This article describes the discovery of action research by a "conscious incompetent" in higher education. The influences on the development of an action researcher's individual philosophy are discussed. These shape a specific investigation into the implementation of international staff exchange in a post-1992 UK university from the position of an "outsider within", a tempered radical. Ontological and epistemological concepts of quasi-objectivity, subjectivity, participation and commitment are discussed in relation to entrepreneurship in the higher education context, concluding that action research is a methodology suitable for tempered radicals and strategic entrepreneurs and that the action researcher can play these roles to research the execution of international faculty mobility in higher education.