Passion and Entrepreneurship

The aim of the chapter is to investigate the meanings and dimensions of passion resulting from narratives by entrepreneurs who have made passion, cultivated as consumers, their business. The study advances the knowledge of entrepreneurial passion by giving centrality to an internal vision of passion and of its meaning and dimensions. Indeed, within entrepreneurship studies, the methodology to approach the construct of passion is mainly based on sources and definitions generated by scholars, rather than those generated by entrepreneurs themselves.

In this paper, a mixed methodology is adopted that integrates in-depth interviews with content analysis driven by text-mining techniques. The analysis of data includes a semantic clusters analysis that identifies the meanings that entrepreneurs attribute to passion, and a co-occurrences analysis that reveal the words that the entrepreneurs associate to passion. The chapter shows that entrepreneurs define passion through six dimensions: passion as travelling companion, passion as targeted action, passion as practice, passion as organizational context, passion as collectivism, passion as struggle.

Chapter 3: The Role of passion(s) in entrepreneurial team evolution - by Francesco Petrucci, Alessandro Pagano and Roberta Bocconcelli

In the past few years a remarkable number of so-called 'alternative', or 'unconventional', research streams in the field of entrepreneurship emerged. These 'alternative' studies have contributed to recognize entrepreneurship as a heterogeneous and complex phenomenon, calling for going beyond the long-standing 'classical' theory of entrepreneurship focused on the figure of the entrepreneur and on the notion of 'opportunity recognition' that lies at the core of the entrepreneurial process (Guercini & Cova, 2018).

Contrarily to this view, entrepreneurship has been found to be a more 'collective' and 'contextual' process. Many entrepreneurial frameworks such as the social entrepreneurship (Borzaga & Defourny, 2004), the community entrepreneurship (Johannissson, 1990), and more recently the view of the unconventional entrepreneurship (Guercini & Cova, 2018) have acknowledged, even though from different angles, a 'collective dimension' inherent in the entrepreneurial process as opposed to the traditional role of the single entrepreneur (Dufays & Huybrechts, 2017). In particular, these streams have contributed to expanding our knowledge on the collective dimension of entrepreneurship, analyzing the active role that communities play in entrepreneurship. Communities are places of close relationships and intense activities where people produce resources that can be valuably turned into antecedents for entrepreneurial projects and initiatives (Pagano et al., 2018). Accordingly, it is increasingly suggested in this literature the necessity of framing the focal entrepreneurial actor under the lens of the entrepreneurial team (hereafter ET) against the myth of the "lonely hero entrepreneur" (Dufays & Huybrechts, 2017)

The purpose of this chapter is to expand our knowledge on the collective nature of entrepreneurship in a specific way: it investigates the dynamics of passion in ETs formation and evolution in the context of the development process of a new venture. We argue that passion-based entrepreneurship constitutes an appealing setting for studying ETs formation and development. In order to explore the role passion in the evolution of entrepreneurial teams an in-depth case study concerning the formation and development of an ET in the context of a 'cultural and creative' start-up development process is reported: the case concerns the development of RATATA', a contemporary art festival and trade show by a community of passionate friends, artists, and enthusiasts.

Chapter 4: Beyond "entrepreneurial passion": Are there other "deeper" forms of passion involved in entrepreneurial pursuits? - By Enrico Baraldi, Marcus Lindahl, Andrea Perna & Andrea Sabatini

More recently, passion and entrepreneurship have started being seen not only as closely connected but also as an integrated, "fused" concept named entrepreneurial passion (Cardon et al., 2005; Cardon, 2008). This new term coined by Cardon et al. (2009) has lately gained considerable impact in the scholarly field of entrepreneurship and they see "the nature of entrepreneurial passion as consciously accessible, intense positive feelings experienced by engagement in entrepreneurial activities associated with roles that are meaningful and salient to the self-identity of the entrepreneur" (Cardon et al., 2009).

In our view this conceptualization of the elusive notion of passion is problematic. The reason for this, we contend, is that the concept of passion becomes basically all-encompassing or at least a milder form of the emotional tensions described in a wide array of texts starting from the literary and philosophical tradition. Passion then has been diluted by Cardon et al.'s indicator of "intense positive feelings" (Ibid) into a vague placeholder of some heightened emotional activity in general. It would be valuable to pursue a more thorough critical discussion on contemporary attempts within business studies of conceptualizing passion, but that would lead us astray from our own attempted path of inquiry. Instead, we suggest a different and more emotionally hard-core take on passion. In short, we need to distinguish passion from any other type of positive feelings experienced by entrepreneurs, and lean instead towards its extreme manifestations.

