Abstract
JOURNAL OF TEACHING IN TRAVEL & TOURISM 2019, VOL. 19, NO. 1, 79–92 https://doi.org/10.1080/15313220.2018.1560533 Stuart Reid Department of Service Management and Service Studies, Lund University, Helsingborg, Sweden ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY Received 17 July 2018 The paper uses an unconventional story format to report on three Accepted 16 November 2018 cases of tourism innovation, using the literary genre of nonsense to also contemplate narrative expression in academic research. KEYWORDS Case materials principally derive from open in-depth interviews. Entrepreneurship; The analysis highlights the importance of knowledge in innova- entrepreneuring; innovation; tion, also illuminating an important relationship to entrepreneurial tourism; narrative; story-telling passion. Notably, passionate interest inspires a learning habit that builds enabling stocks of knowledge; these knowledge stocks render the necessary technical knowledge and situational aware- ness to see and seize innovation opportunity. By using their vast stock of knowledge, entrepreneurs can identify needed resources and know-how and ways to fill in the gaps. In prosaic terms, this ingrained learning habit depicts a story of incremental innovation at personal scale. Use of the literary nonsense genre overtly posi- tions narrative as a rhetorical form, inviting contemplation of alternative forms of scholarly expression. In this respect, novel forms of expression open the way to new insight into social phenomena. Polyvocality enhances our knowledge of the social world. Epilogue This paper departs from the customary cannons of academic writing to offer a conventionally unconventional tale. It is a tale about tales or, more accurately, a tale of tales retold; after all, every story “includes the words of others” (de Montoya, 2004, p. 77). Naturally, names have been changed to insulate identities; else all is as true as subjective human existence permits. So, in effect, it is neither a work of fact nor a fiction but sits somewhere in-between; embracing the epistemology of constructionism (Pernecky, 2012) as it must, as “even the simplest narratives are complex constructions, selective accounts of selective events” (de Montoya, 2004, p. 77). Hark that the preced- ing remark does not mark a retreat into relativism; rather, saying such simply serves to signal that all knowledge is “transactional, subjectivist, value mediated and co-created” (Ateljevic, Morgan, & Pritchard, 2008, p. 951), rendering the relevant revelation that “all knowledge is partially true” (Ateljevic et al., 2008, p. 950). CONTACT Stuart Reid stuart.reid@ism.lu.se Department of Service Management and Service Studies, Lund University, Helsingborg, Sweden This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article. © 2018 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way. 80 S. REID The protagonist in this tale of tales is an inquisitive social science researcher whom I have, not arbitrarily, named Alice. The name is a nod to the heroine of the 1865 fantasy novel Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, written by Charles Dodgson but penned under the pseudonym of Lewis Carroll (Carroll, 2004[1866]). In that tale, Alice falls through a magical rabbit hole to enter a weird world inhabited by odd anthropomorphic creatures, from which point Carroll creatively unfolds Alice’s sense-making journey home. In this respect, Carroll’s Alice is an apt avatar for all social science researchers, who also plunge headlong into peculiar “social worlds” (Unruh, 1980) and subsequently strive to make sense of the strange sights they see. As a prime example of the genre of literary nonsense (Lecercle, 2002), Carroll’s fantastic tale furnishes a fine trope apposite to the overarching purpose of this paper, namely, to unsettle settled conventions of academic writing. Notably, nonsense is a “conservative- revolutionary genre” (Lecercle, 2002, p. 2) paradoxically conserving and undoing conven- tion through a delicate interplay of deviance and conformity, rhetorically achieved through a playful mixture of irreverence and deference. As Lecercle (2002, pp. 2–3) explains, the nonsense genre is “deeply respectful of authority in all its forms: rules of grammar, maxims of conversation and of politeness, the authority of the canonical author of the parodied text….mixed with…the liberated, light-fantastic, nonsensical aspect…where rules and maxims appear to be joyously subverted”. In the current endeavour, nonsense is used as a rhetorical device to deconstruct the cannons of academic writing by respectfully ridicul- ing them. In particular, by purposely taking certain academic writing conventions to a ludicrous extreme, the constructed character of academic narratives is laid bare. However, the rhetorical device of nonsense does not merely render criticism; the light- hearted approach to the deconstructive endeavour instead serves both to entertain and to enliven the reader to wider possibilities. In