Entrepreneurial mindset: Mobilising others

Mobilising others is a uniting characteristic of the entrepreneurial mindset because many opportunities cannot be developed by one person, one team, or one institution acting alone. Entrepreneurial progress often depends on resourcefulness, combining different forms of knowledge, access, legitimacy, infrastructure, experience, and commitment.

Activating others and engaging them in the process is therefore not an optional extra added after the idea has been formed. It is often part of how the idea becomes viable in the first place. An entrepreneurial mindset recognises that value is frequently created at the intersection of contributions, rather than within isolated effort.

In practice, this means asking not only what can I do, but what can, or will need to be, built with others. Progress depends on recognising that working together is better than going it alone, and occurs at the intersection of shared visions and values, where complementary capabilities exist, and how different interests can be aligned around a shared objective.

Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much.

Helen Keller

From networking to purposeful co-creation

Entrepreneurial collaboration is different from general networking. Networking may create visibility, access to information, ideas and opportunities through the concept of ‘weak ties’¹. Purposeful co-creation goes further: it identifies what is missing, who can contribute it, and why they would have reason to engage.

Entrepreneurial collaboration begins when relationships are connected to a clear purpose. Attending events, exchanging ideas, or maintaining professional relationships may be useful, but they do not automatically generate an impact. Collaboration becomes productive when people move from “just a contact” to “someone with common interests”, then to opportunity identification and commitment.

In university and innovation settings, an example could be to societal challenges, connecting education, policy, institutional strategy and external engagement, while bringing together staff, students, external partners, community actors, entrepreneurs, funders, or industry representatives around a problem that none of them can solve alone². In entrepreneurship education, networking with external actors can also help academics build proximity, acquire resources and generate legitimacy for new initiatives³.

Common reasons for seeking co-creators could include:

• To strengthen creativity and innovation – Diverse perspectives often improve idea generation, problem-solving, and adaptability.
• To provide missing expertise or capabilities – Co-creators can contribute complementary skills, knowledge, and experience that are not currently available within the venture.
• To provide legitimacy or profile in the market – Co-creators can enhance credibility, visibility, and trust among customers, investors, and other stakeholders.
• To provide access to either specific resources – Co-creators can contribute access to funding, technology, infrastructure, talent, or strategic networks.
• To provide access to the market – Co-creators can open pathways to customers, distribution channels, industry relationships, or new geographic markets.
• To share risk and responsibility – Financial, operational, and reputational risk are often easier to manage with co-creators.
• To increase speed and execution capacity – Co-creators can accelerate development, decision-making, experimentation, and scaling.

The practical task is to make these contributions visible and connect them to a clear purpose. It starts with recognizing a need and then asking the question, “Who do I know?” to see who could help to fill that gap. Once candidates have been identified, entrepreneurial actors ask: “Why would they participate, what can they bring to the table, what do they need in return, and how can we create a mutually beneficial dynamic?”.

Key point

Move beyond broad general networking to co-creation by asking who can contribute to the opportunity, why they would want to engage, and what mutually beneficial circumstances can be created.

Collaboration as a way to improve ideas

Collaboration is not only a way to access resources. It is also a way to improve ideas. When individuals work across boundaries, they expose their assumptions to challenge, test ideas against real needs, and refine their approach through feedback. The best concepts are created in an environment in which there is friendly disagreement and where actors can openly oppose each other to add different perspectives and improve it.

This is especially important in uncertain contexts, where the first version of an idea is rarely the strongest one. A concept may seem promising within one team or institution, but become more relevant, usable, or credible when shaped with those who understand the problem from another position.

For example, students, researchers, entrepreneurs, industry partners, public organisations, or community groups may each see different parts of the same challenge. Bringing these perspectives together can reveal blind spots, clarify demand, identify practical constraints, and create stronger pathways for implementation.

Seen this way, mobilising others is not simply about dividing tasks efficiently. It is a learning process. Through conversation, disagreement, testing, and reflection, ideas become more grounded and more likely to generate an impact.⁴

Key point

When developing something ambitious, involve people who can challenge your assumptions, reveal blind spots and help you test whether it responds to a real need.

Aligning stakeholders to maximise impact

For collaboration to work, alignment matters. Goodwill and shared interest may open the door, but they are not enough to sustain progress. Productive collaboration requires clarity around what each party is trying to achieve, what each can contribute, and how decisions will be made as new information emerges.

Impact is co-created when mobilising others generates value for multiple stakeholders, rather than serving only one actor. In university contexts, this means linking institutional priorities with social, economic, or community value, rather than treating stakeholder benefit as an add-on⁵. This does not mean that every participant has the same motivation. In fact, collaboration often brings together people with different incentives, expectations, and definitions of success. The work is to connect these differences to a common direction.

This requires deliberate attention to roles, expectations, and mutual benefit. Who needs to be involved? What are they able to contribute? What would make participation worthwhile for them? Where might friction emerge? These questions help prevent collaboration from becoming vague, extractive, or dependent on individual enthusiasm alone.

