An Analysis of Fund-Raising Process by Civic Entrepreneur
Until recently, most business management studies of venture enterprises have tended to examine the relationship between the entrepreneur’s network, business concept and financing. This paper is a case study of a small, regional art project in the Hiroshima area, managed by students and professors from Hiroshima City University, which started as a small project but eventually grew into a large-scale project which involved actors from various fields.
The study will analyze differences in management related to small, social value creation focused projects, and general project management. It is based on an action research approach with detailed interviews that took place over the period of one year and are continuing. In our case analysis we found differences between the management of social value creation projects and general project management in the early stages of project funding. Especially, we found that the relationship between business concept and fund raising was not so important. After establishing financial support it took some time to create a business concept that could realize the project’s business goals.
In the future, this study will be extended to include various areas, and continue intensive interviews as well as take a quantitative approach in order to generalize our research findings.