the tradition of the Frankfurt school of critical theorists, the teleological end is to elevate transformational possibility (Dant, 2003). In this paper, the deconstruction seeks to provoke contemplation of the hegemonic rhetorical form typical of much academic writing, not merely for the sake of critique, but to elevate the transformative idea that scholars may choose to read and write academic narratives differently. This tale of Alice’s wonderment seeks to advance these wider notions, while also offering insights into innovation. The basic point common to both themes is that it is worthwhile to wonder if there are other ways to do things. Wonderment is the kernel of innovation in any realm and it is in this liminal space that this tale will play. To wit, and without further ado, this Alice falls through the metaphorical rabbit-hole to enter the strange world of tourism, wherein she meets three rare creatures – entrepreneurs that have managed marvellous feats of innovation. Each eagerly tells Alice an innovation tale. Still, since “tales have to tell themselves” (Smith & Anderson, 2004, p. 142), I must insist that you conform to the notion of nonsense by contravening convention – divesting any desire to digest all the details at the start, but instead dally and get-the-gist gradually, even ethnographically, by “going along” ( e.g., Kusenbach, 2003) and joining-in Alice’sjourney. A beginning One day, Alice came to be intrigued by the topic of tourism innovation. There was no momentous moment as such; rather, her interest just drifted to mind with the dawning realisation that “innovation” had, by all accounts, become terribly topical in tourism. JOURNAL OF TEACHING IN TRAVEL & TOURISM 81 Suddenly, at least as it seemed to her at the time, talk of tourism innovation had positively permeated the public discourse: news stories (Sherry, 2015), industry confer- ences and awards (QTIC, 2015; TTNQ, 2015; UNWTO, 2015), government websites and policy documents (Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development [OECD], 2006, 2010, 2011; RET, 2009) all extolled the virtues of innovation and exhorted firms, and destinations, to innovate. With her curiosity positively, if not profoundly, pricked, Alice promptly did what any social science researcher did – she peeked at the weighty wisdom accumulated in the bountiful body of academic literature. Here, somewhat to her surprise, she started to see that the fervent industry interest in innovation seemingly did enjoy some support in academic thought; wise academicians indicated that innovation was good for firms and the surrounding economic systems they inhabited (e.g., Drucker, 1985; Johannessen, Olsen, & Lumpkin, 2001; Porter, 1990; Tidd & Bessant, 2013). In fact, innovation had, it seemed, long been deemed a driver of firm and economic performance; leastways, since Schumpeter (1934) styled the entrepreneur as a catalytic agents of creative destruction. Now, anyhow, most modern pundits appeared to agree that innovation inevitably instilled competitive advantage – a truism evidently echoed in Porter’s oft-quoted quip that “Companies achieve competitive advantage through acts of innovation” (1990, p. 74). At this point, Alice thought that the logic of it seemed, as usually it did, utterly unassailable. Although, Alice soon saw innovation was not all plain sailing. In fact, it was a rather risky road. By all indications, innovation was “disruptive, risky and costly” (Tidd & Bessant, 2013, p. 109) and the innovation process was not fancy free but was in fact “fraught with uncertainty” (OECD, 2005, p. 30), fairly “like driving in the fog” (Tidd & Bessant, 2013, p. 330). Indeed, any innovation effort “could cost many resources” (Sundbo, 2002, p. 29) and firms could even “innovate and die” (Hall & Williams, 2008, p. 29)! Understandably unsettled, Alice now wondered if innovation was such a good idea after all. Still, several sensible people said firms needed innovation to simply survive, let alone thrive, in this world of tourism (e.g., Cooper, 2006; Hall & Williams, 2008; Hjalager, 2010; Sundbo, Orfila-Sintes, & Sørensen, 2007; Weidenfeld, Williams, & Butler, 2010); it had, for instance, been said that “firms’ competitiveness depends on their innovativeness” (Sundbo et al., 2007, p. 88) and so, ergo, competitive escalation compelled “innovative behaviour from firms in order to compete” (Sundbo, 2002, p. 66). In long and in short, it seemed innovation in tourism was “crucial to the establishment, growth and survival of firms” (Hall & Williams, 2008, p. 24). Reasoning this through, Alice reasonably reached the view that, regardless of real risks, not innovating indicated a road to ruin. “What a dastardly dilemma!” she declared. That perilous prognosis prompted Alice to seek some sort of solution. She set off spiritedly, speculating that “There must be some magic formula for innovation!” Alas, her hopes were dashed by a devilish dearth of research. Although innovation research was well advanced in