Drawing on the burgeoning literature of place in organizational research, we examine the emergence of a local entrepreneurial region in northern Germany and investigate how actors linguistically construct the new start-up scene. In this sense, we extend existing literature, which has foremost highlighted how actors draw on already established meanings of local places, such as Silicon Valley, by showcasing how places become infused with meaning in the first place. Surprised by the observation that actors described the region as both a suitable place to start ventures, and as an area that is seriously lagging behind in its capacities to support start-ups, we draw on a dialectical approach, and mobilize Bakhtin’s notion of the chronotope to better understand this seemingly paradox. Drawing on interviews, observations and documents, we discern four types of ‘placing’, which are geared towards constructing the emerging entrepreneurial region both symbolically and materially. Common to these types of placing is that they work with scale and distance, shaped by what we believe are two chronotopes; one being that of the international start-up world, and the other that of a rural region. Relying on the chronotope allows us to develop a spatialised or ‘sited’ way to account for the role of local and translocal discourses in shaping processes of symbolic and material construction. Furthermore, by proposing the notion of ‘placing’ as tension-ridden process, we extend current literature on place and entrepreneurship and highlight the role of language in the construction of a local start-up ecosystems.
