Conversational learning: how and what micro-business owners learn from interacting with managers from large firms

The social and situated aspects of entrepreneurial learning are an increasing focus for understanding how small business owners learn through interactions with others. This shift in understanding of the entrepreneurial learning process has implications for programmes designed to support small businesses, and an increasing number of articles explore how owner-managers can be brought together in learning communities to learn from their peers. However, it is rare to find a detailed theorisation of how entrepreneurial learning is socially constructed through deliberate conversations during these programmes. Furthermore, managers from large firms have not tended to be included in such programmes. Through a study based on a programme delivered over an eight-year period by a business school in the United Kingdom, we use Conversational Learning Theory to explore the learning outcomes from a programme where micro-businesses were brought together both with their peers and managers from large firms.