Louise Chalkley received the award for best article presented at the RENT conference about entrepreneurship.

She wrote an article about the theory of recognizing opportunities.She argues that this theory should be revised. From her experience as an entrepreneur she analysed that identifying opportunities isn’t critical to the venture creation process. Instead the empirical evidence she found suggests that nascent entrepreneurs in particular operate in penurious environment, whereby ongoing creative problem solving is critical to the survival of their new venture.
She suggests that a practice-based framework for the venture creation process may provide further scope for the theoretical development of entrepreneurship.
In her article Louise tells how she researched the data she gathered during the period she was working as the founder of a fast growing firm. During this period she kept diaries and made a lot of notes she archived and used later on in her research.
At the end of her article she states:
“Creative problem solving is a critical part of learning how to gain control of a new organisation, not opportunity identification, recognition or creation…”
I really liked the article while preparing myself for the conference. I even liked it more after the way she presented her paper at the university in Bodo. So I was very happy that the reviewers of ECSB awarded her for this piece of work. A great ending of this conference in a small town far away in Norway!