Entrepreneurship Networks in Beirut: Capital and Creativity Modeling the Future.

Abstract

This dissertation explores the development of technology entrepreneurship in Beirut, Lebanon. By following a variety of projects, both ventures and venture-related resources, it demonstrates the appearance of this phenomenon as it was stabilizing as a meaningful site of work for its participants. Through concrete problem solving and the production of both system descriptions and spaces of public deliberation, there emerged a setting in which values, projects, and people interacted in a network. This entrepreneurship ecosystem was not centrally managed, but was rather organized through the actions and intentions of its participants. Networks need public spaces in which to develop, and risk needs stability to rise above uncertainty. Several different types of activity constituted the nascent ecosystem: venture founders organized themselves in startups, working to bring a product to market through interaction with funders, primarily early state equity investors organized as venture capital firms and angel investors. These two groups were connected by entrepreneurship networking and promotion groups, which also conducted or supported business climate research. Individual venture founders developed viable projects in a context of support, of access to necessary resources. A space for rationalized investment deliberation was effected through interaction, entanglement, and collaboration between founders, funders, and networkers preceding its appearance. In this light, the nascent entrepreneurship ecosystem was an information system in the process of becoming a business system. Determining a field of action was a preliminary step towards making successful startups and profitable venture rounds, towards stabilizing dynamism. For the younger software developers involved in this setting, it offered a new style of work, a career path other than those leading out of the country. For diaspora returnees, it offered a space in which they could conduct business in Lebanon on terms familiar from other technology entrepreneurship hubs.