manufacturing where “innovation theory has its roots” (Drejer, 2004, p. 551), the research was scantier in services (Drejer, 2004; Flikkema, Jansen, & Van Der Sluis, 2007) and in tourism it was troublesomely thin (Hjalager, 2010;Sipe& Testa, 2009; Williams, 2008): tourism innovation research was a “young phenomenon” (Hjalager, 2010, p. 8) and there had been “surprisingly little research” (Hall & Williams, 82 S. REID 2008, p. 4). Needless to say, neither the meaning nor means of tourism innovation were really very clear (Hall & Williams, 2008;Hjalager, 1994, 2002, 2009, 2010;Sipe& Testa, 2009). At this point, Alice thought innovation looked a bit like “buzzword”, just like Hjalager (2010, p. 1) had previously said. Presently, Alice questioned if industry’s quest for innovation was possibly the epitome of the idiomatic “fool’s errand”– striving after something without knowing what it was or how it worked seemed such a temerarious thing to do! Reasonably reasoning that “If one was to find anything one had to first know what it looked like”, Alice resolved to “start-from-scratch”, so to speak and nut-out what “innova- tion” was. It proved to be a tough nut too. By and by, she detected that most descrip- tions concerned “the concept of newness” (Johannessen et al., 2001, p. 20) and novelty was the “key distinguishing feature” (Slappendel, 1996, p. 107). The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) said as much, solemnly stating it such: “By definition all innovations must contain a degree of novelty” (OECD, 2005). “Alas, all that did not seem very helpful” thought Alice, as she wistfully wondered what “novelty” looked like. It seemed such a slippery concept! After all, it had not seldom been said that innovation involved different degrees of change – from small and incremental to radical and disruptive (Abernathy & Clark, 1985; Damanpour, 1996; Hjalager, 1994, 2002; Schumpeter, 1934; Tidd & Bessant, 2013). The notion of newness was nebulous too since novelty was naturally “in the eye of the beholder” (Tidd & Bessant, 2013, p. 30). Johannessen et al. (2001, p. 23) precisely put the problem thus the question of “‘how new’ was linked to the question of ‘new to whom?’” This basically meant that any given innovation could be “new-to-the-firm”, “new-to-the-market” or “new-to-the-world” (OECD, 2005; Tidd & Bessant, 2013). Moreover, many mentioned that innovation was more than a mere outcome, but was a process with at least two parts too, broadly constituted by creativity/invention and implementation/exploitation (e.g., Damanpour, 1996; Fuglsang & Sundbo, 2002; Hjalager, 2002, 2010; Kanter, 1996; Sundbo, 2002; Tidd & Bessant, 2013). Alice diligently digested this deluge of detail thus: innovation did not exist unless “novelty” was put into effect (Hjalager, 2002, 2010; Tidd & Bessant, 2013); new-to-the-firm innovation (OECD, 2005; Tidd & Bessant, 2013) was “the minimum entry level” (OECD, 2005, p. 57); and an innovative firm was one that had “implemented at least one innovation” (OECD, 2005, p. 58). “Well, that seems to have settled that!” she surmised, happy to be making some headway at last. With the “what” sufficiently settled, Alice turned to the trouble of “how”. Here, she shortly sighted specifications spanning the spectrum of structure and agency, with explications spanning individuals and organizations through to the institutional frame- works surrounding their sum. For instance, there were “systems of innovation” (Edquist, 2005), constituted in tourism by “the economic structure and institutional set-up affect- ing learning and innovation in tourism firms” (Sundbo et al., 2007, p. 93), and Hjalager (2009) even adroitly applied that to events! Others contemplated the importance of networks and collaborative arrangements as repositories of resources assisting innova- tion in tourism (e.g., Liburd, Carlsen, & Edwards, 2013; Novelli, Schmitz, & Spencer, 2006; Sundbo et al., 2007). Others acknowledged knowledge as an additive activating tourism innovation processes (e.g., Hjalager, 2002, 2009; Weidenfeld et al., 2010). Alice’s head spun – all the different vantages were interesting and insightful but she discovered, just JOURNAL OF TEACHING IN TRAVEL & TOURISM 83 as her namesake had done, that “being so many different sizes in a day is very confusing” (Carroll, 2004[1866], p. 60)! The nub of the rub was “How to look at the how of it?” After ruminating on it, a relieved Alice recalled the relevant revelation that entrepreneurs instigated innovation by instituting ideas (Drucker, 1985; Schumpeter, 1934; Tidd & Bessant, 2013). So all she had to do was find some! It all sounded simple, until Alice careened into a confounding contradiction that even though tourism was “a phenomenon characterized by immense innovativeness” (Hjalager, 2010, p. 1), evolving new products and processes over time (Hjalager, 2010; OECD, 2010), it appeared that most firms were not very innovative (Hjalager, 2002, 2010; Sundbo et al., 2007; Weidenfeld et al., 2010). “‘Curiouser and curiouser!’ cried Alice” (Carroll, 2004[1866], p. 15), just as her namesake had when she was bedevilled by bewilderment. That is, though Alice had soundly surmised that it could be useful to appraise entrepreneurs in innovative tourism firms, the pithy practical problem of “How to find them?” had presently presented: Puzzling this puzzling puzzle, Alice pounced upon a plausible possibility: “Perhaps I could ask people in firms that have won accolades for tourism innovation”, she said. Though that proved positively easier said than done – as innovative tourism firms were, as it were, rather rare, it took some searching to find some! Thereafter, she said she should like to speak to someone who could recount “How the innovative idea came about?” And that was how the three tales of innovation came about! The three telling tales The tale of Charlie Charlie’s story started in 1976 when he decided to build a rainforest tourism attraction in a tropical wilderness in Australia. There and then, tourism was tiny. To make matters worse, Charlie’s attraction was far from town. So Charlie simply started a bus service too! Little by little, tourism grew; and thus Charlie’s businesses survived and prospered. A lot later, in 2004, Charlie bravely bought a half-share in a struggling butterfly sanctuary. It too was out of the town, now more like a city, so the busses were helpful here too. So it soon grew too. Then, in 2005, Charlie took another chance, taking up a lease over an indoor wildlife habitat dome atop a hotel in the heart of the now small city. But interest in the dome was low. So, in 2006, when Charlie began using busses for jungle tours, the wildlife dome was included as a stop along the way. This helped, but even so, interest in the dome remained depressingly low. Evidently it needed some “extra attraction to bring in more visitors”. An external dome climb presented a possibility, but that inkling idea (and everything else) was interrupted when the 2007 financial crisis caused a tourism slump. Some 4 years later, when tourism started to stop stuttering, Charlie decided it was time to take a trip, searching for ideas and inspiration. Charlie’s wondering wandering evidently worked wonders – shortly after his return, he simply “sat down and worked out a design for an entire adventure course inside the dome”. Charlie’s plan, completed in March 2011, included 65 ropes courses and zip lines, a free fall bungee, and an external dome climb offering panoramic views of the city. The plan was submitted to the municipality, gaining construction consent some 7 months later in October 2011. The 84 S. REID ensuing building work proved particularly challenging because the project was so peculiar: “basically retro-fitting…a glass house to be an adventure attraction”. The fire safety was terribly troublesome: “it was absolutely ludicrous, they treated it like and office…and it held us up for quite some time”. In contrast, operational commencement was simple and straightforward, thanks to Charlie’s expertise and experience. To con- clude, Charlie’s plan proved to be a great success, gaining innovation acclaim for implementing a challenge ropes course inside an immersive wildlife exhibition. The tale of Johnnie Johnnie founded his first firm in construction “building wharves and bridges”. So one day, Johnnie found himself leading a project to build an adventure climb on a river bridge in a big Australian city. Becoming increasingly intrigued by the tourism side of it, Johnnie started toying with transitioning into tourism. So he started “looking around [the city] to … identify any other opportunities”. Realizing that the remarkable river and riverside cliffs of the city were not really being used, Johnnie settled on “a concept that would allow people to enjoy the beauty of [city] and the river’s edge”. By and by, in 2005, he started a business offering adventure activities on the river and riverside cliffs. The business was a success, and within a few years he expanded it into outdoor and wellness activities on a nearby island where cruise ship passengers visited a resort. Noticing his activities on the island, the cruise ship operator asked Johnnie if he could come up with some ideas for ships. So Johnnie set off to the ships, to watch and chat with passengers and crew, getting a “feel” for the ships and how adventure activities could work. Consequently, Johnnie crafted a comprehensive concept delivering new adventure activities using the architecture of the ship. The main challenge was “convin- cing the Captain and the ship’s staff that it’s a good idea to create something…that could add to the list of risks and accidents on-board”. The safety record of Johnnie’s other businesses helped him here, as did his knowledge of state-of-the-art safety gear, honed by his habit of wandering the world “looking at different systems and different places”. Consequently, the management of the cruise line concurred with his concept, consent- ing to construction on one