Text Sushi by Alf Rehn

I think I blogged about chessboxing once, a long, long time ago, when no-one knew what blogging was. But that was then, on a long-dead blog, so I felt I would touch upon it anew. Think about it, can there be any more academic sport? You have the structure of chess combined with the aggro of boxing, so the sport should feel like a regular conference. So why not co-brand a conference (like CMS5) with the World Chess Boxing Organisation?

I turn 35 today. No, that’s not really altogether massively old, but neither am I a spring chicken anymore (or, more precisely, I can’t even pretend to be). Makes one wonder about life, though. Not that I’ve had a bad run. I have a pretty decent career, two lovely children, and generally an OK life. But I’ll never be a star athlete, and I should have published a novel by now. I guess this means I have to work so much harder in the coming five years.

Listening to: Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick by Ian Dury and the Blockheads

I haven’t ridden a train in Sweden for ages. Am now sitting on the X2000 from Stockholm, and through fortune’s grace, in 1st class. An interesting experience. The seats are comfortable, the internet is free, and I was just served a very passable lunch. I have three hours to work, and there’s even an electric outlet (something one nowadays needs to hunt for for more than an internet access point).

Free internet and coffee is not a big cost for a company, but one feels remarkably cared for when these things are present. The question is, why aren’t these made available in 2nd class? It makes no real economic sense to deprive people of something that would cost approx. 19 cents per user. Damn, most people would be happy to pay a euro extra for this…

Why can’t people accept that internet access and coffee should be seen as part of the infrastructure, not “extras”?

The Hidden Enterprise Culture – Entrepreneurship in the Underground Economy
Colin C. Williams
Cheltenham, UK: Edwar Elgar, 2006
xi + 263 pp.

It is almost impossible to dislike this book. As the field of entrepreneurship studies in such a dire need of serious, critical engagements with the whole potential field, rather than the ideologically delimited part most focus on, this book serves as an important reminder of what is yet to be done, and the possibilities that remain. By taking the underground seriously, rather than just moralizing about it, Colin Williams presents a fascinating and stimulating piece of scholarship, one which hopefully will at least partially shake the field out of its intellectual complacency. The book isn’t perfect, as books rarely are, but it represents the kind of serious inquiry that could change the way in which entrepreneurship studies is usually seen outside of the field – i.e. as a politically motivated sham of either trite generalities or scholastic inanities – and re-energize the discussion therein.

The book sets out to inquire into the entrepreneurial underground economy, seeing this as an area which is legitimate to study if not necessarily to engage in. Noting that most commentators have treated it as an aberration and a pathology, and focused on different ways in which it could be combated, Williams looks to the fact that many (if not most) entrepreneurs have at least some experience of gray or off-the-books exchanges and endeavors. This is the hidden enterprise culture of the book’s title, and Williams goes on to analyze this as a field of economic and organizational behavior unto itself, with fascinating results. He does not completely escape the procedural trap, and unfortunately spends a lot of time delving into possibilities for government policy, when this could have been better spent by enriching the empirical cases, but one is prepared to forgive this as the book so clearly is doing important work.

Part I of the book details the ways in which both entrepreneurship studies and research into the underground economy has turned a blind eye to to the notion of “underground entrepreneurship”, and how this myopia has reduced and hindered intellectual development in both. Many of the arguments put forth in this part have been formulated before, but Williams has done us a great service in summarizing and collecting them, and it constitutes a great read. One comes away from these chapters amazed at how stunted the discourse has been, and the author makes a most convincing case for the necessity to inquire into the linkages between entrepreneurship and underground economies.

Part II then goes on to portray and discuss the hidden enterprise culture. This is the most important part of the book, and is simply dazzling. I cannot over-emphasize the sheer pleasure of reading an intellectually aware and analytically rigorous text on an important but almost completely ignored aspect of entrepreneurship. I want to draw a comparison to Dick Hobbs’s masterly Doing the Business, and Sudhir Venkatesh’s recent Off the Books, both amazing ethnographies, and suggest that it is through such case-studies (rather than the tired accolades to the usual IT-startups) that entrepreneurship studies can be developed as a serious social science. Williams combines surveys, cases, portraits and stringent analysis to present a compelling picture of an ignored economic culture, and this section alone is worth the price of the book.

Part III and IV discusses possible policies for dealing with the hidden enterprise culture, presenting the different options for deterring gray economies and potential initiatives for utilizing the energies contained therein. These parts are no doubt important, but they aren’t quite as fascinating and pressing as the earlier parts. I can see their importance as e.g. a report for government, but as a scholar I would have rather seen part I and II extended and these parts substantially shortened.

The book is well-written, even if it sometimes lapses into a dry and bureaucratic tone. There are parts that read like an official report rather than a piece of research, but one is (again) prepared to excuse such minor blemishes. Overall, this is important work, and it suggests that we need to radically alter the reading lists in the courses on entrepreneurship in our universities. It is a serious book, written by a serious thinker who is also a fine scholar, and I contend that the book should be required reading for every single researcher in the field – and I bloody well mean it! Succinctly put, we need more books like this, and should be thankful to Colin Williams for having written it. Kudos!

Attached, a short essay remembering Jean Baudrillard, from Svenska Dagbladet.

OK, this is just too much. See link below, see if you can guess my ire. Well, I never!

Overheard in New York | Extreme Makeover: Wednesday One-Liners Edition

The great gang around Sriram Krishnan are arranging an event on Web 2.0 known as hej! 2007 in Stockholm. Eric Wahlforss will be speaking! Sounds like a great thing, should be great fun.

So, flying back from Amsterdam, I had to check my luggage. I happened to have a nunchuck in my bag (as one does), and couldn’t get it through security. So I put it in cargo. Stupidly, I’d left one of my phones in there (forgot the damn thing), and obviously it got robbed. It was a nice bag (a Samsonite Pro-DLX Rolling Tote), it had a EuroBonusGold-tag, and a Priority label. Basically, it was a blinking “Rob This”-sign.

So, I lost my phone. Closed the number, try not to think of the integrity issue, hope the bloody thing is at least properly wiped. Some good things, though. I’ll now be rid of one phone number, and can get another one only a few people will have (keeping it secret, as well). I got around to changing my passwords, which was overdue. Try to see the silver lining. Still bugged about it, though.