The case study which the Authors refer to provides with a good foundation to contemplate the difference between the growingly employed construct of entrepreneurial passion (Cardon et al., 2005; 2009) and the concept of a passionate entrepreneur, that is, and individual driven by some other form of possibly more brutal passion. More particularly, we suggest that if such thing as entrepreneurial passion exists, it should not be taken synonymous with a passionate entrepreneur, or that much deeper forms of passion can intervene, for good and for bad, in entrepreneurial pursuits.

Chapter 5: It's not fair! - Passion, play and entrepreneurship - By Laura Mitchell & Saara L. Taalas

In the literature linking passion and entrepreneurship the rise of proposed passion is allocated to individual effort and/or psychological attributes of a particular individual (Cardon et al, 2009; Collewaert et al, 2016; Gielnik et al, 2015). This interpretation of entrepreneurship located in the traits of single individuals has been contested by researchers focusing on processes of creating organization and the becoming nature of entrepreneurial agency (Gartner 1988, Steyaert 1995). Western thought on entrepreneurship still largely builds on the idea of reason located in deliberate economic mind set for action in the core of entrepreneurship. In our reading, the notion of singularity of reason connects to philosophical roots, namely in the Hegelian body and mind divide. Building on Spinoza's and later Deleuze and Guattari's, this has been problematised in recent entrepreneurship research, arguing for entrepreneurship as embodied becoming (e.g. Hjorth 2007, Steyaert 1998) as well as rooted in networked entrepreneurship and ordinary organisation of interests (Bill, Jansson and Olaison 2010, Rehn and Taalas, 2004).

In this paper we will take a look at entrepreneurship from the perspective of affect and gaming (Anable 2018), and how passion is evoked in the intersection of game play, in the escalation between reason and affect, the mind and body. Werewolf is a social parlour game that has over the last decade become popular and now a standing feature among many high tech start-up entrepreneurship conferences and sparring programmes. Werewolf is a social game with relatively simple rules to learn that can be modified and played without much paraphilia at almost any location with large groups of people. The basic game involves dividing the crowd into a group of villagers with a set number of werewolves among them without the participants knowing the identities of each other. The game play is divided into day and night periods. At night, the werewolves wake up and kill villager one by one. During the day, the villagers are trying to figure out who are the wolves among them and to eliminate wolves without killing innocent fellow villagers by mistake. The game play can be intense and involve all night playing sessions between long conference days. Some think it is the best way to get to know conference participants, and to train entrepreneurial skills while building a start-up community.

By examining the werewolf game playing from an interpretivist perspective as a backdrop, we explore the role of passion in performance of specific entrepreneurial skills. Further, we trace the repetitive and culture-producing aspects of gaming as rehearsal and performance. Through exploration of the repetitive game cycle, we highlight the performative process of such games as werewolf that present opportunities for the normalisation, 'perfection', and emergence of entrepreneurial as becoming.

Chapter 6: The paradox of passion in innovation and entrepreneurship - by Alf Rehn

Unquestionably there was once a time when phenomena such as emotions, passion, embodiment and the likes were relegated to the very margins of entrepreneurship studies, and overall seen as somewhat dirty and disreputable. This has shifted radically over the last decades, to the point where one could conceivably make the argument that attention to e.g. passion and affect in entrepreneurship represents the majority position, and the attempts at clinical, quantitative and pseudo-objective analysis of entrepreneurship that is sometimes referred to as "the mainstream" is in fact the new margin. To this comes the fact that passion in entrepreneurship has, through the ideological state apparatuses operating in the field, become enshrined as not so much a possibility than a demand and exhortation. Looking e.g. to the field of startup entrepreneurship, with its cheerful insistence that one should "do insanely great things" and "find your Why", we can see the establishment of a specific kind of ideology, one where passion isn't so much accepted as it is expected.

This paper will discuss the paradox of prescribed passion, by way of a popular culture analysis of how passion in entrepreneurship gets inscribed, disseminated, and reproduced. In addition, the paper will address how entrepreneurial passion becomes commodified, in a manner that makes it consumable and easy to communicate to the world. As notions about passion in entrepreneurship become inscribed as simple exhortations, these can then be turned into guidebooks, posters, and various ephemera, which in turn become semiotic markers regarding the need for passion for those wishing to belong to the community.

Rather than seeing passion as an individual engagement, the paper will thus discuss it as an affect, even an affectation, and engage with the problematics of passion when it becomes part of an ideology, a system of norms, and a set of semiotic commands that can be transformed into material forms. Looking to e.g. conferences for and popular literature about entrepreneurship, the paper will argue that passion, rather than being the establishment of personal identity and a deeply held project, can be studied as part of how group cohesion is formed, how ideological purity is measured, and how specific socio-moral mores are reified. Not unlike the manner in which military units use shared rituals, oft-repeated slogans, or provocative linguistic displays to create a sense of unified purpose (consider, for instance, shouts of "semper fi" and "no one left behind", not to mention more loaded and morally questionable discursive practices), the contemporary world of entrepreneurship (particularly of the startup variety) uses references to and semiotic objects of passion, living your dream and the likes not so much as objective statements about the world, but rather as ways to align people to an ideological position. In such a reading, the very notion of passion becomes problematized, and seen as having the potential of being made into a (material) resource for ideological praxis.