ship. Johnnie’s extensive experience in establishing similar adventure activities, albeit on land, made the shipboard implementation straightfor- ward. Pleased by the plentiful passenger plaudits, and a perfect safety record, the management of the cruise line subsequently extended the concept to several other ships. Johnnie justly won innovation acclaim for crafting new experiences for cruise ship passengers by using the ships’ architecture to create adventure parks at sea. The tale of Jennie Jennie’s story began 15 years ago when she, as a veterinarian and marine biologist, and Paulie, another marine biologist, were asked to care for some sick turtles. Jennie and Paulie were initially able to use an old aquarium, but it was only a temporary arrange- ment and they needed to find a permanent place. Hearing of this, a local business owner offered them use of a building in town, and this became their new base. And so it went, with them caring for a few sick or injured turtles that people would bring in: “we used to get 4–5 turtles every year…just the two of us doing it, we got another couple of volunteers JOURNAL OF TEACHING IN TRAVEL & TOURISM 85 on board and we got a few more turtles over the years”. For a while, all went well enough; until freakishly bad weather triggered a mass turtle stranding far exceeding the capacity of Jennie’s little facility. Horrified that hundreds of endangered turtles died, Jennie determined to get a larger facility; however, having no site and no resources, it was merely an important idea. Luckily, one day, another local business owner said Jennie could use a site that they owned on a nearby island; and “so the idea was hatched that we build over there”. Although she still had no money or resources, she started working on it anyway, simply “making do” with whatever she “could beg or borrow”. Progress was painfully slow until a chance meeting with a local politician fortuitously furnished fabulous aid in the form of earthmoving equipment: “One day I ran into [politician] and I said…“We really need your help”. And he said “Ok, what do you need?” And I said, “A Bobcat would be great”… and on the barge next week was a Bobcat! That made a lot of difference … we could clear large amounts of land which otherwise would have taken years”. The lack of financial resources made things hard but Jennie persevered because she passionately believed these endangered tropical turtles “needed somebody to look after them, and that was us”. Many, if not most, in the local community saw things the same way, seeing the turtles as a barometer of the health of reef. The topicality of the tropical turtles saw Jennie interviewed on television one day, whereupon she took the chance to simply say “we really need workers and tradespeople”. Her request rendered a remarkable response, with many volunteering to help. From then on, whenever she needed help, she would just place an ad in a local newspaper and “…plumbers and electricians…and carpenters….would ring up and say ‘We’d love to come and help! What can we do?’” In this way, the new facility got built and the rehabilitation work got underway in 2012. The rehabilitation success rates were soon among the highest in the country, largely thanks to the dedicated volunteers that Jennie tirelessly trained. Thereafter, Jennie started tours to educate people about turtles and the rehabilitation work; soon a steady stream of tourists, students and researchers started coming. The tours engaged these visitors in conservation behaviour, furnishing funds for the facility. In conclusion, Jennie was later lauded, an innovation prize awarded, for so effectively combining turtle tourism experi- ences with turtle conservation and research. An end The fantastic tales all fascinated Alice; after all, Jennie, Johnnie and Charlie had all managed to do something new! In one way, each tale traced a master plot of a Quest (Kent, 2015), wherein “some major incident” sparked a search for a “person, place, or thing” (2015, p. 486) with the action tracing the three parts of the uncertain start, confrontation of stern challenges, all culminating in a triumphant win. Here, historical happenings clearly had inspired Jennie, Johnnie and Charlie to act, initially with only an inkling of an idea: Charlie did not know at the start what to do with the dome, Johnnie did not know what might work on ships, and Jennie had but a dim and distant vision! Each started anyway, seeking answers as they went, their trajectory taking twists and turns that shaped how things turned out. Each faced challenges too: for Charlie, fire safety was the worst; Johnnie faced challenges of safety and passenger risk; and Jennie faced the challenge of having no resources. In the end, they all defeated their difficulties, 86 S. REID triumphantly bringing their innovation to life. Each story was, of course, more than just an entertaining Quest tale: as situated local accounts, the stories depicted the messy lived practice of entrepreneurial life (de Montoya, 