Rethinking Green Entrepreneurship - Fluid Narratives of the

Green Economy

Kirstie O’Neill, David Gibbs

Abstract
Green entrepreneurs have been seen as key drivers for a transition to a green economy.
However, there has been limited in-depth qualitative empirical research with green
entrepreneurs to date, focusing instead on typologies categorising certain ‘types’ of green
entrepreneur. Moreover, the literature rarely situates such individual activities within
broader concepts such as the green economy. In contrast, we suggest that current
discourses of the green economy are important in contextualising the ways that green
entrepreneurs make sense of themselves and their businesses. Green entrepreneurs are
thus negotiating varying tensions between their business activities, environmental
philosophies, and wider contexts at the intersection between the green economy and the
mainstream economy.

Drawing on evidence from 55 interviews, we explore the narratives employed by green

entrepreneurs to situate themselves within/outwith the wider green economy – the
recursive framing of mainstream and niche ‘green’ activities provides a sense of the tensions
and politics at play in the development of the green economy. We thus offer a new and
more dynamic view of the evolving nature of ‘being’ and ‘becoming’ a green entrepreneur,
rather than relying on the fixed categories espoused in previous typologies. We conclude
that it is important that policy makers recognise the complex and contentious nature of
green entrepreneurship, and that it is essential to view the green economy as a diverse
constellation of myriad actors rather than corporate reinventions of business as usual.

Key words: green economy; green entrepreneurs; green building; UK

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1. Introduction

Since the first IPCC assessment report in 1990, a scientific consensus has emerged about
anthropogenic influences on the global climate and the significant risks for human and non-
human life posed by rising levels of atmospheric greenhouse gases (Lewis and Maslin, 2015).
Within both policy circles and academia, it is recognised that current Western modes of
production and patterns of consumption are unsustainable (Jackson 2009). In response,
policy makers have expressed interest in developing ‘green’ or ‘low-carbon’ economies
(Davies and Mullin, 2010), with green entrepreneurs seen as key drivers in the transition to
new economic forms. However, there is a paucity of detailed research work with such
businesses and it is over ten years since the last substantive research activity on green
entrepreneurship (Schaper 2002; Schaltegger 2002). Moreover, within the green
entrepreneurship literature to date, a substantive focus has been on developing typologies
to categorise or explain certain ‘types’ of green entrepreneurial behaviour, rather than
investigating their transformational roles (Issak 2002; Linnanen 2002; Walley and Taylor
2002). Further, this literature rarely situates such individual activities within broader
concepts of the green economy, despite that fact that it provides a significant framing
device for green entrepreneurs’ activities. Drawing on empirical material from 55
interviews with green entrepreneurial businesses and support agencies in the UK building
sector, we respond to calls (Kirkwood and Walton 2014) for more in-depth qualitative
research on green entrepreneurship. In particular, we address two key questions: How do
discourses of the green economy affect the narratives that green entrepreneurs construct
for themselves and their businesses? What does this mean for the future potential of green
entrepreneurs to transform economic development practices?

Green entrepreneurs have to negotiate tensions between their business activities, their
environmental philosophies and these wider contexts relating to the green economy and
the mainstream, growth-focused economy. We argue that current iterations of the green
economy create tensions for green entrepreneurial identity given its dual focus on both
‘green-ness’ and continued economic growth (Edenhofer and Stern 2009). More
specifically, we attempt to unpack the green economy by exploring the narratives
respondents employed to situate themselves within (and sometimes without) wider
discourses of the green economy. In this paper we explore our empirical material through
the relationship between discourses of the green economy and entrepreneurialism and the
narratives employed by green entrepreneurs. Discourse refers here to the language, ideas
and practices that shape our means of relating to, and acting upon, particular phenomena
(Knights and Morgan 1991), such as the green economy or economic growth. Individuals
come to understand the world in the terms of such discourses and the social practices that
reproduce particular worldviews as truth. Actors utilize particular discourses to interpret or
construct organizational reality in such a way as to justify or legitimate particular actions or
outcomes (Knights and Murray 1994, in Doolin 2003). They draw upon a variety of different
discursive practices in their attempts to make sense of their business practices and
philosophies, which they express through stories or narratives. We use the term narratives
here to refer to the sense-making devices used by individuals to impose order on their
experiences and activities (Warren 2004; Riessman 1993). “The basic idea of sense-making
is that reality is an ongoing accomplishment that emerges from efforts to create order and
make retrospective sense of what occurs” (Weick 1993: 635). Narratives are constructed in

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hindsight to render experiences coherent and plausible in a context of business uncertainty
(Weick 1995; Kearins and Collins 2012). However, although the narrative process involves
selective and creative interpretation of events in order to rationalise these, such narratives
may not always readily cohere. Individuals may struggle to achieve a cohesive narrative,
necessitating multiple, fluid narratives that they move between at any given moment
(Downing 2005). Narratives are important as actors use them to help create positive
expectations about their own practices and technologies, and to encourage reforms that
both enhance their own activities and critique existing regimes (Smith and Raven 2012).
Narratives are “recursively told, embodied, and performed in a series of different materials”
(Law 1994: 259, in Doolin 2003), such as the empirical material from our interviews.

In constructing their narratives actors engage in the process of framing, whereby elements
of discourse are assembled that then privilege certain interpretations and understandings
over others (Goffman, 1974). Framing is an inherent part of cognition, employed to
contextualize and organize the dynamic swirl of issues, events and occurrences (Boykoff
2008). Such framing activities can work to marginalise some discourses while contributing
to the entrenchment of others (Dalby 2007, in Boykoff 2008). Cortazzi highlights the closely
entwined relationship between discourse and narrative, such that narratives are:

a discourse structure or genre which reflects culture. It is a central medium of

cultural expression, organization and learning. Furthermore, it also creates cultural
contexts (Cortazzi 1993: 58, in Wiles et al 2005).

The power of narratives in processes of policy or institutional change has been recognised in
the policy studies (Hajer 1995; Kern 2011) and entrepreneurial literatures (Larty and
Hamilton 2011). Such narratives can be one approach to reshape widely held views and
discourses in order to change patterns of social practices and achieve institutional reforms.
The recursive framing of mainstream and ‘green’ activities provides a sense of the tensions
and politics at play in the development of the green economy. By focussing on the
narratives employed by green entrepreneurs themselves, we gain a better insight into green
economy actors and their networks, as well as the ways they promote their practices and
technologies. Moreover, by attending to these narratives we illustrate how green
entrepreneurs are themselves a heterogeneous group and do not fall into neat or discrete
‘categories’ as previous literature would suggest. Instead they exhibit disaggregated and
messy narratives which change in response to internal and external pressures and where
motivations, ethics and practices can vary temporally and spatially, indicating a more
complex picture than has previously been recognised.