When alignment is treated as part of the work, mobilising others becomes more than participation. It becomes a structured way of creating outcomes that are valuable for more than one party.

Key point

Be clear about what each stakeholder wants, what they can contribute and how working together is beneficial for everyone involved.

Building opportunities together

Patchwork-Quilt Principle

Saras Sarasvathy’s “Effectuation” identifies the ‘Patchwork-Quilt Principle’. It describes a situation where entrepreneurs build opportunities with self-selecting stakeholders who are willing to make real commitments, rather than starting with a fixed plan and searching for ideal partners to execute it⁶.

Collaboration changes the opportunity itself. New collaborators do not only add capacity to an existing plan; they often change what is possible, what matters, and what direction the initiative can take. A partner may bring access to a new user group. A student may reveal a different need. An industry actor may identify a route to application or a market. A community organisation may clarify what would make an initiative legitimate and useful.

This is why entrepreneurial collaboration requires openness as well as direction. The aim is not to gather as many contributors as possible, but to involve those whose commitment, knowledge, or resources can help shape a better opportunity.

The central question therefore shifts from “Who can help me?” to “What can we build together that none of us could create alone?” This shift changes the quality of engagement. It encourages entrepreneurs to look for complementarity rather than similarity, for commitment rather than loose interest, and for mutual progress rather than one-sided gain.

Key point

Work with collaborators who bring complementary capabilities and real commitment, allowing the opportunity to be shaped through what you can build together.

If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.

African proverb

Moving from individual effort to joint outcomes

Mobilising others is ultimately about turning distributed contributions into outcomes that matter. This requires more than bringing people together. It requires translating different capabilities into coordinated action.

In practice, this means building relationships that can support experimentation, feedback, and adaptation over time. Productive relationships rest on the ability to have robust conversations, the permission to disagree agreeably, have open conversations, collaboratively solve problems and offer potential solutions in a constructive way. Forming respectful and trusted relationships are formed through undertaking actions together, having patience and tolerance in the process, trusting the outcome and reflecting in a balanced way to improve future collaboration.

It also means knowing when mobilising others is useful and when it is not. Not every activity needs more partners, and not every stakeholder needs to be involved in every decision. Entrepreneurial judgement includes the ability to focus on collaboration where it adds value.

When mobilising others is done well, it can strengthen both the initiative and the wider ecosystem around it. Participants learn from one another, resources are used more effectively, and ideas become connected to the people and contexts that can help them succeed.

Key point

Mobilise others where it adds value, coordinating the right people and building productive relationships to undertake actions that create meaningful shared outcomes.

Looking ahead

Mobilising others is not a one-time activity. It is an ongoing capability. As contexts evolve, so do the stakeholders, resources, and opportunities involved. Entrepreneurial actors continuously identify who to work with, align interests, and adapt collaboration as new information emerges.

Across entrepreneurship, innovation ecosystems, commercialisation, and impact creation, progress depends on the ability to bring together distributed contributions and turn them into meaningful outcomes. Individuals who can build trust, align motivations, and integrate complementary capabilities are better positioned to mobilise others and create impact.

In this way, mobilising others becomes more than a supporting activity. It becomes a core mechanism for navigating uncertainty and shaping opportunities into reality.

References

1. Granovetter, M (2023). 50 years on, Mark Granovetter’s ‘The Strength of Weak Ties’ is stronger than ever, retrieved on 8^th May 2026 from https://news.stanford.edu/stories/2023/07/strength-weak-ties
2. Ferreira, J. J., Fayolle, A., Ratten, V., & Raposo, M. (Eds.). (2018). Entrepreneurial universities: Collaboration, education and policies. Edward Elgar Publishing.
3. Rossano-Rivero, S., & Wakkee, I. (2019). Academic entrepreneurship in the context of education: The role of the networking behaviour of academics. Journal of Science and Technology Policy Management, 10(4), 951-974.
4. Secundo, G., Del Vecchio, P., Schiuma, G., & Passiante, G. (2017). Activating entrepreneurial learning processes for transforming university students’ idea into entrepreneurial practices. International Journal of Entrepreneurial Behavior & Research, 23(3), 465-485.
5. Karwowska, E. (2021). Creating shared value by the university. Social Responsibility Journal, 17(1), 30-47.
6. Sarasvathy, S. D. (2008). Effectuation: Elements of entrepreneurial expertise. Edward Elgar Publishing.

Luca Barbera (author) is a Project Officer at UIIN. His work encompasses a broad spectrum of research topics, including sustainability, deep tech, engagement practices for universities and academics, with a particular emphasis on the valorisation of results.
Jose Villagran-Polo (author) is the Deputy Manager R&D Projects at UIIN and works on topics related to university-business collaboration, entrepreneurial education and the role of university-based incubators in their regions.