive, as with some forms of critique; in a truly collaborative environment where ideas are free and students support one-another, there is no ground to lose to one-another. There is only ground to lose to oneself.

Innovation is a core trait of an entrepreneur, and following Schumpeter, the author describes this person as “someone breaking loose from familiar routines and blazing trails on their own” (70). An innovator follows no playbook; “there is no preset plan, the entrepreneur must create a new one” (71). These activities are not considered arduous. An entrepreneur is driven by “the desire for independence, for struggle and victory, for success, and finally by the joy of activity and creation” (71).

Designers, like innovators, are often characterized as leading through action; the author indicates that “the entrepreneur performs the function of assuming responsibility. This function is inseparable from that of leadership” (72). Like a designer, an entrepreneur or a leader “believes she is right while the others are in error” (74). They take risks, and while leveraging planning, they also proceed in the face of uncertainty because they have conviction of their ideas. The planning is integral as one component of the process, as “different case scenarios need to be anticipated in order to prepare appropriate strategies to be implemented as soon as a particular case arises” (74). The particulars matter. The author describes this in the context of a market process, but the same holds true in designerly output—the thing that is made, and how it is used, matter in specific.

The author’s conclusion paints a picture of an entrepreneur who pursues a creative path much like a designer: “entrepreneurship finds its model rather in the artist genius” (75). As in studio, this artist must continually work exceptionally hard, and as the author explains, “if you are not prepared to throw yourself into the fray, you have already lost” (76). This requires a sense of creative confidence almost entirely dependent on raw skill and informed intuition—being “alert” to opportunity, and constantly transforming oneself as those opportunities shift. The qualities of an entrepreneur, many nearly identical to a designer, are presented: “Willpower and audacity are no longer the opposite of cool calculation. The entrepreneur of her own self must combine the two. She must, above all, become alert, innovative, and take on uncertainty. Yet she should also possess minute self-control and clear-sighted planning, harmonizing creative non-conformity and pedantic stinginess in one person” (76).

Summarizing a core conflict present in an argument of a designer as entrepreneur is the implicit competitive quality of a market: that it is competitive and not collaborative. Studio offers an environment that is described by instructors and students as being both competitive and collaborative at once, and also highly comparative, yet “you only act enterprisingly when you are more innovative, alert, daring, self-responsible, and more of a leader than all the others” (77). The conflict can be resolved by considering a creative entrepreneurial spirit, or the development of creative confidence, as deviating from the theory of a solely entrepreneurial self. There is something different about constructing an entrepreneurial designer than in constructing an entrepreneur.

Chapter 6: Creativity

In this chapter, the author positions creativity as a constant need to solve problems and innovate, all in pursuit of entrepreneurial benefit. This is largely argued to be a false form of creativity, reduced to a work ethic of idea production rather than a meaningful sense of a spark or magic.

The author claims that “faith in the creative potential of the individual is the secular religion of the entrepreneurial self” (101). It is enigmatic in its contradictions, as “on the one hand, creativity is meant to be mobilized and set loose; on the other hand, it is meant to be regulated and bridled, directed at specific problems and held apart from others” (102). This duality is introduced in studio, where students learn to be just innovative enough: to recognize that real, commercialized products need a firm footing in the familiar in order to be adopted. It clearly can be taught and learned, as “it is something that can be increased by systematic training, a learnable competency” (102). And by claiming creativity as a competency, it can also be aimed: “creativity is meant to be mobilized and set loose” purposefully and on-demand, but also “regulated and bridled, directed at specific problems and held apart from others” (102). An entrepreneurial self learns how to manipulate the competency of creativity in the face of problems. Studio foundations are unaimed, but when creativity is brought into project work, it becomes firmly entrenched in a design brief that expects a material, purposeful, differentiated output.

Problem solving is “the leading conception of the contemporary discourse of creativity” where “the problem to be solved is always the same: successful and innovative self-assertion in competition” (105). The qualities necessary to creatively solve problems include “artistic fantasy, hard work, the desire to subvert and destroy, unbridled vitality and ludic levity” (105).