The structure of the paper is as follows. In the next section we outline the green economy
context within which green entrepreneurs operate. We then examine definitions of green
entrepreneurship and some of the contradictions between being green and being
enterprising. We outline the methods used and then interpret our interview data in terms
of how green entrepreneurs narrate their practices and explore how mainstream green
economy policies influence their activities. We then offer some conclusions from the
analysis in relation to our two questions.

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2. The Green Economy

Although the green economy has a legacy from Limits to Growth arguments (Meadows et al.
1972) and the Blueprint for a Green Economy (Pearce et al. 1989), current iterations of the
green economy entered mainstream policy discourse towards the end of the 2000s, notably
at the Rio+20 conference (Bina 2013). To give just three examples – in 2009 the OECD 1
adopted the notion of ‘green growth’, emphasising the role of technological solutions,
stating that: “[i]n order for countries to advance the move towards sustainable low-carbon
economies, international co-operation will be crucial in areas such as the development and
diffusion of clean technologies...and the development of an international market for
environmental goods and services”. The World Business Council on Sustainable
Development (2010) promoted a green economy predicated on the efficiency of the market
as the means to address environmental challenges and sustainable development, while
UNEP (2011: 16) defined the green economy as “low carbon, resource efficient, and socially
inclusive [where] growth in income and employment should be driven by public and private
investments that reduce carbon emissions and pollution, enhance energy and resource
efficiency, and prevent the loss of biodiversity and ecosystem services.”

There is a range of discursive approaches to the green economy. For example, Bina (2013)
divides these into three categories – ‘business-as-usual’, ‘greening’ and ‘all change’, while
Ferguson (2015) similarly has ‘conventional pro-growth’, ‘selective growth’ and ‘limits to
growth’ (see Table 1). Both authors indicate that in reality these are points on a spectrum
of interpretations of the green economy from market-led, business-as-usual through to
proposals for more radical changes such as a steady-state economy and degrowth (Kenis
and Lievens 2015). Thus rather than a clear or stable end point, the “green economy
remains a disaggregated and contested discourse” (Ferguson 2015: 26) and an ongoing
contest between different economic visions of the future (Bailey and Wilson 2009; Bailey
and Caprotti 2014).

(Table 1 about here)

While the green economy has rapidly become a focus for national economic policies (Bailey
and Caprotti 2014), for the most part, the way it is interpreted within policy envisages
incremental and reformist changes which do not challenge or undermine the dominance of
neoliberal economic growth or consumption economies (Philips 2013; Bina 2013). Although
there is recognition that the very premise of the green economy concedes that ‘business as
usual’ has resulted in economic and ecological crises, and thus we now need something
different (Shear 2014), the green economy frequently appears precisely as a neoliberal
project, proposing that it is the role of government to create new markets for capital
investment, and to use markets to manage nature and climate change (Tienhaara 2014).
The primary concern is declining economic growth and the need to restore such growth
(Bina and La Camera 2011). It is, consequently, rarer for political appeals to encourage
constraints on demand and consumption, given that the primary aim is (still) economic
growth, albeit green-tinged (Brockington 2012). In this regard, current policy prescriptions
fall within the left hand side of Table 1.

1
http://acts.oecd.org/Instruments/ShowInstrumentView.aspx?InstrumentID=70&InstrumentPID=67&Lang=en&Book=False (accessed 14
May 2015)

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It is within this context and ensuing tensions that green entrepreneurs operate. While
green entrepreneurs are seen as key change agents in enacting a green economy, policies
that promote business-as-usual constrict the space available for radically different green
businesses and challenge (or dilute) the narratives they construct. Moreover these policy
contexts can be subject to frequent changes. In the UK, for example, the previous Labour
government’s low carbon transition plan emphasised that acting on climate change would
stimulate innovation and new technologies to help businesses reduce energy costs, and
provide employment in green industries (HM Government 2009a). The same government
produced a Low Carbon Industrial Strategy (HM Government, 2009b) outlining how the UK
economy could shift towards low carbon development, producing both economic benefits
and environmental improvement. The subsequent Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition
government initially continued this approach with a pledge to be the ‘greenest government
ever’, but with a much greater emphasis on government-business partnerships (HM
Government, 2011). Over time the coalition gradually watered down its green policies and,
following an election in 2015, the incoming Conservative government abandoned many of
these policies, including a shift away from renewable energies to emphasising low-cost
energy and scrapping its commitment to zero carbon homes. The Conservative Government
reiterated its commitment to continued economic growth through increased productivity in
‘Fixing the Foundations: Creating a more Prosperous Nation’ (HM Treasury, 2015). This
strategy reveals ‘new’ priorities for the government, suggesting a move away from a green
economy, and a renewed emphasis on business-as-usual and more traditional economic
growth 2. As Carter (2001: 2) comments “there is no doubt that environmental issues have
had a big impact on contemporary politics, and yet the frequency with which governments
adopt a business-as-usual response to environmental problems raises the cynical thought
that perhaps nothing much has really changed”. Our focus here is on the ways in which
green entrepreneurs negotiate discourses of the green economy and these shifts in policies
in order to make sense of their own activities. Exploring their motivations, thoughts and
coherence through their narratives “may assist in drawing attention to these dominant
discursive strands and alternative interpretations of what the green economy currently
means and could mean” (Caprotti and Bailey 2014).

3. Defining Green Entrepreneurs

Green entrepreneurship is claimed to have the potential to be “a major force in the overall
transition towards a more sustainable business paradigm” (Schaper 2002: 27), with green
entrepreneurs offering “exemplary solutions for a social transformation” (Isaak 1998: 88).
Thus their actions and motivations stem from the desire to tackle specific environmental
problems, or to change their sectors so that alternative and more sustainable products and
practices become more widespread, and challenge ingrained practices (Gibbs 2009). More
radical perspectives may also seek revolutionary transformation through post-capitalist
thinking (cf. Gibson-Graham 2008; Shear 2014), reconceptualising entrepreneurship and
challenging the corporate work-to-spend cycle (Bradley and Hedrèn 2014). Such
entrepreneurial behaviours may be part of a broader ontological shift in what

2
Space doesn’t permit an in-depth discussion of changes in UK green building policies, we have discussed
these in detail elsewhere (Gibbs and O’Neill 2015).

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entrepreneurialism might entail and how we envisage ‘the economy’ (cf. Gibson-Graham
2008), and re-envisaging what it means to be an ‘entrepreneur’.

