Black Entrepreneurship

Overview

Black entrepreneurship plays an increasingly important, and increasingly paradoxical, role in contemporary American society. On one hand, it is a vehicle for economic advancement, exemplified through inspiring instances of resolute agency, heroic achievement, and storied successes that collectively reinforce the notion that entrepreneurship can be a potent, emancipatory force of social and economic mobility. On the other hand, it is also a vivid illustration of race-related challenges, chronicled through an abundance of empirical evidence that reveals the extent to which Black entrepreneurs navigate a racialized entrepreneurial context — one in which formidable constraints arise throughout the entrepreneurial journey.

The paper develops a multilevel process model organized around seven stages of the Black entrepreneur journey: (i) initial interest, (ii) opportunity recognition, (iii) nascent entrepreneurial behavior, (iv) resource acquisition, (v) resource coordination, (vi) value capture, and (vii) innovation. At each stage, distinct constraints emerge: a racialized context, entrepreneurial self-efficacy, access, legitimacy, scalability, ambidexterity, and fatigue. The collective impact of these constraints comprises the racialization of Black entrepreneurship across the business venturing lifecycle.

Contribution to the Research Program

This work anchors the Resource Mobilization & Business Model Design stream by foregrounding a critical question: whose entrepreneurial reasoning gets supported, and whose gets structurally undermined? The concept of constrained agency — the recognition that structural inequities limit but do not eliminate Black entrepreneurs' ability to exercise their potential — provides essential nuance. Despite persistent constraints, Black entrepreneurs do exercise agency in ways that meaningfully transform the structures that hinder their progression. The paper points to both policy-based and market-based cures that better fulfill entrepreneurship's emancipatory potential.

Key Insights

• Seven distinct constraints emerge across seven stages of the venturing lifecycle, creating a pattern of compounding racialization
• Constrained agency is not the same as no agency — Black entrepreneurs exercise transformative agency despite persistent structural barriers
• The mechanisms of racialization remain under-theorized, leading to an incomplete understanding of why success is more elusive for historically marginalized entrepreneurs
• The framework offers explicit, multilevel, lifecycle conceptualization applicable to other historically marginalized groups
• The paper points to policy-based and market-based cures that better fulfill entrepreneurship's emancipatory potential