Effectual Entrepreneurship and a Cyclical Model of Expanding Uses of a Focal Resource: A Case Study of TOMUSHI Inc.

The transition toward a circular economy requires firms to develop circular business models (CBMs), yet doing so is particularly challenging for ventures operating under severe resource constraints and uncertainty. Although prior research has examined how entrepreneurs mobilize, recombine, and redeploy resources, less is known about how successive expansions of uses of the same focal resource become generatively connected over time. In this study, I address this question through an in-depth case study of TOMUSHI Inc., a Japanese venture that has developed multiple businesses around a single biological resource—the rhinoceros beetle. I propose a Cyclical Model of Expanding Uses of a Focal Resource. The model captures two analytically distinct but interrelated processes: a within-cycle process through which a new use of the focal resource emerges and a between-cycle process through which the outcomes of one cycle create conditions for subsequent expansion. The findings show that the enactment and commercialization of one use generated knowledge, stakeholder relationships, legitimacy, and capabilities that subsequently became means or conditions for further expanding other uses of the same focal resource. The theoretical significance lies not simply in the identification of multiple uses but in the discovery of generative connections between successive uses. By unpacking this process, I provide a fine-grained account of means expansion within effectuation and show how successive episodes of means expansion can become generatively connected across cycles.