For us, green entrepreneurs are those entrepreneurs who run businesses to achieve both
environmental and business goals, and who wish to transform their sectors to be more
sustainable (Jolink and Nieston 2013; Schaltegger 2002). Willis et al. (2007) call such
entrepreneurs ‘disruptive innovators’ whereby established business models and user
expectations are superseded and transformed. One shortcoming within the green
entrepreneurship literature, as with work on more conventional entrepreneurship, is that
the notion of the individual as ‘entrepreneurial hero’ remains pervasive (Nijkamp 2003).
This focus on the role of charismatic and pioneering individuals is a simplistic solution to
current environmental challenges, whereby if we only had more of these individuals, the
problems would be solved. In addition, this focus on individuals in the literature has led to
the development of typologies to categorise certain ‘types’ of individual behaviour. For
example, Walley and Taylor (2002) offer green entrepreneurial categories such as the
‘maverick entrepreneur’, and the ‘opportunist entrepreneur’, while Linnanen (2002)
develops a typology based on the intersection between environmental and profit-driven
motivations, ranging from ‘nature-oriented’ to ‘environmental technology-focused’.
However, such typologies lack dynamism, create static categories, and are frequently based
on scant empirical evidence, primarily limited to a single or small number of case studies
(Kirkwood and Walton 2014). Moreover, such typologies pay little attention to the wider
contexts within which green entrepreneurs operate – as we have argued, this context is
significant for the narrative process of green entrepreneurs (Cohen 2006). This means that
“we do not get much feel for the interplay of competing discourses of business and the
environment, the flow of national and local technology politics, the trade-offs,
compromises, deals and conflicting visions … the literature fails to incorporate the
‘messiness’ of processes of innovation, and how they are contingent upon the interplay of
many actors, not just one” (Beveridge and Guy 2005: 672).

In this paper we move away from such neat categories of green entrepreneurs (either
individually or collectively) to explore the narratives of green entrepreneurs and how these
relate to wider discourses of the green economy and what it means to be an entrepreneur.
In so doing we highlight the messy realities of being a green entrepreneur within a society
where discourses pertaining to economic growth, enterprise and entrepreneurialism are
dominant. These discourses are so entrenched (Dryzek 2013) that they are difficult to
escape, even when trying to create or envisage a new way of being an entrepreneur and
performing the economy. Indeed, as Purcell (2014: 151-2) suggests “we must be willing to
imagine and demand a possible world, even if that world is impossible under the conditions
that exist now.” He continues that “even though such a possible world is a long way off, and
it is also, at the same time, right in front of us” – we need green entrepreneurs and others
trying to change current conditions to begin establishing and enacting new discourses that
might challenge those long ingrained discourses. Re-configuring (or re-organizing) discourse
can open up new possibilities for climate change action (Swyngedouw, 1992), or for
performing the economy differently.

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4. Enterprise, Entrepreneurialism and ‘Being Green’

Green entrepreneurs are therefore identified as new entrepreneurial actors seeking to

combine environmental awareness and business in a holistic manner and are said to have a
different organising logic to more conventional entrepreneurs (Tilley and Parrish 2006).
Indeed, Kirkwood and Walton (2014) argue that it is their passion for the environment that
sets them apart from other entrepreneurs. At the same time, the discourse of enterprise
culture remains highly influential in Western capitalist societies (cf. du Gay & Salaman
1992), emphasising a focus on the marketplace, the provision of goods and services in
response to consumer demand, and a normative desire to make money. As Larson and
Pearson (2012) suggest, although there are other perspectives available to choose or reject,
certain interpretations of enterprise exert greater influence, as they either align well (or less
well) with dominant cultural, institutional, or organizational norms and ideals. Enterprise
and entrepreneurship (and by association, economic growth) are canonical within Western
societies (Bruner 2004). That is, they are so pervasive it is difficult to imagine green
entrepreneurial narratives that are not framed by these discourses, and thus why it can be
difficult to introduce substantive change.

The dominance of such conventional interpretations of enterprise and its associated values
may contradict those of green entrepreneurs, and some green entrepreneurs may morally
reject these mainstream values (Philips 2013). Ideals related to entrepreneurialism
encountered in mainstream society prioritise characteristics such as profit seeking,
economic growth and aggressive behaviour (Nicholson and Anderson 2005). This may make
it challenging or awkward to outwardly oppose such standards, or to find ways of expressing
opinions without falling back on these discourses, to some extent. In addition, current
policy frameworks and dominant discourses of the green economy act to validate certain
views relating to entrepreneurship and business development, whilst simultaneously
excluding other, perhaps more radical, perspectives (Cohen and Musson 2000). Thus the
ways in which the green economy is currently defined through policy may restrict
opportunities for green entrepreneurs as a result of its focus on job creation, narrow market
sectors such as clean tech (Davies 2013; Georgeson et al., 2014), and continued economic
growth, linked to business-as-usual neoliberalism. This may push those green
entrepreneurs who are trying to be radically different into liminal spaces, limiting their
impact on the wider economy.

Green entrepreneurs thus operate in a contradictory space, in which their position is

produced by, and consists of, conflicting discourses of the green economy and
entrepreneurialism, which they negotiate in managing themselves and others (Kuhn 2006;
Sveningsson and Alvesson 2003). The narratives that green entrepreneurs construct about
themselves and their entrepreneurial activities are renegotiated and remade when they
come into contact both with the mainstream economy, and with particular constructions of
the green economy. The narratives of green entrepreneurs who claim to be motivated by
the creation of environmental value over (or at least equal to) economic value, provides
insights into how they negotiate between competing and contradictory sets of views
relating to the environment, enterprise, the green economy, and subsequent conflicts (cf.
Philips 2013). Furthermore, it offers insights into how new discourses of entrepreneurialism

7
can begin to be constructed and how these begin to pervade mainstream discourses such
that changes may occur.

5. Methodology

Our research involved 55 in-depth interviews with respondents from businesses in the
green building sector and support organisations, including banks and other sources of
finance and business advice (see Table 2). Respondents were located across England and
Wales, with some regional concentrations, for example the South West of England.
Potential research participants were identified from exhibitors at events such as EcoBuild
and GreenExpo, online membership databases of organisations like the Association for
Sustainable Building, Internet searches and snowball sampling. We identified the
businesses as green entrepreneurs from their marketing and publicity material, their
membership of green or alternative organisations, and some of our participants contacted
us directly following project publicity in the press – this required some filtering by telephone
before interviews were conducted. Research participants were approached by letter or
telephone, with the majority of interviews conducted face-to-face and interviews lasted
between 60 and 120 minutes. Interview schedules were based around a set of core
questions – given the variety of businesses involved in the research, interviews were semi-
structured to allow flexibility and questions were open-ended, allowing participants to
interpret these freely. All interviews were digitally recorded, transcribed and qualitatively
analysed using Nvivo to structure analysis themes.

