What happens when you give an entrepreneur a camera? Illuminating spatial, embodied and affective aspects of entrepreneurship

The use of video to unlock the minutiae of everyday entrepreneurship is growing in response to calls for more creative research methods in studying entrepreneurship. In this paper, we explore the value and relevance of participant-generated video diaries to the field. Drawing on data from a year-long empirical research project that used participant-generated video diaries, we evaluate the contribution of this method by contrasting it with adjacent and related video methods used by entrepreneurship scholars to-date. We find that it is the seemingly mundane and ordinary, the unromantic and commonplace, but powerfully intimate and otherwise invisible aspects of everyday entrepreneurial life that we get to see, efficiently and effectively, when we give an entrepreneur a camera. This, in turn, significantly enhances our understanding of the spatial, embodied and feeling-based experiences of entrepreneurs. Building on our experience, we provide suggestions for the design and execution of participant-generated video diaries in entrepreneurship research. We contribute to the field by guiding scholars to capitalize on the unique affordances of this method to broaden the methodological base of entrepreneurship research and to elicit new data about the minutiae of complex entrepreneurial experiences and practices.