Challenging leadership in discourses of Indigenous entrepreneurship in Australia

This chapter focuses on the social transformation occurring in Australia through the growth of Indigenous entrepreneurship driven by community connectedness to collective goals such as independent Indigenous economic development, rather than any simplistic reproduction of 'homo-economicus'. Interest in Indigenous entrepreneurship as a field for research is increasing. Creating value for the market from cultural knowledge and practices offers Indigenous entrepreneurs unique competitive advantages. While Indigenous Australians are three times less likely to be self-employed than other Australians, there is a growing trend towards innovation in Indigenous arts and cultural tourism, with Indigenous entrepreneurs using the opportunities afforded by new media to reach out to increasingly receptive global audiences. Research into leadership, like much research about entrepreneurship, has been dominated by Western ways of thinking and is deeply permeated with assumptions about what it is to be a leader and how leadership takes place.