Interview transcripts were coded based on themes from the literature, specifically relating
to respondents’ narratives, but also in response to themes that emerged within and
between the interviews. Although there were differences between both the views and the
business activities of our respondents, many similar themes emerged across them. The
narrative accounts outlined in the next section were developed from responses to explicit
evaluative questions about how and why events occurred. These were rarely orderly and
coherent, but developed from the interaction between the interviewer’s questions and the
respondents’ narrative direction (de Fina 2009). Some respondents were more consistent in
the narratives they employed, whereas others jumped from one narrative to another
depending on the topic under discussion. Such inconsistencies arise from the interplay
between personal narratives and wider societal discourses, as well as being contingent on
the context of the interviews themselves – our analysis was concerned with moving beyond
placing individual green entrepreneurs into one discrete category or another, to envisage a
more complex and transient picture whereby green entrepreneurs exhibit flexible and
relational characteristics. This approach attempts to overcome the fixity in the existing
literature, albeit that we recognise that this is still an imperfect way of dealing with the
narratives of green entrepreneurs. The collective repertoires in the following section
emerged from the interview data, but our interpretation of narratives was also developed in
relation to the academic literature and the policy literature on the green economy and
wider discourses of entrepreneurialism and economic growth. Of course, these
interpretations are our own, and these discourses also influence us – other researchers
would no doubt construct different accounts.

(Table 2 about here)

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6. Narratives of Green Entrepreneurship

In this section, we highlight how current interpretations of the mainstream and green
economy influence the narratives of green entrepreneurs. This analysis illustrates how
more radical narratives of strong sustainability are squeezed by the dominant discourse of
enterprise culture and economic growth. Given that green entrepreneurs are situated at
the juncture between economy and environment, it is inevitable that contestation and
heterogeneity exists. As a result, narratives are inevitably complex and dynamic in both
space and time, so that at one point individual green entrepreneurs may subscribe to a
particular perspective, which may contradict other narratives they also advocate. As Philips
(2013) suggests, green entrepreneurs have to position themselves within a variety of
discourses in a sense making process (see also Georg and Füssel 2000), thus at times
adopting potentially dissonant mainstream entrepreneurial characteristics. The interstitial
or liminal spaces occupied by green entrepreneurs are thus squeezed by competing
dynamics, and can be aligned with mainstream practices at some places and times, and not
at others. As Shear (2014: 199) notes, people have the potential to be affected and
transformed by different and competing ideologies, including different understandings of
the (green) economy.

(Table 3 about here)

Following our analysis of the interview transcripts, and drawing on the discourses of the
green economy presented in Table 1, we argue that green entrepreneurs employ four
dominant narratives (sometimes synchronously) in relating their activities to these wider
contexts (see Table 3). These (sometimes overlapping) narratives represent the different
ways that green entrepreneurs engage with, and negotiate, dominant discourses of the
green economy and economic growth. We have clustered these narratives under the
following headings: a) it’s not about hugging trees; b) pragmatism and the impact of the
mainstream economy; c) compromise and hybridity; and, d) radical transformations –
activist entrepreneurs. Table 3 illustrates the interface between the spectrum of discourses
of the green economy and the narratives employed by green entrepreneurs. These
positions are not exhaustive, but illustrative of the different ways green entrepreneurs
frame their practices. We will now explore these narratives in more detail.

6.1. It’s Not about Hugging Trees

There is a common mainstream perception that environmentalism is discordant with

economic growth. Many of our green entrepreneurs were sensitive to this view and, while
they may try to avoid being seen as too business-like, they also attempted to distance
themselves from the ‘sandals and vegetarianism’ side of ‘being green’. Furthermore, they
did not want to be perceived as evangelical or ‘holier than thou’ in judging people’s
behaviour and consumption practices. These green entrepreneurs were keen to
simultaneously balance their environmental motivations against the stereotypical
characteristics associated with entrepreneurialism. Tree-huggers and hippies were
prevalent environmentalist stereotypes raised by many green entrepreneurs, but seen as
incompatible with modern business ideals (cf. Lorenzen 2014). One green building materials

9
supplier (GB029) made it clear that although he understood and felt sympathetic to the
green movement, he was quite different:

I won’t walk round in sandals and have goats and things … I have friends … who are
ageing hippies and I'm not in that league.

Conversely, the need to adhere to more conventional interpretations of entrepreneurship,

in terms of making money, was one approach adopted by a green architect (GB021) to
promote his business:

...doing what I do, you can’t stand up in front of a bunch of business people and tell
them it’s about hugging trees. They don’t really want to know, they either want a PR
angle or they want to save money, or make money.

For those who wanted to be more sustainable in their own businesses, this meant that there
was a disparity between their own principles and those of their customers, which influenced
their public behaviour. Thus the architect quoted above went on to say that he’d had to
change his approach to try and sell it to different people in different ways. He felt that,
having ‘started purely from the ethical side’, he had to conform to mainstream business
practices when dealing with some clients in order to be taken seriously. As another green
architect (GB025) stated, avoiding the use of particular words and terms is important to
maintain business credibility – ‘sustainable is a word we don’t use now…as soon as you
mention sustainability I think they presume you have got dreadlocks … and live in a yurt’.

Despite their reservations about being too closely aligned with it, our respondents did credit
the Green movement with having shifted what were once considered alternatives, such as
photovoltaic panels, into the mainstream. As one green builder (GB026) argued:
‘photovoltaics, they’ve become the norm now, if you can afford them or you want them.’
However, selling these features to clients was based on mainstream justifications such as
‘return on investment’. The same green builder went on to suggest that they’ve become
normal ‘not because people are necessarily wanting to ‘save the planet’, but…often a
determining factor in…these decisions…is are they going to save money or are they even
going to make money.’ Selling such technologies to clients therefore required an emphasis
on the financial aspects rather than their green credentials – one renewables business
(GB007) explained that ‘...sad as it is to say, we don’t really try and sell [the environmental
benefits] because at the end of the day...all people are interested in is financially how is it
going to benefit them.’ Negotiating the tensions between their green values and the need
to attract customers required our green entrepreneurs to employ a public narrative and
image that aligns to mainstream thinking, even if this involved an element of double-think
and compromising their own principles.

Despite these experiences, the same green businesses continued to employ a private
narrative that positioned them as different from mainstream ‘big business [which] doesn’t
give a monkeys (sic) about anything other than profit anyway’ (Green building entrepreneur
GB016) and many articulated concern about such companies jumping on the ‘green
bandwagon’. While this interest from mainstream companies was welcomed by some
green entrepreneurs, the majority felt that it was ‘greenwash’ or ‘spin’ and that ‘in actual

10
fact most of it’s no different to what it was before they’ve just put some spin on it, you
know everyone wants to be green’ (Green building entrepreneur, GB016). Such mainstream
businesses ‘borrow’ convenient niche aspects and characteristics in response to emerging
market opportunities, with the result that this ‘greenwash’ was viewed as positively harmful
by one green building materials supplier who argued that ‘the big boys always follow us
and…we kind of open out the market for everyone’ (GB008). The interest from mainstream
companies was seen as quite different to their own green principles. Thus, while larger
companies were able to ‘see a gap in the market, and say ‘we want some of that’ and invest
and research and develop it’, the deeper green people who are part of the ‘alternative
economy that’s always gone on’ didn’t expand either because they ‘just didn’t have the
resources and the backing’ but also because they ‘just didn’t want to go down that route’
(Green builder, GB026).

