Taking sustainopreneurship to a PhD Dissertation

This wiki is the home of making progress of a dissertation on the concept of sustainopreneurship.

I am currently looking for a formal affiliation and funding solutions for this research project, that has a candidate to leverage into a full-fledged research program subject to cover a diverse set of related sub-topics.

Still, in parallel to the popular book writing, there is a wise move to take some of the writing on the popular book at http://sustainopreneurship-book.wikidot.com through the process of "academization". The scope of the popular book is more wide and less deep, and aimed more towards practitioners - sustainopreneurs in existing or potential becoming! - so the PhD Dissertation would focus more laser-sharp into one aspect of the outlined research agenda that has been published numerous times in different contexts. Choosing in between the "what" or "how" aspect of sustainopreneurship, the aim and scope of a potential dissertation is a conceptual project, given its novelty as a concept. The process-related research agenda is equally important, but that will move in the domains of the popular book and concrete meetups in the virtual and physical spaces, and experiences collected from practitioners will fuel the empirical base for future process-related research on the "how" aspect of sustainopreneurship.

The main conceptual need has been outlined regards two dimensions in earlier publications - the "internal" conceptual deepening and understanding focusing the experienced core of sustainopreneurship, "sustainability innovation", and the "external" conceptual positioning related to the extensive buzzword collection related to "the business case of sustainability".

This is the core of an emerging research proposal for a full-fledged dissertation, with a work-in-progress TOC and outline of a potential future full-fledged dissertation presented down here.

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Sustainopreneurship - Business with a Cause. Deepening the Conceptual Understanding of Entrepreneurship and Innovation for Sustainability. [working title]

Outline and potential TOC:

1. Introduction

1.1 Background

1.2 Problem formulation

1.3 Research questions

1.4 Research design

1.5 Structure and outline

2. Conceptual framework and development

2.1 The Sustainability Discourse and its Responses

2.1.1 The Sustainability Context

2.1.2 The Sustainability Challenges

2.1.3 The Traditional Response - 'thinking and talking within the box'

2.1.4 The Emerging Force - 'acting outside the box'

2.1.5 The Accentuating Reframing - '(inter)acting as if there was no box at all'

2.2 The Entrepreneurship Discourse and its Development

2.2.1 History

2.2.2 Main Research Themes of Entrepreneurship

2.2.3 Extending the Discource - Entrepreneurship as a Social and Societal Phenomenon

2.2.4 Social Entrepreneurship

2.2.5 Eco-preneurship

2.2.6 Sustainability Entrepreneurship

2.2.7 Introducing Sustainopreneurship - history, definition and the emerging research agenda

2.3 The Innovation Discourse and its Evolvement

3. Researching Sustainopreneurship

3.1 Paradigms

3.2 Disciplinary domain

3.3 Ontology

3.4 Epistemology

3.5 Method

4. Sustainopreneurial Venturing - Case Studies

4.1 Surveying - Quantitative Study

4.2 Interviewing - Qualitative Study

4.3 Enacting - Interactive Study

5. Building a framework for sustainability innovations

5.1 A model with core dimensions of sustainability innovations

5.2 The SEEDS Model

5.3 Structuring the Offerings and Business Models Output

6. Sustainopreneurship and the Business Case of Sustainability

6.1 Positioning Sustainopreneurship

6.1.1 The Hart and Millstein Buzzword Sort

6.1.2 Main business sustainability concepts summarized and analyzed

6.1.3 Positioning Sustainopreneurship in the Sustainable Value Matrix

6.2 Institutionalization and Organization - reframing the boundaries

7. Future research challenges - the Process Agenda

7.1 Sustainopreneurial Process Model

7.2 Obstacles for Sustainopreneurship

7.3 Enablers for Sustainopreneurship

7.3.1 Networking

7.3.2 Identity/Branding

7.3.3 Resourcing

7.4 Leveraging the Sustainopreneurial Forces

7.4.1 Collapsing the Degrees of Separation

7.4.2 Creating Arenas for Sustainopreneurship

8. Towards an Open World

8.1 Open Innovation

8.2 Open Source

8.3 Open Space

8.4 Open Mind and Spirit

8.5 Open World