1.1 Why Passion and Entrepreneurship?
It is hard to picture a real entrepreneur without passion, that is, as a strictly rational individual driven solely by a calculative pursuit of profit. Iconic entrepreneurs such as Virginâs Richard Branson, Appleâs Steve Jobs, IKEAâs Ingvar Kamprad, Luxotticaâs Leonardo del Vecchio or The Body Shopâs Anita Roddick all shared a deep passion and a strong emotional engagement not only with their businesses but also with broader societal and personal issues, ranging from the environment to living conditions and poverty. But, despite the salience of deep passions in the professional life of so many entrepreneurs, only quite recently has passion surfaced as a core topic in entrepreneurship studies (see, e.g., Cardon et al. 2009; Murnieks et al. 2014; Chen et al. 2015; Guercini and Ceccarelli 2020). Following and expanding this research tradition, this book aims to penetrate into the connections between âpassionâ and âentrepreneurshipâ, two phenomena that for long have been treated by separate disciplinary domains, namely philosophy and psychology (e.g., Descartes 1985; Vallerand et al. 2007), on the one hand, and management and economics (e.g., Schumpeter 1934; Kirzner 1973), on the other hand.
While from an empirical point of view, passion is clearly important for real-life entrepreneurs and seems to have concrete consequences for their behavior, it is also important from a theoretical point of view to develop the very concept of passion, its various facets and connections with entrepreneurial behavior. Therefore, this book sets to investigate in a fine-grained manner the very construct of passion and its empirical manifestations across concrete cases of entrepreneurial endeavors. This investigation will help us identify how the notion of passion, in all its various facets and by using different perspectives, can be employed within the academic field of entrepreneurship, while also allowing to progress further this field itself.
This book is the result of the joint efforts of a team of scholars who have been working on the topic of âpassion and entrepreneurshipâ for several years and have met to discuss these issues in three dedicated workshops: in Florence, Italy (2017); in Uppsala, Sweden (2018); and in Milan, Italy (2019). Next to offering a novel perspective on the connections between passion and entrepreneurship, this book also addresses this issue from the perspective of both individuals (Thorgren and Wincent 2015) and communities (Cova and Guercini 2016; Dallago and Tortia 2018).
While consolidated academic definitions of entrepreneurship are based on the search for profit by rational actors who discover entrepreneurial opportunities thanks to their alertness (Kirzner 1973) or combine resource and activities in innovative ways (Salerno 2008), the reality of entrepreneurship is much more complex. In particular, entrepreneurship seems to be often based on less rational behavior driven by reasons quite different from profit-seeking or even from any form of economic gain. For many entrepreneurs, entrepreneurship goes tightly together with individual passion and a sense of creativity (Cardon et al. 2009). Passion is a concept signaling strong emotional elements and a sense of irrationality, and it can both feed the pursuit of a certain business and be itself enhanced by the entrepreneurâs efforts in starting and developing a business (Gielnik et al. 2015).
These kinds of connections between passion and entrepreneurship are an interesting research area, which is still in its infancy (Collewaert et al. 2016). The literature in this emerging area (Cardon et al. 2009, 2012) has identified both the positive and negative aspects of passion, including its âcontagiousnessâ in relation to others such as employees and financiers, and the problem of measurement of passion and its effects. Scholars have identified skills, social relationships and own work experience as important factors influencing both passion and entrepreneurship. Consumption too can be a reservoir of passion and for innovative forms of entrepreneurship (Guercini and Cova 2018; Daskalopoulou and Skandalis 2019). In examining the interface between passion and entrepreneurship the contributions in this book address in particular the following issues: (1) rethinking the definition(s) of passion and its various forms and facets; (2) highlighting the multiple functions of passion for entrepreneurship; and (3) capturing the different analytical levels where passion emerges, such as individuals, teams and communities.
This book provides a conceptual framing as well as empirical case studies on the theme of passion and its roles for entrepreneurship. The cases provide concrete examples from several sectors and contexts such as winemaking, sports equipment, gaming, healthcare, the cultural and non-profit fields. This variety enables investigating passion within heterogeneous settings. This introductory chapter continues with a review of previous studies on the link between passion and entrepreneurship. Then, we define our framework to address this connection: this framework identifies different facets and intensity of passion, the level at which it appears (individual, team and community) as well as its effects for the entrepreneurial endeavor. Finally, we provide a brief review of the contents of the chapters that make up this volume.
1.2 Previous Studies
It is both stimulating and challenging to review the theme of passion and entrepreneurship, which we identified above as a new research area within the field of entrepreneurship. While a comprehensive literature review on this topic would require much more space, we focus here on outlining the key themes and concepts which emerge from the most influential and cited contributions on the links between passion and entrepreneurship. On the one hand, from the most influential studies appear interesting research gaps that deserve further attention, and, on the other hand, through the new interpretation of the connections between passion and entrepreneurship it is also possible to propose a new research agenda.
Entrepreneurship and Passion: Introducing the Phenomenon
It is broadly acknowledged that the research field of entrepreneurship concerns how new businesses are formed (Shane and Venkataraman 2000). The âhowâ question is certainly very intriguing but complex to address, as nascent businesses emerge from the combination of heterogeneous elements and processes such as technology, the business development process, the entrepreneurâs role and relationships with markets. A large part of entrepreneurship research has focused on understanding the different roles played by the entrepreneur as an individual when new businesses are formed. The entrepreneur is often viewed as the owner and manager of the business (Cooper et al. 1988), the organization builder (Gartner 1988), the founder (Howell 1972; Mescon and Montanari 1981), the actor who comb...