6.2. Pragmatism and the Impact of the Mainstream Economy

As we outlined earlier, mainstream green economy policies do not palpably alter the ethos
of economic growth, and effectively see the green economy as a new source of growth (Bina
2013; Tienhaara 2014). The green entrepreneurs we interviewed, including some of the
policy makers involved in the research, felt that green values in the wider economy were
either non-existent or primarily motivated by financial gain, as businesses and consumers
looked to reduce their costs during financial recession and as energy prices have risen. One
nascent green entrepreneur had established his business to take advantage of what he
understood to be a growing green market, only to realise that, in practice, there was very
little demand for his recycled plastic garden furniture. The dominance of more mainstream
principles was thus seen as being driven by consumers, as ‘everybody wants to be green,
[but] nobody wants to spend any money on being green’ (Recycled garden furniture
entrepreneur, GB006).

Policy makers and support agencies reported similar experiences, where businesses were
only interested if it saves them money – environmental benefits may be secondary, thus
suggesting that a wider, mainstream adoption of green principles is not yet happening.
Evans and Abrahamse (2009) similarly found that consumers were less motivated directly by
sustainability, but rather were motivated by underlying issues that happened to be
simultaneously more sustainable. They argue that appealing to these wider issues are one
means for expanding commitments to sustainability. However, while saving money may be
a framing device to attract people to sustainable activities, this may have limited impact if
wider consumption practices are left intact, as well as being a temporary measure in that if
more money is available, previous high consumption patterns may be resumed.

As the previous section indicated, green entrepreneurs at times employed a narrative of

opposition to the mainstream. However, the infiltration of larger companies into sectors,
which might once have been deemed ‘alternative’ or ‘niche’, had also changed their own
practices and behaviours. A green builder, in talking about the explosion in renewables
companies in response to the UK feed-in-tariffs, admitted, somewhat uncomfortably, that
they had ‘set up a kind of partner company, so we could...I guess to be totally honest, that
we could … benefit from what was going on as well’ (GB026). Policies such as the UK’s feed-
in-tariff promoted what once were niche ideas (renewable energy technologies) to a

11
broader audience, but also created opportunities for green entrepreneurs to enter
mainstream business. Even for green entrepreneurs then, the lure of mainstream thinking
about enterprise and profitability is enduring, and made it difficult for many green
entrepreneurs to imagine operating in ways that are dramatically different, as well as being
difficult to justify a business that isn’t making them rich. As a green builder (GB026)
acknowledged: ‘I think as ever with … businesses that … have an ideal behind them, you’re
struggling sometimes because you know the compromise is you’re also trying to make a
living out of it.’

Such pragmatism also extended to the ways in which green entrepreneurs viewed their
wider impacts upon their sector and their customers in terms of changing opinion towards
greener alternatives:

it’s...having a balance between being pragmatic in life and doing what you can. And
so those are the decisions that I think a lot of people are having to make. They’re
keen to do something about the environment but it’s also got to fit in with their
lifestyle. (Renewables entrepreneur, GB007)

There was concern amongst respondents to make change easy for people, so that they
don’t feel that ‘they’re losing out and feeling that they’re in a negative position lifestyle
wise’ (Renewables entrepreneur, GB007). This concern to make change palatable to the
wider population resulted in the need to take a ‘pragmatist approach versus the idealist
approach’ because in reality ‘people want to be able to walk into a house and turn the light
on, don’t they? And turn the TV on and turn the oven on, and there’s a price to pay for that’
(Green builder, GB0026). As a result, he suggested that his company tried not to ‘get too
kind of holier-than-thou about it’ despite recognising that ‘the enthusiasm and the
consumption for you know electronic goods is enormous’. He also reflected that it would
‘take something enormous to jolt people into change you know, it’d have to be huge to
make people say ‘ok, well I won’t have a TV or I won’t do x or y or whatever’. As others
have noted, despite being aware of the problems of overconsumption and the effects of
climate change (Crocker and Lehmann 2013; Steffen et al. 2011) changing practices is
difficult: the same entrepreneur went on to note ‘human beings I suppose, we’re our own
worst enemies, aren’t we? Because we know the problem, but … we’re like kids in a sweet
shop as well, we love the candy, we love buying things and having things … and how do you
[change that]?’ He argued that people ‘get bored – their TV isn’t big enough… you know
people just get bored … very quickly and they find it very hard to stop. And essentially those
goods, by and large, are relatively cheap’. Clients were thus conceptualised primarily as
‘consumers’, who won’t make difficult lifestyle changes alone and need incentives or
legislation to make the ‘lifestyle’ changes required. Green entrepreneurs saw government
policy as critical to shifting behaviour, as ‘there aren’t enough personally motivated people
to drive big business into doing anything other than you know what they are good at doing,
which is producing rubbishy houses that people spend a lot of money on’ (Green building
materials supplier, GB016). For a policy maker (GP007) trying to encourage energy
efficiency, he reflected on whether ‘transformation [is] taking place in society with regard to
inefficiency from an ethical standpoint. And I don’t think I see that … I [think] we’ve lost
that since … the late 60s and 70s’.

12
6.3. Compromise and Hybridity

For many then, pragmatism had meant compromise and the emergence of hybrid forms of
business operations. The latter was often described as a shift that had taken place once
radical ideas moved into the mainstream, but in the process lost the more radical elements.
One green builder (GB026) described how green entrepreneurs had to respond to consumer
demand, as there were only so many people who wanted ‘the ‘hairier’ end of green
building’, a more rustic approach using natural materials. In contrast, technological changes
and demand for more modern approaches to sustainability meant that businesses have
witnessed a significant shift away from the ‘hairier’ end of green building. For instance,
installing renewable technologies such as PV panels might be argued as representing weak
ecological modernisation type approaches to green building, whereby high-tech renewables
and materials provide homes which do not materially challenge current high levels of
consumption, and which also embody high levels of emissions within the fabric of the
building. Such ‘eco-bling’ 3 aligns well with modern ideals of living comfortably, but without
compromising current expectations of what a home should look like and how it should
perform.

Some green entrepreneurs had monitored developments within their sector and could see
the future growth potential in, for example, renewable energy technologies. One green
architect (GB013), although taking a radical green stance to the work he accepted most of
the time, argued that ‘building regs have sort of caught up a little bit’ so that for him ‘maybe
you know it wouldn’t be so bad getting a mainstream job right now!’ Trying to combine
multiple issues in these ways highlights, however, how people struggle to make sense of
what their real motivations are and to maintain a coherent narrative. For example, one
renewables entrepreneur (GB007) talked about how he had ‘combined the environment
with a serious business’. Thus he had:

...always wanted to … run my own business and I could see where the market was
going so that’s where the financial thing came in. But the second one was
environmental, I wanted to contribute something and I could see the environment
becoming a big issue and you know being able to provide a service that will cut down
on peoples’ emissions for me was sort of win-win in a sense. And we do everything
personally as much as we can to you know cut down our emissions and recycle what
we can, that sort of thing. (GB007).

