The Emergence of Community-Based Entrepreneurship (Empirical evidence from Italy)

Abstract

This project aims to generate new knowledge about what is meant by Community-based entrepreneurship (CBE). Once a complete definition is addressed, the focus is to study the way CBE emerges and develops within its fertile environment. The work has the purpose to discover if there are some factors triggering the initial emergence of CBE, while providing new insights into this new kind of entrepreneurship. This has been achieved by inspecting a wide range of theoretical studies on this topic and, at the same time through a qualitative analysis of two existing communities within the Italian territory. Community-based enterprises are run and controlled to achieve the social and economic goals of the community by ensuring the maintenance of both personal and social benefits in the immediate and long-term future. The thesis provides a framework highlighting specific conditions that allow CBE to emerge. This can be used as a precious tool to verify and define a CBE and its guidelines. The achievement of this successful result along with the "Map of the process", which the community-based venture has to follow to make its start-up possible, provide important contributions to entrepreneurial theories.