Although structural constraints, such as political instability, corruption, and conflict, impair the development of entrepreneurial ecosystems, research suggests that individuals involved in entrepreneurship may be capable of overcoming such impediments. This contradiction challenges our understanding of how entrepreneurial ecosystems can develop in contexts facing severe structural constraints. I draw on an in-depth qualitative study of Iraq’s emergent entrepreneurial ecosystem to address this challenge. I find that Iraq’s entrepreneurial ecosystem developed as collective emancipation by enabling individual emancipation through entrepreneurship of young Iraqis from their otherwise predictable future and modeling it to fit a collective aim. My study details the mechanisms involved in this process of collective entrepreneurial emancipation. By doing so, my work adds to the scholarly understanding of entrepreneurial ecosystems and the emancipatory power of entrepreneurship.

Biography

Anne-Sophie Sabbatucci is a Ph.D. Candidate at Kelley School of Business, Indiana University. Anne-Sophie’s research interests lay at the intersection of entrepreneurship-as-emancipation and social entrepreneurship. Her current projects examine how entrepreneurship develops in fragile, violent conflict areas and how social entrepreneurship and compassion may also be harmful. She is particularly interested in using qualitative research methods to explore and learn from challenging contexts. Before joining the Ph.D. program at Kelley in 2021, Anne-Sophie worked as a business developer for a startup and a strategy consultant for several years.