“My Disability Is Something We Use as a Strength” — Hero or Not Hero: Revisiting critical studies about entrepreneurship

Abstract

Critical perspectives challenge the figure of the hero. Meanwhile, the scientific debate lacks a conceptual framework to define the hero characteristics. The objectives of this research are to present and extend the hero-matrix, to use entrepreneurs with disabilities (EWDs) as a means to test the matrix empirically, and to shed light on what defines a hero in our current post-modernist context. To do so, we interviewed 20 EWDs twice over the course of a year. Our results show that a hero is someone who successfully copes with seven injunctions relating both to himself or herself as a person, and to someone who interacts with others. Disability seems to increase the intensity of each criterion.