Kervio, Julien
The transition from sustainable entrepreneurship to post-growth entrepreneurship
- 2026.
19
This doctoral project explores the transition from sustainable entrepreneurship to post-growth entrepreneurship. The project builds on the premise that mainstream sustainable entrepreneurship is grounded in a weak conception of sustainability—one that proves inadequate in solving growing ecological and social crises. Degrowth, by contrast, offers a strong approach to sustainability, yet its principles remain only marginally incorporated into entrepreneurial practice. The dissertation seeks to clarify the distinctions between these two perspectives, to develop a theoretical framework for translating degrowth principles into the entrepreneurial ecosystem, and to analyze the risks associated with such a transition. Adopting a constructivist epistemological stance, the study draws on a comprehensive literature review, a systemic analytical framework, and an intervention-research project carried out with LIDEV, a sustainable-entrepreneurship support organization based in Geneva. The project thus provides value both to scholars and practitioners by generating new knowledge that can enable entrepreneurs to explore pathways toward more robust forms of sustainability.