The author spends a great deal of space equating creativity and innovation. Creativity is about distinctions, newness, recombining things that have already been considered. Given the broad canvas of these ideas, “being decisive is the element of difference” (104). Divergent thinking is one of the main qualities responsible for innovation; the author views this as more than just a tool—it is a “heroic trait” claimed as a “genius myth” (107). People who can solve problems and produce innovations “are independent, unconventional and self-willed in social interaction” (110). These are qualities instructors seek to construct in their students, and students work with these constructions in tension with feelings of inadequacy. The quality of decision making is a quality of creativity, and related is the ability to see the new ideas come to life; “creativity is approached as a form of production” (104). Students enter design school without the ability for production and are told that through hard work, they will become creative: “being creative demands constant effort” (112).

Curiously, the author briefly references the social qualities of creativity and contradicts the predominant view of a lone, independent designerly self: “Creative people are involved with others. They are dependent on others regarding their inventions, artefacts, interpretation… they develop ideas together with others. They are given problems to solve by others or they are dissatisfied with the solutions other people have come up with” (110-111). The author is describing, in part, the need for criticism and critique in studio culture, and “whether or not something is creative depends on the judgement of the community” (111). This is one of just a few gestures made to a difference in creative confidence as compared to other aspects of an entrepreneurial self. Design is said to thrive on external criticism and validation. This, too, is a quality instructors describe as fundamental to success, and is also a quality students describe as valuable, but also terrifying. The environment must be supportive, and again the author surprisingly acknowledges that a quality of creativity is “an environment that welcomes and rewards creative ideas… to tap into creativity as a resource, spaces must be generated where it can thrive and diversify” (113-114).

Some time is spent denigrating modern brainstorming and innovation techniques. The author explains that “there is no shortage of programmes of ‘innovation gymnastics’… creativity training standardizes the rupture with standard solutions, makes a norm of divergence from the norm and teaches people not to rely on what they’ve been taught” (115). It’s important to note the focus on corporate training and not on academic scholarship, as with the continual references to Osborn and de Bono’s techniques which have found broad adoption in design thinking training in organizations. These techniques, however, have also found their way into a design studio, and students further find themselves learning to be entrepreneurial innovators, where “idling is encouraged, but only in order to subsequently get the idea machine churning out even more, since it needs a break now and then to recover its breath… at the end of the day, the emphasis is on product, not on creative” (117).

This focus on constant work and work ethic is easily recognizable in studio discourse from both instructors and students, and this focus on production is how the author concludes this chapter. He argues that “when leisure is systematically made scarce or expropriated for innovation work, then all that remains is a simulacrum of creativity… the ideal of the creative adept is therefore not just an heroic future—active, non-conformist, inquisitive, imaginative—she is also stressed out” (117).

Chapter 7: Empowerment

In this chapter, the author argues the power dynamics implicit in language of empowerment: that to be empowered suggests that one isn’t naturally powerful and instead requires permission from another; and that empowerment is a granted sense of volition to change things through assertions that things actually require changing and that one should work on their own to cause the change. More simply, the author argues that empowerment raises unresolved questions of power.

In the discussion of empowerment, “it is not the power relationships themselves that are the issue but the sense of powerless felt by those who not have the power” (127). This leads someone to question themselves, as if their lack of influence is a failing of their own—that one is the “author of one’s own failure” (127). Rhetorically, these people can be grouped and then offered a solution of personal empowerment. Optimistically, empowerment labeling is intended to “overcome the debilitating sense of powerlessness. It is not to solve problems but to cultivate the skills required to do so” (128).

The lack of skill is something that can be fixed; there “are no weaknesses, just suppressed or undeveloped strengths waiting to be made conscious… this group only feels powerless because its members have not yet recognized their own power and experienced it in action” (130). Focus is partially on skill-building, and also on optimism of the self in order to increase a sense of confidence. It is about helping someone recognize that they have the ability to change the world around them through their own efforts. While this may not be attainable, “the conviction that we can contribute to shaping the world around us persists despite disappointments and setbacks” (132).

This is the entrepreneurial self as a stance: “a firm belief in your own goals, the malleability of the world around you and your own skills for coping with it, active engagement with problems and the ability to integrate unpredictable changes into your life plan” (134), and this is precisely the space of authorship and problem solving. Designers change the world, it is said; they are changemakers, and a designer’s identity is based on the idea that they can make things which have impact on a broad scale, that they have influence.