Emancipated Entrepreneuring in the Nascent Commercial Spaceflight Industry: Authoring Ecosystems by Branson, Diamandis, and Musk

The emancipatory perspective on entrepreneuring examines the activities undertaken by entrepreneurs to bring about change. Business ecosystems are a mode of organizing economic production that differs from markets and organizational hierarchies, and is increasingly associated with collaborative innovation, opportunities for technology entrepreneurship, and rapid technological progress. This thesis examines how business ecosystems feature in the emancipation actions of entrepreneurs in the commercial spaceflight industry. The research design is a case-based event study of three entrepreneurs and their space ventures: Sir Richard Branson and Virgin Galactic, Peter Diamandis and XPRIZE, and Elon Musk and SpaceX. Results show that business ecosystems can be emancipating – as a means for escaping constraints, in the authoring activities to enact change, and in making declarations to mobilize support, manage interpretations, and motivate change from others. Contributions include a formal operational specification for event studies using the emancipation perspective that can be applied in other field settings.