The literature on Community-based entreprises provides a good framework for studying the dynamics of cooperative entrepreneurship. However, today it is still unclear how collective projects serving the community emerge and take shape in the first months of their existence. To understand the emergence of this kind of venture we adopt an entrepreneuring view which allows us to propose a process perspective on entrepreneurship (Steyaert, 2007). Thus, this paper will specifically address the following question: beyond the entrepreneur and the entrepreneurial team, how does the collective agency of the community enable the creation of new ventures over time? We rely on two case studies located in the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region to identify the collective dynamics of this type of entrepreneurial venture. Our contribution provides a new understanding of the community ventures process and contributes more broadly to the literature on collective entrepreneurship.
