STUDY | Communities as entrepreneurs – from local initiatives to global movement

How can local communities create and spread opportunities for sustainable small businesses? That’s the question at the heart of a new study examining the Finnish initiative REKO – Real Consumption. Through an 11-year case study, the researchers show how ordinary people, rather than individual entrepreneurs, can drive sustainable change through self-organization and shared responsibility.

REKO is based on direct contact between local producers and consumers. Through social media, customers can order food directly from producers and pick it up at an agreed location. The model reduces transportation, strengthens local businesses and creates a fairer and more transparent food supply chain. What makes REKO unique is that it has no formal organization, ownership or governance – it is driven by local groups working together based on shared values.

The research, recently published in the academic journal Journal of Business Venturing, shows how such communities create and scale entrepreneurial opportunities. Three mechanisms are at the center: infrastructure shift, where the initiative moves from physical location to digital platform; nurturing, where values and knowledge of local products are shared across regions; and sustaining infrastructure, which allows more sustainable small businesses to grow over time.

The study challenges the image of the entrepreneur as a single actor driving change. Instead, it shows that communities can be entrepreneurs themselves – identifying needs, developing solutions and creating long-term opportunities without forming formal organizations. Central to the process is what the researchers call opportunity confidence – the confidence that value-based opportunities can grow and sustain over time.

The results show that local groups can contribute to sustainable development and social impact without large investments. By organizing producer-consumer relationships in an open, decentralized and cost-free way, communities can create robust systems for local production and consumption.

The study contributes to research on community-based entrepreneurship by shifting the focus from the individual to the collective. It shows how local initiatives can grow into global movements – and how communities, through self-organization and shared values, can become a transformative force in entrepreneurship for sustainable development.

More about the article and the authors
The article Big things from small beginnings: Creating and scaling community-based oppotunities for sustainable small and local business in the Journal of Business Venturing is written by Man Yang and Maria Ehrnström-Fuentes, both Assistant Professors of Management and Organization at the Hanken School of Economics, and Joakim Wincent, Professor of Entrepreneurship and Innovation at the Hanken School of Economics and at the University of St. Gallen.