The nature of entrepreneurs’ engagement with a layered rural context

Rural entrepreneurship has recently been reconceptualised as engagement with contexts. However, our knowledge of the nature of this engagement remains limited. In this paper, we explore the engagement of entrepreneurs hired as part-time industry mentors at regional universities. Using a qualitative approach based on grounded theory and self-ethnography, we interviewed five entrepreneurs in adjunct positions and their academic counterparts at universities in Northern Norway. We also relied on our own experience as academics collaborating with industry mentors. Our findings demonstrate that the entrepreneurs’ engagement encompasses and combines the business, academic and spatial layers of the entrepreneurs’ context and that it unfolds in the form of knowledge-sharing practices. Our study makes several contributions. First, it contributes to the limited empirical research on rural entrepreneurship as engagement with context and gives a novel and detailed account of how this engagement unfolds in practice. Second, it contributes by adding new insight into how entrepreneurs relate to a layered rural context. In particular, we emphasise that the knowledge-sharing practices help in crossing boundaries between the layers. Third, our study offers some practical contributions for rural entrepreneurs, policymakers and actors in regional innovation systems and regional universities.