At the same time he went on to raise the difficult decisions he had grappled with and the
compromises that resulted, such as having a large, energy inefficient 4x4 vehicle for the
business. This is the root of the issue for the green entrepreneurs in our research: they are
trying to run green businesses whilst surrounded by contemporary society which links
consumption and status, and where being radically different can be difficult and potentially
lead to failure. Green entrepreneurs are thus constrained by the mainstream context they
currently occupy. Such a context made it difficult for some green entrepreneurs to radically
change their own practices – as one green architect (GB021) reflected:

3
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/eco-homes-dont-have-to-be-eco-bling, Accessed 13.03.14.

13
 ...I’m kind of ‘have your cake and eat it’…we don’t have a tumble dryer but I’d still
kind of like a nice car...I do still want these things, I’m not 100% guru, do you know
what I mean?

This degree of pragmatism was deemed ‘easier’ now, as many things which had been
associated with the ‘green movement’ were considered more mainstream, as reflected by
one green builder (GB026) ‘to talk about any of those things now it’s not unusual, is it?
You’re not labelled anymore’. However, many green entrepreneurs were resigned to the
fact that they were ‘not saving the world’ and that all they could do is try to ‘make it a little
bit better’. This respondent argued that he saw the way they ran their company was as
‘doing pretty much the same thing but just slightly differently and maybe, hopefully, having
less impact. It’s not a panacea by any means for stopping the ice caps melting or something,
it might lessen it, but only a tiny bit’ (green builder, GB026). Such incremental changes
contrast with more activist narratives of substantial changes in lifestyle and consumption
with aspirations towards sustainability.

6.4. Radical Transformations – Activist Entrepreneurs

Although opposition to the mainstream was a common narrative amongst our respondents,
this was frequently expressed privately rather than in their business dealings. However,
approximately 15% of business respondents (i.e. excluding the finance and policy
interviewees in Table 2) talked about being a green entrepreneur in ways that might appear
to have more in common with activists. One green builder (GB006), contrary to popular
images of entrepreneurs, suggested ‘money’s never been an issue for me, not you know to
wish to make money, just enough to survive’. Similarly, a green technology entrepreneur
saw himself as ‘typical of people in the green movement – we’re not good at marketing,
we’re not good at promotion…but we have great ideals…promotion and selling seems far
too much like capitalism’ (GB012). While these businesses were making money they were
also attempting to reconceptualise ideas relating to entrepreneurship, levels of income and
quality of life. For these green entrepreneurs, businesses were combined with other
activities, including campaigning, food growing, caring, family life, and other projects (see
also Rodgers 2010; Ivanko and Kivirist 2013). Many of these businesses were trying to make
people think about the ways they lived their lives and to encourage them to do so in a lower
impact way. It is through the narratives of these green entrepreneurs that we can identify
how they perform entrepreneurialism otherwise, as part of a broader ontological shift in
what entrepreneurialism might mean (cf. Gibson-Graham 2008).

In this way, green entrepreneurs may act as educators or change agents, using their
business to lobby for change in their sectors in new directions. For example, one green
architect (GB025) described a project they were commissioned to undertake: ‘…they said
‘are you interested in doing a design for a small light industry starter unit?’ And we said
‘yeah okay but … do you fancy taking a sustainable approach to it?’ And they said ‘yeah all
right’; so sometimes even if it is a project you might not necessarily want to do you can
actually talk a client around into taking a sort of more reasoned approach to it.’ Many
argued that ‘actually when you explain and show them what to do they do seem to take it
on board.’ This was not seen as an approach to sell more expensive products to clients, but
to bring about change in how buildings are constructed and the types of materials that are

14
used. As people become more aware of the benefits of good insulation for example, it may
be ‘easier to maybe lean on the client a little bit more to say if you insulate your house an
extra 50 mil it will cost you a couple more grand but you’re going to save that in fuel bills in
two years … and then they’re more likely to be aware of that and then more likely to do it’
(GB013, Green architect).

Thus, some of the ‘greener’ respondents in our research were acting in ways not perhaps
typically associated with entrepreneurship through attempting to change both their
business sectors and how clients thought about sustainability (specifically in relation to
buildings). Respondents also tried to promote green building and low energy building to
clients linked to ideas such as ‘taking back control more of your life… so you’re not beholden
to behemoth energy suppliers and having to deal with them and all that kind of stuff’ (Green
architect, GB013). However, despite the efforts of such green entrepreneurs, it was also
recognised that wider contexts and political conservatism may mean that ‘the system’s not
in place to allow [sustainability] to override anything else’ (GB013, Green architect). Such
situations mean that while green entrepreneurs are trying to enact change, wider systems
can limit the potential for this. One architect (GB021) described a situation where a local
planning authority opposed a green building plan where ‘[he] personally would’ve fought it,
but we gave the client the option and they went ‘oh we need to get it built so let’s just give
in’, which is just frustrating for us.’

These ‘radical’ green entrepreneurs may still adhere to some principles of the mainstream
economy, but there is a process of shifting towards ideas that challenge these underlying
discourses, particularly in relation to business profitability and growth, and what constitutes
‘work’. As Gibson-Graham (2008) suggests, by focusing on such examples of marginalized,
hidden and alternative economic activities through research, it is possible to render them
more real and more credible as objects of policy and activism. Reading for difference in the
realm of capitalist business can even produce insight into the potential contributions of
private corporations to building other possible worlds (Gibson-Graham 2008: 264-5).

Businesses who identified with these ideas had often been inspired by ideas of degrowth or
lower levels of growth and consumption (Schumacher 1973). Degrowth is argued by some
to represent an alternative to the dominant economic paradigm, although as a concept it
remains contested and lacks clear definition (Schneider et al., 2010; Martínez-Aliera et al.,
2010). One green builder (GB019), talked about the need to reconceptualise quality of life
by decoupling high levels of income from quality of life. She argued that green businesses
work because it’s ‘a collection of people who are really passionate about it’ but that
‘nobody makes a lot of money out of it’. She went on to say that ‘the secret of green
businesses is...it’ll be people who care and...don’t necessarily want a lot of money’. For her,
the recent recession, and the idea of Peak Oil, meant that ‘people are just going to have to
get used to [the idea] that money isn’t everything and it’s quality of life and all those other
things, community, you know it’s not about earning vast salaries’. Thinking about
entrepreneurship in this way is quite different, but she suggested that by working in this
way, building on ‘really good principles’, green entrepreneurs could make real changes in
the world – for her, ‘the government isn’t going to change it, and big business isn’t going to
change it – it’s going to be the little people taking all the little steps to make it better’. The
UK green economy policy context has caused frustration for those green entrepreneurs who

15
want to see greater commitment to a stronger ‘green’ economy – one such architect
thought the current UK policy formulation ‘is just old jargon, absolutely meaningless - it’s a
load of rubbish!’ (GB025, architect).