2004), sifted into some semblance of sense (Rae, 2000). In making sense, these entrepreneurial tales (Smith & Anderson, 2004) offered sense-giving too (e.g., de Montoya, 2004; Foss, 2004; Rae, 2000; Smith & Anderson, 2004). The quintessential question for Alice was thus “What could it all mean?” Musing on the meaning, Alice noticed that Jennie, Johnnie and Charlie all managed to get the resources they needed, but their ways and means diverged and differed. For one thing, Johnnie and Charlie relied mainly on internal resources, while Jennie needed lots of outside resource help. The character of it differed too: Jennie relied on extensive external relations (media, political and business) to requisition real resources; Johnnie cultivated a couple of contacts (senior management and shipboard staff) to aid investigation and development of the idea; and Charlie carefully sustained a single relation to the lessor of the dome to smooth the way. In this, the tales all jibed with the views of external relations as repositories of resources (e.g., Liburd et al., 2013; Sundbo et al., 2007; Weidenfeld et al., 2010). Notably, though, Alice also noticed that each of them adapted, relying on relations in different ways precisely as they needed. Knowing that knowledge was an important innovation ingredient (Hjalager, 2002, 2009, 2010; Liburd et al., 2013), Alice assessed the theme of know-how too. It was clear that Johnnie and Charlie had a habit of flitting off on fact-finding forays – clearly, a case of garnering knowledge from observation/imitation of distant, similar attractions to build stocks of knowledge, as Weidenfeld et al. (2010) had said. Jarringly, Jennie did not jaunt a jot, and Alice wondered if something was amiss until she recognized the reason – Jennie’s knowledge stock was replete! Adding it all together, it seemed these innovating entrepreneurs knew both what knowledge was needed and how to fill in any knowledge gaps. “Ah ha, it’s that adaptability again!” thought Alice, as a proverbial penny dropped. To wit, adaptability was throughout the common thing – be it resources, relationships or know-how, these entrepreneurs knew both what was needed and how to get it too. The must, as de Montoya (2004, p. 59) said, adapt so as to “process the events that flow . After further contemplation, Alice came to the inconclusive conclusion, just around them” as her namesake had, that “Here, was another puzzling question” (Carroll, 2004[1866], p. 120). The quintessential question was not that adaptability was needed but “How? Undoubtedly, it was their understanding of the innovation realm that enabled them to act as a vet and marine biologist experienced in turtle rehabilitation work, Jennie could conceive a facility that would work; Charlie’s long experience with nature attrac- tions had helped him revamp the disappointing dome; and Johnnie’s experience in land-based adventure activities helped him put such on ships. Passion was a potent potion in the mix. Pointedly, it was long-held passionate interest that had furnished the knowledge to act: Charlie had been involved in local nature tourism for over 40 years; Johnnie had enjoyed heights and outdoor activities for near-on 20 years; and Jennie had been directly involved in rehabilitation for over 15 years. So each story was the same: Jennie, Johnnie and Charlie succeeded in their quest because knew what was needed and how to fill-in gaps. All in all, Alice sussed it thus: they succeeded because they knew a great deal about their innovation arena; they knew a great deal because their passion inspired them to persist and learn. It was their accumulated stock of knowledge that made them masters JOURNAL OF TEACHING IN TRAVEL & TOURISM 87 of their art. That recast the stories in a new light. The detail of the “e-tail” (Smith & Anderson, 2004) was really how they chose to live and make a living (de Montoya, 2004), persisting in their “entrepreneuring” (Steyaert, 2007) and learning along the way (Rae, 2000). The master plot was not simply Quest, but was Discovery too (Kent, 2015). It was the story of incremental innovation at personal scale, an emergent process of entrepre- neurial “becoming” (Foss, 2004). Alice reflexively reflected that, that was not dissimilar to her own journey. Actually, Alice thought her namesake neatly summed it up: Dear, dear! How queer everything is to-day! And yesterday things went on just as usual. I wonder if I’ve been changed in the night? Let me think: was I the same when I got up this morning? I almost think I can remember feeling a little different. But if I’m not the same, the next question is, Who in the world am I? Ah, that’s the great puzzle! (Carroll, 2004 [1866], p. 19) “At least that was one way to look at it”, Alice supposed. Of course, as reconstruction of tales it was always just “a new story, a new construction, bearing some resemblance to what might be ‘out there’ in the world, ever unfolding, and inviting interpretation” (de Montoya, 2004, pp. 77–78). So it was more of an end