‘How might we?’: Studying new venture ideation in and through practices

Recent scholarship focuses on new venture ideation—the process of generating and developing new venture ideas—separately from venture development, as the creation of new ventures begins with new venture ideas. In this study, we ask which practices are being enacted to carry out new venture ideation, and how and why are they constituted by aspiring entrepreneurs. By conducting a video ethnography, we find that aspiring entrepreneurs utilize six practices, i.e., ‘how might we’, ‘seeing’, ‘do you mean’, ‘yes, and’, ‘invitation’, and ‘but, what’ linked to the formulation, explaining, extending and questioning of new venture ideas. Our study extends the relational perspective of new venture ideation by detailing the relations between conversation, bodies and visual artefacts that facilitate the joint exercise of entrepreneurial imagination. •How aspiring entrepreneurs generate and develop new venture ideas in and through practices remains little understood.•Uses a video ethnography that produced 33 h of audio-visual recordings to answer how social practices perform new venture ideation in situ.•Multimodal analysis suggest that aspiring entrepreneurs are guided by and utilize six social practices.•Practices enable coordination whilst remaining open and fluid to allow for individuals to imagine possible ventures.•Opens up new territory for research on new venture ideation in and through practices.