Accidental Entrepreneurs Triggered by Passion, Experience and Sharing. An Investigation on Food Bloggers via Ethnographic Analysis

Moving from the analysis of the unconventional approach to entrepreneurship (accidental/end-user entrepreneur), the purpose of the paper is to verify whether the decision making phase of the entrepreneurial process actually has a collective nature, identifying a virtuous cycle that links individual innovation, knowledge, judgment, and decision-making to collective interactions. Based on the translation of food bloggers in terms of unconventional user entrepreneurs, data were collected by means of an ethnographic analysis and a supplementary online survey on a panel of food bloggers and on their followers. By analyzing the main results of the research, the authors distinguish ‘three generations’ of food bloggers that can be defined amused, functional, and fervent. Only the third group, the fervent food bloggers, thanks to this virtuous circle, seem to emerge as accidental/end-user entrepreneurs.