than the end after all. Prologue People use stories to make sense of life (Bruner, 1991; Kent, 2015; Marris, 1997; Polkinghorne, 1988), and such stories often trace the well-known master plots that describe human life (Kent, 2015). As Kent (2015, p. 488) says: “the idea of humans as ‘homonarrans’ or story telling animals is well established”. So it is with stories describing entrepreneurship or the action of “entrepreneuring” (Steyaert, 2007). As Smith and Anderson (2004, p. 126) say, “narratives are a central means of communicating the entrepreneurial message”. In setting out the sense of how entrepreneurs live and make a living (de Montoya, 2004; Smith & Anderson, 2004), these narratives offer the sense of entrepreneuring. Pointedly, by listening to these “entrepreneurial tales”, (Smith & Anderson, 2004)itis possible to gain insight into the mundane and messy practices (de Montoya, 2004; Foss, 2004; Smith & Anderson, 2004) constituting “entrepreneuring” (Steyaert, 2007), including those activities culminating in innovation. As Rae (2000, p. 149) says “If we want to learn about people’s perception of their experiences, we have to listen to and make sense of their stories”. Of course, the “events cannot tell themselves” (Throgmorton, 2003, p. 131), so these stories are necessarily narrative constructions (Branston & Stafford, 2010; Throgmorton, 2003). As the sense-giving power of any narrative is a product of its construction (Sandercock, 2003), a prosaic view invites focus on sense-giving form (Steyaert, 2004). Notably, narratives are persuasive communications (Kent, 2015; Marris, 1997; Sandercock, 2003; Throgmorton, 1996, 2003) and storytelling is “necessarily political” (Throgmorton, 2003, p. 132). Authorial power is always at play (Jørgensen & Boje, 2010; Sandercock, 2003; Throgmorton, 2003). As Sandercock (2003, p. 21) says, “There is always an author … choosing which facts are relevant, what to describe, what to count, and in the assembling of these facts … an interpretation, either consciously or unconsciously, emerges”. Pointedly, the constructed-ness of any sense-making narrative necessarily 88 S. REID entails some political nonsense, and this is as much the case in academic writing as in any other narrative. Selection of rhetorical form is thus a political act. The politics of rhetoric are laid bare in the literary genre of nonsense, which challenges taken-for-granted literary and social norms. In this respect, literary nonsense mirrors the deconstructive thread in post- structuralism. As Williams (2005) explains, the assorted lines of post-structuralism all retain a programmatic core of deconstruction, mounting challenges from conceptual limits to expose and debunk the presumption of a stable core. In mounting its challenge from the liminal borders of deviance and conformity, the literary genre of nonsense provokes contemplation of taken-for-granted rhetorical (and social) conventions. As Lecercle (2002, p. 2) explains: “the negative prefixin ‘nonsense’… is the mark of a process not merely of denial but also of reflexivity, that non-sense is also metasense”. In contemplating a narrative of academic stories, one can simply say that the research story boils down to the simple proposition that if questions are sufficiently intriguing to merit research, then the answers are likely to be useful for others to know. Institutional scholars have long said as much in grounding the research effort in the basic premise that universities exist to generate and disseminate knowledge to benefit society (e.g., Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, 1967; Göransson, Maharajh, & Schmoch, 2009a, 2009b; Roper & Hirth, 2005). Yet even as social science seeks to elicit creative insights into the social phenomena it investigates, the rhetorical form of its expression has resisted creativity. Most scholarly research narratives employ the rheto- rical form of scientific objectivity grounded in the ideology of scientific rationalism. Even so, these versions of events remain constructed narratives, and in any narrative “there is no such thing as mere description or pure facts” (Sandercock, 2003, p. 21). The sense-giving power of any narrative owes much to the way in which it is told (Kent, 2015; Marris, 1997; Throgmorton, 2003). As Sandercock (2003, p. 20) says “story- telling … is not merely recounting events, but endowing them with meaning by commentary, interpretation and dramatic structure”. Consequently, Sandercock (2003) cautions for “alertness to the ways in which power shapes which stories get told, get heard and carry weight” (2003, p. 26). Consequently, the form of academic writing is never value-free, even if the “choice” is simply to default to the conventional rhetorical norm of scientific objectivity. ”; Jørgensen and Boje (2010) point to the dominance of “totalizing narratives describ- ing the hegemony of narrative over story as “a violent duality of oppositions” (2010, p. 256), they “deconstructive move” to “reorganize the textual