Evolving Differently from the Same Set of Pre-conditions: A Qualitative Longitudinal Study of Entrepreneurship and Genius Loci

This chapter analyzes how entrepreneurs of a same district, thus dealing with similar sets of resources and accesses to market, respond to innovation pressure. Spread over five-year period from 2010 to 2014, this is a longitudinal qualitative multiple case studies conducted in Italy’s Prato textile district, near Florence. The authors adopted a content analysis to reconstruct the perceptions about innovation trajectories adopted by a sample of entrepreneurs. Our findings show that despite equal pre-conditions, we observe firms evolving differently due to their approach to pursing opportunities, based on network configurations and cognitive interpretations of internal support for implementation. This chapter develops an interpretation of the findings adopting a framework based on the effect of strong and weak ties and a cognitive approach based on an effectual or causal entrepreneurial decision-making.