For some, a low or non-existent salary was part of the risk associated with being an
entrepreneur, as one green technology entrepreneur (GB005) explained ‘you know I’m
working for basically nothing most of the time, I have not earned as much as I’ve spent on
the business and that doesn’t count my investments in the business! …but I do that with
eyes wide open that this is a fantastic product...I could end up with egg on my face
but…that’s what entrepreneurs do’. The role of risk in entrepreneurialism was a strong
(mainstream) discourse to frame this green entrepreneur’s narrative – he accepted these
risks as being ‘what entrepreneurs do’, but his motivations in taking these were related to
the environmental impact of the product rather than to the desire for financial success. As,
Kearins et al. (2010) suggest, growth may not be as important as gaining wider acceptance
of the founder’s vision.

Those green entrepreneurs who narrated their motivations and businesses in terms of a
more radical commitment to changing practices, and who might be described as ‘deep
green’ philosophically, had strong personal commitments to the environment, not just
through their business. A number of green entrepreneurs had undertaken apprenticeships
or volunteer placements to learn their skills, including straw bale building and other natural
building approaches. One green building materials entrepreneur (GB034) described this as
‘…hands on and we lived in tents and it was a great experience not just in learning how to
build but just by living like that, and connecting with nature in that sort of way...’. This
approach to ‘preserving nature and trying to you know live lightly on the planet’ was ‘at the
core’ of their business (GB034). Another green building materials supplier demonstrated his
commitment ‘...when [he] built [his] own house [he] used low fibre clay blocks, self-
insulating blocks, solid wall construction, hemp lime plasters, natural paints’ (GB016). One
green architect (GB013) made it clear that he had been unwilling to compromise his green
ideals:

…we have always purposefully steered away from really anybody who isn’t
interested in full-on green building because we’ve only got a certain amount of time
and we’d rather do those projects basically and I guess we figured if we didn’t
support non-sustainable practices then they wouldn’t exist sort of thing, do you
know what I mean? It’s almost sort of like boycotting it

People who associated with more radical reasons for their work often argued that they had
less interest in making money, but valued social justice in the relations they had with their
employees and colleagues, as well as environmental justice. One green builder (GB026)
suggested that he had ‘no interest in making [money] – I want to have a good relationship
with the people who I work with.’ For him, this meant that their business, whilst not being
‘a co-operative by any means’, involved a ‘kind of blurring of the … hierarchy’. He wasn’t
sure ‘whether that falls into the green eco side of things, but … a lot of people are drawn to
that and also have similar way of viewing the world’. Despite this, he admitted that
‘obviously the bottom line is, it’s a business … it’s got to work.’ The challenge here is to
combine a business with a strong commitment to an ideal and to perform both aspects well.

16
7. Conclusions

In this paper we have argued that green entrepreneurs’ combination of environmental

concerns and entrepreneurialism offers an interesting exploration of the fluid and multiple
character of narratives in the green economy. This is particularly timely given that the
global financial crisis has injected new life into discussions about the relationship between
the economy and the environment (Tienhaara 2014). Previous research has shown that
there are challenges in balancing environmental and business aims and that green
entrepreneurs have to prioritise which is more important in decision making (Kearins et al.
2010; Kirkwood and Walton 2010). However, we offer a more detailed and nuanced view of
these issues based on in-depth qualitative research indicating that for green entrepreneurs
this is rarely an either/or situation. In contrast to previous work, we offer a dynamic view of
the evolving nature of ‘being’ and ‘becoming’ a green entrepreneur, rather than relying on
the fixed categories espoused in earlier typologies. Reflecting the different discourses of
the green economy outlined in Table 1, there was a similar narrative spectrum expressed by
our respondents (see Table 3).

In relation to the question of how discourses of the green economy affect the narratives
that green entrepreneurs construct for themselves and their businesses, there was certainly
a strong sense among all respondents that they saw themselves as different from the
mainstream, even if this view had to be kept private when dealing with clients. In some
cases, green entrepreneurs talked about more radical ways of running businesses and
transforming their sectors, and decoupling quality of life from high incomes and high
consumption. These views have more in common with degrowth principles, and the need
to redefine prosperity. In this vein, green entrepreneurs may be seen to ‘embody degrowth
ideas in new material spaces’ (Kallis 2011: 878). These material spaces may occupy space
outside of the ‘green economy’ as currently conceptualised – as we show in Table 3, this
small group of green entrepreneurs / activists rejected the current dominant discourse of
the green economy. For them, this green economy discourse offers a ‘sustainability fix’
(While et al., 2004) for policy makers who are unwilling or feel unable to make radical
political shifts towards sustainability. This group of entrepreneurs are important in realising
new forms of entrepreneurship that question contemporary notions of well-being,
profitability and economic growth. These green entrepreneurs attempted to downplay
stereotypes of entrepreneurs as greedy and profit-driven through their narratives relating to
the values of family life, community and environmental issues. Their focus on
environmental concern means that these green entrepreneurs make choices about how to
engage with entrepreneurship to challenge the idealised notions of the entrepreneur as
embodied solely in a view of enterprise that focuses on profit and growth. They drew on a
discourse of quality of life, and low growth or degrowth, to frame an entrepreneurial
narrative that was more consistent with their ideals, but which perhaps does not align so
well with mainstream images of entrepreneurialism (cf. Larson and Pearson 2012). Further
research is required which explores these business practices in more detail.

However, at other times, research participants’ narratives reflected a more traditional

economic development perspective, which might align better with mainstream business
philosophies. In between these positions, respondents’ narratives reflected the ways that
they tried to combine different perspectives at different times, which represents the

17
experiences of the messy and complex reality of being a green entrepreneur. Although we
have used four headings as a means to describe different narrative accounts, these are
porous and illustrate how fixed categories are not adequate to understand the competing
complexities that green entrepreneurs, and indeed other actors, are dealing with. Many of
the research respondents described narratives that travelled across the four subheadings
we outline above, illustrating the dynamic (and sometimes contradictory) nature of green
entrepreneurship. Previous conceptualisations of green entrepreneurial identity have seen
it as relatively stable and enduring, rather than dynamic and potentially competing. It is not
our intention to pigeonhole green entrepreneurs, but rather to recognise the complexity
and contentious nature of green entrepreneurship, and the ways that green entrepreneurs
try to overcome personal conflicts, not only within their own narratives, but also those that
arise from contact with, and their framing of, the broader mainstream discourses and the
ideals of their clients and contacts. As a result, green entrepreneurs are not confined to one
narrative but moved between and across these, depending on circumstances and how the
mainstream discourse of the green economy affects their narratives. Thus, our respondents
may see themselves as outside the mainstream or as radical at some points, but part of the
same mainstream green economy at other points in time. Despite this apparent lack of
cohesion to one specific narrative, it is important to recognise the role of narratives in
providing a foundation for shared identity and purpose, which can play a part in challenging
mainstream discourses and in creating a different economy and society, the possible worlds
we alluded to earlier. While often deeply entrenched, discourses such as ‘continued
economic growth’ can be contested or challenged by alternative “niches” or counter-
narratives that may eventually come to replace the dominant discourses(s) of a culture. In
developing the framework for thinking about how green entrepreneurs’ narratives both
inform, and are informed by, discourses of the green economy, we attempt to show that
these narratives are unstable and changeable, such that the same green entrepreneur could
concomitantly express narratives from multiple perspectives. They are thus unsuited to
static typologies found in the existing literature. Furthermore, our (admittedly imperfect)
categorisation of these narratives illustrates how resistant the mainstream discourses are to
change, and the importance of considering wider contexts beyond the lone entrepreneurial
hero.

