Six Memos for a Curious and Imaginative Future Scholarship in Entrepreneurship Studies

In this introductory article, we explain the purpose of this special issue that is set up as a Festschrift in honour of the (editorial) work of Bengt Johannisson. Inspired by Italo Calvino's Six Memos for the Next Millennium, the special issue is structured along six essays that are both commemorative and affirmative, that is we use the work of Johannisson to explore fresh waters and invent new practices of performing scholarship in entrepreneurship studies. In the special issue, six practices are proposed that keep entrepreneurship studies imaginative: othering words and concepts, exploring boundaries, affecting community scholarship and entrepreneurship education, contextualizing through participation and reconceptualizing method. In the conclusion, we emphasize for the future the importance of a curious and imaginative scholarship in entrepreneurship, a utopian movement that attracts investment of intensity and mobilizes the idiosyncrasies of the multiple.