Ecosystems as Practice Fields: Coordinating Sensemaking-in-Practice Across Contexts

This study reconceptualizes entrepreneurial sensemaking as a practice-based accomplishment rather than an internal cognitive process. Drawing on practice theory, we examine how sensemaking emerges through situated performances involving doings, sayings, and material arrangements. Based on a comparative qualitative study of fifteen early-stage technology startups across Finland and Türkiye, we demonstrate how entrepreneurs accomplish sensemaking through three interrelated practices of narrating, experimenting, and interpreting. Our findings suggest that these practices are not stable categories but are instead contextually configured accomplishments shaped by ecosystem specific norms, artifacts, and modes of learning. We introduce the concept of ecosystems as practice fields to highlight how entrepreneurial environments structure the visibility, transmission, and evaluation of specific practices. This study contributes to entrepreneurship as practice literature by shifting the analytical focus from identifying discrete practices to explaining how those practices are enacted, stabilized, and varied across different contexts. Consequently, we provide a more robust and situated understanding of the foundational work involved in entrepreneurial sensemaking.