Findings: Interdefinition of economic rationales

If the business plan is to work as an interessement device, it must incorporate the problematization of the actors while extending and materializing the hypothesis made by the science-students, who want to become entrepreneurs:

 That their invention can become a technology

 That the market and customer exists

 That an organization can be profitable filling that gap

 that they as a team can create that organization.

Without the above context the legal contracts would lose most if not all of their val-ue. The interessement device should to be successfully confirmed though the prob-lematizations‘ validity, and the alliances that are implied by the business plan.

Different actors are enrolled by different actions. Some are mainly enrolled by the interessement device of our investigation, the Business Plan, but they must also view the active participation in the Venture Cup Competition process, the progress of sales pitching technique, and technical prowess of the science-students as part of a start-up‘s team positive due-diligence.

”the interessement helps corner the entities to be enrolled. In addition, it attempts to interrupt all potential competing associations and to construct a system of alliances.” (Callon 1986)

Alliances are, however, not stable until enrollment is a stable identity of the actor.

This only happens when the actor problematization seizes to be a question and be-comes a statement. e.g.‖ The start-up will be a profitable investment‖. Only if this is the conclusion of the investors, can the business plan, pitch and start-up‘s organiza-tion be deemed successful in its network.

From an accountant point of view what is remarkable, however, is that the trials of strength and negotiations are centered on different parts of the business model pre-sented to justify the NPV and cash-flow of the science based start-up.

Investors‘ enrollment requires that they accept their designated roles in the network as funding and valuation experts, and that they act on their expertise by delegating resources in the start-up‘s organization.

Science-students on the other hand must accept the role as accountants-in-the-wild, and as the ones responsible for organizing the efficient merging of means and oppor-tunity. In short they must accept an identity as entrepreneurs.

The negotiation surrounding the problematization ‖what is a profitable start-up?‖

happens through a number of exchanges of information between science-students and a jury that play the role of investor vetting the business models assumptions.

The hypothesis of profitability and innovation will be challenged within the start-up’s existing industry structures, and the sub-problematization ‖Is this an efficient solution to this market?‖ and‖ does this business model incorporate the mega trends we believe will shape our industries‘ future?‖ can be answered in a number of

differ-ent ways and still be ‖correct‖, as long as it translates in a form that is useful for the actor overcoming her obstacle-problem.

Another obstacle-problem that favors translation into accounting is the need for the professional investor to be able to report his own performance to his own network of superiors and backers. He will have to argue his investment choice and risk taking as strategic and calculated. To report this he will need to benchmark with other in-vestments, and compare his competitor‘s oranges with his apples. So in his negotia-tion with the science-students there is also a search for solunegotia-tions to his network’s obstacle-problem of‖ Is this the most attractive investment ratio?‖ and‖ Is this risk realistic?‖

Analysis of the BP submitted to Venture Cup Competition Jury:

The hypothesis attempted to be proved in the BP: That there is a market, and it is a profitable Business model to support the development of a science-based invention.

(for instance large file sharing.)

By framing what Information is lacking to convince investors and other actors, we will get a context of the industry and the needs of other actors. The interaction we wish to investigate is the translation of an Invention into an attractive start-up, the organization of the network surrounding the start-up (BP), and an account of how it was facilitated.

Are the spokesmen and negotiation representative, when mobilizing allies?

The negotiation and incorporation of a BP is a useful proxy for other investors‘ ob-stacle-problems, if the interessement device of the business plan is representative in its translation of idea and market reality. The interlocutors (the science-students) must be convinced by the generality of investors‘ demands for information and of the Business Plan‘s standardization.

The symmetry is perfect and final when handing in the Business Plan to the Venture cup Jury, but in the real world iteration is a constant for achieving success as a start-up.

Several versions of the BP are made to suit different stakeholders, some that invest capital and time, like the Business people, others, such as Professors, are lending prestige, knowledge and access to labs and other students‘ time.

The entrepreneur is in perfect alignment with the start-up‘s goal, as long as she sees herself as such, and if she returns to her identity as a science student, the decision to

disvest and detangle herself from the start-up network becomes possible. However the entrepreneur is in perfect alignment with the investor‘s identity in wanting only to participate in a start-up that ―has profit potential, and can be expected to bring the invention to market‖

Is closure reached where representatives are deemed beyond question?

Depends on if the experience, the insight of a customer pain and potential market combined with a technological solution, of the investors/ entrepreneur translatable to others in the network

To control the value assessment the start-up must set up believable controls:

‖The purpose of a management control system is to help management focus on the core business opportunity, to support resource allocation, and to provide timely corrective action whenever necessary. In a high-risk environment, such as that within which new economy firms operate, the importance of properly design con-trol systems would seem critical” (Sjoblom 2003)

Some general trends and close, but not perfect, examples from the real world need to be proven to be both relevant and emulative in the BP for Venture Cup. The main problematization ―will this be a succesfulll start-up‖ can be turned into a number of sub-questions that problematizes different theories ‖what is the potential market for the invention?‖, ―who can the start-up partner with?‖and ―can the science-student be transformed to an Entrepreneur‖.

By tracing the problematization of start-ups, science students and investors in Ven-ture Cup 2010 through ANT we can then in the next part explore what accounting a start-up BP must incorporate and compare the findings in chapters 4 to the empiri-cal narrations of how science based start-ups have translated a rationale for new market size and IP strategy.

6 Venture Cup’s use of Accounting