In relation to what this means for the future potential of green entrepreneurs to transform
economic development practices, the current policy-driven form of the green economy is
working to encourage particular forms of green entrepreneurship conforming to ideals
linked to continued growth and consumption, and the use of advanced technologies (cf.
Tienhaara 2014). We suggest that the latter legitimates certain green entrepreneurial
identities and discounts others, especially those which are more radical or transformative.
Mirroring Karvonen et al.’s (2014) argument in relation to urban experiments, current green
economy perspectives exhibit the paradoxical qualities of promising radical change whilst
practicing business as usual. This tendency reinforces particular discourses of economic
growth and entrepreneurship, and rather than undermining and challenging neoliberal
economic development, it potentially locks us in to continuing such strategies. This context
influences how green entrepreneurs make sense of their personal beliefs and values, and
these either ‘fit’ well or less well with mainstream ideologies. By focusing on green
entrepreneurs, we hope to have highlighted how some of the actors involving in making and

18
remaking the green economy negotiate the tensions encountered in being green and being
entrepreneurial.

The mainstream green economy project needs to be diverse so as to support, encourage

and legitimate the transformative agenda of green entrepreneurs such as the ones we
discuss in this paper, rather than focusing solely on corporate clean-tech type businesses
which arguably do little to alter the status quo. In this we concur with Shear’s (2014)
observations that despite the predominance of the mainstream green economy project, the
green economy is actually a contingent, undetermined, economic space full of circulating
desires, ideologies and fantasies, and a full range of capitalist and non-capitalist
relationships and practices. Like the mainstream economy, the green economy is
continually being made and remade; its shape and contours are contingent and open to
transformation (Shear 2014). For us, green entrepreneurs are core to this process of making
and remaking, in that their narratives help to expand the concept of the green economy and
to make ‘present’ alternatives which challenge the current obsession with economic growth
and continued expansion of consumption. Without such examples, it is unlikely that the
green economy will offer the solutions that policy makers imagine it can provide. In this
sense, we conceptualise green entrepreneurship as relational, so that what it actually
constitutes varies temporally and spatially. This approach better situates green
entrepreneurs in the surrounding contexts and moves from fixed and static images of green
entrepreneurs towards a position where their narratives can change in the short term but
also evolve over longer periods to become more or less ‘green’. In the UK, as it stands, the
dominant discourse of the green economy remains wedded to traditional economic
development objectives and as such does little to encourage ‘strong’ green
entrepreneurship. The weight of such interpretations bears down on green entrepreneurs
and constrains their potential to substantially perform the economy otherwise.

19
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Table 1. Discourses of the Green Economy.

Frequently articulated in policy Rarely articulated in policy

Incremental change Transformative change

Conventional pro- Selective growth/greening Limits to

growth/almost business as the economy growth/socioeconomic
usual transformation
• Greening as • Resource-efficiency • Steady state
investment • Low carbon growth economy
opportunity • Decoupling • Prosperity without
• Restarting market • Clean technologies growth
economies • Ecological • Degrowth
• Green Keynesianism modernisation • Social well-being
• Job creation
Source: Adapted from Bina (2013), Ferguson (2015).

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Table 2. Categories 4 of Interviewees.
Sector No.
Finance and policy staff 15
Consultants 4
Builders 4
Architects 4
Building material suppliers 7
Energy consultants/installers 7
Other green building 14
entrepreneurs
Total 55

4
We recognise that these ‘categories’ are not fixed and that some participants operate across boundaries.

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 Table 3. Discourses of the Green Economy – Shaping Green Entrepreneurs’ Narratives.

Frequently articulated in policy Rarely articulated in policy

Incremental change Transformative change

Conventional pro-growth/almost Selective growth/greening the economy Limits to growth/socioeconomic

business as usual transformation

Green entrepreneurs’ narratives (below) as they relate to discursive framings of the green economy (above)
It’s not about hugging trees Pragmatism and the impact of Compromise and hybridity Radical transformations – activist
the mainstream economy entrepreneurs
I had focussed on the recycling area as one of the [If] a company says ‘look, I’m really not I’m not the biggest soapbox standing I always felt I wanted somebody to take…my ideas
commercial areas that would make the company interested in being green but I’m trying to green…you must do this; you must do that and turn into a business and give me some income
viable and also deliver solutions in its own little save money’. That’s their motivation. I’m and the other! Um…I appreciate that we so I could then go on to other ideas. You know I
sphere - we can't all save the planet! (GB011 – not really worried what the motivation need to use these green issues within the felt I wasn’t a businessman and I was the design
environmental consultancy). is...it’s the impact that I’m looking at … and business but I don’t think we need…I’m not and craftsman you know. And I didn’t want to be
much as I might love everybody to wear going to start waving the flags about it if running a business (GB012, Environmental
I'm using my entrepreneurial skills, which I see as sandals and hug a tree ... there’s very little you know what I mean? (GB033 green technology business).
creative skills, not to exploit the planet’s resources point in being super eco and bankrupt … So building business).
or other people, but to deliver environmental whatever a business has to do, it has to We're really not getting down to what life is all
solutions, but also to run a commercial business make commercial sense. And I will push I am very much a believer in sustainability, about, and that's about quality, people, fresh air,
on that basis. So commercially successful the environmental bit very much if it makes which is not seeing the environment just clean food, clear water, space, the flora and fauna,
delivering environmental solutions. (GB011 – commercial sense. (GP006, policy). for the sake of the environment. But the beauty of the planet we live on. It's just not
environmental consultancy). seeing it in the perspective of financial hitting the agenda at all. (GB011 – environmental
Yeah I do support green issues … it’s scene and the social scene. consultancy).
…there is a fantastic opportunity to use difficult though because we set out with an
environmental issues to help us work our way intention of making the green issues work It was a really good business model and … that
out of recession … My prediction is simple it will for us as I said before with the PV, and the differentiated us actually. In fact that we decided
be the environment that will be the next boom last thing we expected was the we would kind of quite actually not go and sell
(GB010, environmental consultancy). government to change the Feed in Tariff so stuff to people and just basically talking to people
drastically. (GB033 green building as they went through it. So I think people were
business). attracted to the nice people side.... (GB028,
renewables company).

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