Learning entrepreneurs as experts

Abstract

This paper concerns agricultural entrepreneurs involved in organizing their learning towards developing innovative and learning enterprises. In high-tech sectors, such as Dutch agriculture, this learning and innovative capacity is particularly essential for economic survival. Reviewing the literature we concluded that innovation can be seen as informal learning processes, in which social networks play an important role. Workers learn by sharing knowledge in the working team, and employers learn by creating networks of colleagues and advisors. The results of three research projects teach us that interactive learning and innovation should be analyzed from a perspective of uncertainty. Learning skills for interactive innovation, as part of the entrepreneurial craft, should comprise the capability of selecting impulses and combining newly selected impulses with existing skills and routines. Paradoxically, entrepreneurs need new impulses from weak, unknown networks to be continuously innovative. Innovative learning involves balancing the chaos of uncertainty and the old grooves of experience. Knowing how to escape this paradox forms the core competence of innovative entrepreneurship. In short, we conclude that agricultural entrepreneurs have to develop flexible expertise, based on a complex worldview to meet the demands of innovation in a changing world. Entrepreneurs should particularly be able to detect the irregularities in the world around them and to balance stability and flexibility.

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