Search for a command to run...
ABSTRACT Globally, regional small businesses underpin many flourishing economic activities by playing a key role in employment and expansion of opportunity; however, they face unique challenges as they often struggle to define success metrics, navigate unclear and potentially limited markets, secure capital and build strong networks with stakeholders. This paper draws on the start‐up journey of 17 small regional businesses within a Tasmanian context. These businesses were explored through semi‐structured interviews to understand lived entrepreneurial experience, small business strategy and the unique organisational challenges that these firms, regions and countries are facing today. Using a coursework unit at a regional university, students were asked to interrogate small businesses using a semi‐structured interview process; these businesses were questioned on their business practices and provided with an overview and a new perspective on the way they can run their organisation from a stakeholder perspective. The practice of bricolage within these small regional businesses has shown to help them through both innovation and scarcity. Through understanding their journeys and problems, governments and policymakers can develop more effective regional policy and innovation or entrepreneurial identity in these organisations that support success and growth in these vital small businesses. Our findings show that entrepreneurs in regional contexts often move between the use of different approaches from effectuation and causation toward bricolage as a bridging mechanism that enables them to cope with unique regional market conditions such as limited networks and resource scarcity that often disrupt business planning. By studying the linkage between the three mechanisms (effectuation, causation and bricolage) to regional market conditions, this study helps to understand why regional businesses often scale incrementally and continue to be connected in their local area without scaling beyond that geographic region.