field of narrative and story” and rebalance the two (2010, p. 256). We must remain mindful of the construction lest the narrative be reified as the only version of the story. The sense-giving knowledge of scholarly narrative is no less useful for its construction; however, the rhetoric of scientific objectivity does risk conflating the narratives into the full story. This may bring the unfortunate side effect limiting the advance of knowledge. In closing, I wish to “come clean”, so to speak and expose my authorial power the purposeful selection of subject and form. I have told this narrative in a most unconven- tional way. I acknowledge that the language and style of my nonsensical approach may render it too obscure and frivolous for some. This is unavoidable since my aim in doing so is to make this article so jarringly different to render it provocative. Form-wise, I have borrowed from the literary genre of nonsense to achieve a political end, namely; to JOURNAL OF TEACHING IN TRAVEL & TOURISM 89 expose the hegemonic rhetorical form of academic writing and thus point to transfor- mative potential; in particular, such perspective offers scope to enrich the practice of scholarship, and the teaching of scholarship, particularly regarding the essential practical matters of how scholars read and write. To achieve my various aims, I have deliberately done several things with this text. Most obviously, I have positioned Alice as the researcher re-constructing tales of innovation told by others. Not only is Alice the narrator, but she is the narrator of the narratives of others. Thus, in using the rhetorical form of nonsense, I have delib- erately elected to take the narrative construction of research writing to an even further extreme by removing the real author one step further, and I have also deliberately done this in a paradoxical way. In particular, I have used the fictional character of Alice to present the researcher as the central character in the research narrative while also using Alice to hide my identity as the hidden author. In this way, I have deliberately sought to provoke readers to wonder “whoisspeakinghere?” My use of the opening and closing titles of “Prologue” and “Epilogue” (typically used in spoken performance) instead of the technically correct titles of “Preface” and “Postface” (typically used in text) is a symbolic gesture conveying my political aim to draw readers attention to the hidden power of authorial voice. Topically, I have sought to convey the theme of innovation in three ways. First, the stories, which indeed derive from empirical research, seek to convey something about the emergent discovery processes of tourism innovation. Despite all the frivolity, the findings are the result of sound research and hopefully offer some contribution to the understanding of tourism innovation. Second, I have used the story of Alice to present the idea of research as a journey of learning and discovery, aptly described as a process of personal innovation. Third, I have sought to foster contemplation of paradigmatic innovation as concerns scholarly reading and writing. Elaborating upon the third point, in prosaic terms, the researcher is the protagonist in a research narrative tracing a plot of “discovery” (Kent, 2015). All too often, however, the protagonist is conspicuously absent in the rhetorical form of scientific objectivity dom- inating academic writing. This observation brings practical implications for scholarship. Particularly, in conducting scholarly research, and in teaching students about scholarly research, benefits may stem from thinking of scholarly research as a journey of discovery where there is no single correct answer. Put another way, researchers are simply people striving to make sense of the world in the best way that they can. The resulting sense- giving constructions of academic writing afford glimpses into wider stories. From this vantage, it seems likely we will gain more insight by encouraging greater diversity in research narratives. One way is to include the researcher as an active voice in the narrative; such inclusion overtly acknowledges the positionality and power of the researcher as the author, raising awareness of the constructed and polyvocal character of all knowledge (Pritchard, Morgan, & Ateljevic, 2011). This kind of deviant step may offer a way to respond to Steyaert’s(2004, p. 21) call to move to a more “prosaic scene” through exploration of other genres offering the potential to interrupt the “centralizing ten- dency” of academic publishing. Daring to make these kinds of prosaic moves may ultimately assist to advance knowledge by displacing totalizing narratives in favour of more diverse constructions of the arrays of events constituting the wider story 90 S. 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Journal
Journal Of Teaching In Travel & Tourism
– Taylor & Francis
Published: Jan 2, 2019
Keywords: Entrepreneurship; entrepreneuring; innovation; tourism; narrative; story-telling
