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As suggested Glaser and Strauss (1967) the analysis and development of the case studies began before the data collection ended. Their argument that it is beneficial to have an overlap between data collection and analysis in order for the researcher to be able to address questions emerging during first review to later informants. Open and selective coding has been applied in order to find and describe the elements and facets of knowledge entrepreneurship and answer the research questions. Hereby open coding means “the process of breaking down, examining, comparing, conceptualizing and categorizing data” (Strauss & Corbin, 1990, p. 61) and selective coding is “selecting the core category” – in this case knowledge entrepreneurship – “systematically relating it to other categories, validating those relationships, and filing in categories that need further refinement and development” (ibid p. 116). The result of the analysis are concepts which are the “building blocks of theory” (Strauss & Corbin, 1998, p. 101) and hence the input for theory development as described in section 1.5.
2.3.3.1. Interview Analysis
For the analysis of the interviews the Atlas.Ti program version 5.0 was used. One so called ‘hermeneutic unit’ was created for each case study and all interview recordings and other case related documents were entered. Next a conceptual transcript of the content of each interview was produced using the methodology of Dürr (2000; Dürr & Aisenbrey, 1998) in (Prehn, 2005)). Hereby the interview is not understood as investigating isolated variables, instead the interview partners where understood as a “‘stable whole’ over which a multitude of phenomena are discovered using a qualitative data is surveyed” (Prehn, 2005, p. 42). During this process already phenomena that were identified as strange attractors and other meta-information was observed and recorded as basis for the holistic analysis. It is important to see whether a phenomenon is a general  strange attractor of the system or unique to the case. Strange attractors that are assessed as elements of all investigated cases become part of the model developed in the cross-case analysis. Weizäcker comments on this process “Each stable result of a fulguration [i] hast to have an intrinsic force for self-stabilization, a correspondence of its inner structures to he outer condition of its existence” (Dürr, 2000). The content of the interviews is then made accessible through the transcripts in which it is attempted to record and express the phenomena as differentiated and vivid as possible in natural spontaneous speech (ibid). Once all interviews had been transcribed each interview was read several times, relevant and unclear parts were listened to, and data was compared across informants in order to identify and understand strange attractors and find and eliminate inconsistencies in the framework (Spiggle 1994 in (McDonald, 2002)). Additionally the notes were reviewed and relevant phenomena, facts and themes were singled out for narrative description in the case study document.
It is important to point out that Charmaz’s re-conceptualization of the grounded theory approach was used. This constructivist premise “assumes the relativism of multiple social realities, recognizes the mutual creation of knowledge by the viewer and the viewed, and aims towards interpretative understandings of subjects’ meanings” (Charmaz, 2000, p. 510). The most challenging aspect when analyzing the interviews was to assess the accuracy of the information obtained. Bernard (1994) points to several distorting effects, foremost deference and response effects are relevant in the context of this study, an interview situation can have on informants. Being conscious of these effects, the researcher attempted to take them into consideration during analysis.
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[i] In this context fulguration means the spontaneous merger of separately existing instances or entities, which form a new system/phenomena.
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