The paper will end with a somewhat provocative suggestion, namely that the attention paid to passion in the practice of entrepreneurship may in fact bring about negative consequences, and that there is an argument to be made for both more dispassionate entrepreneurship and a more dispassionate entrepreneurship studies. Whilst these critiques work on somewhat different levels, both point to the difficulty of dogmatism inherent in praising passion for the sake of passion, and reproducing Cartesian notions regarding emotion and passion versus analytics and reason. Rather than pandering to notions of pseudo-postrationalism, the paper attempts a less affected analysis of affect, and a more dispassionate analysis of passion.

Chapter 7: Passion, expert knowledge and community entrepreneurship - by Christian Lechner

Most research on passion in entrepreneurship focuses on entrepreneurial passion, exploring how entrepreneurial passion fuels entrepreneurial effort or vice-versa. Entrepreneurial passion framed in this sense, puts the will to launch a venture first and the search for an opportunity second. However, since entrepreneurship research deals with the question who and why individual found companies and thus develop entrepreneurial intent, the entrepreneurial passion approach overlooks individuals who perceive first an opportunity and only in a second step develop entrepreneurial intent (and not necessarily entrepreneurial passion). Research on expert knowledge proposes that 10.000 hours of dedicated training are necessary to become an expert in a given domain. As entrepreneurs need (or need to mobilize) some form of human, social and financial capital, a road to entrepreneurship can be to acquire expert knowledge in the first place.The effortful way to the development of expert knowledge can be appropriately understood by passion for a specific domain (e.g. music, sports, programming, acting, engineering, ...). More specifically, it requires GRIT, i.e. passion accompanied by perseverance. However, literature on talent management suggests that passion is rather related to task specificity than with ambiguous task variety of entrepreneurial activities. Therefore, the link between passion and entrepreneurship is less clear.



Our research idea is to focus on the link between passion and the development of expert knowledge. If domain passion sustains the development of domain expertise, we need to understand how domain passion and domain expertise can lead to entrepreneurial intent. One option is that domain passion and domain expertise leads to networking with other domain experts. The resulting community of experts will lead to the generation of ideas of future development of the domain, which can lead to the emergence of new opportunities in the domain with the potential of creating a venture. What individuals will most likely develop entrepreneurial intent? As the development of expert knowledge was subject to the availability hypothesis, i.e. the individual must have had the opportunity to develop domain expertise or put in other words, must have been available to dedicate 10.000 hours to training necessary to become an expert. Similarly, once achieved expert status, the individual needs to be also available for the entrepreneurial activity, which is or a function of an a-priori availability or opportunity costs. If opportunity costs are high, i.e. the expert has a very good job, then the ability or the will to be available will be diminished, reducing the probability of entrepreneurship. Therefore, entrepreneurship appears to be more likely for passionate, domain experts, which are outliers or marginalised. Second, since opportunities will precede entrepreneurial intent, the network developed within the expert community will be decisive. If the idea network of the individual consists only of domain experts but not of bridging ties to the entrepreneurial world (business angels, VC's, business men), then the likelihood of developing entrepreneurial intent will be less likely.

Chapter 8: Exploring the role of entrepreneurial passion in combining social and business goals. The OTS benift corporation - By Chiara Cantù

Inventing, founding, and developing are the three domains related to entrepreneurial passion. With reference to the development of a new venture, the entrepreneurial capabilities allow the founder in the identification and in the exploitation of opportunities. In particular, entrepreneurial alertness refers to an attitude of receptiveness to available (but hitherto overlooked) opportunities. On the basis of the bricolage capability entrepreneurs, through improvisation, can mobilize and combine resources in a novel way (Weick, 1993; Rosenzweig et al., 2016).

The main aim of this paper is to investigate the impact of passion domain and entrepreneurial passion on the combining of social and business goals. In particular, the paper analyses the impact of entrepreneurial inspiration, domain passion and entrepreneurial passion on alertness ability in the identification of entrepreneurial opportunities, and on the bricolage capabilities that sustain the development of a new venture. Going more in depth, the paper describes a case study related to an emblematic Italian innovative start up transformed in a benefit corporation.

Chapter 9: Follow your passion. Passion and resilience in the surfing industry. The entrepreneurial case of Roberto Ricci Designs - By Francesco Capone

The purpose of this chapter is to investigate how entrepreneurial passion (EP) increases individual dedication, commitment, and also perseverance in situations of high levels of risk or adversity such as new ventures creation or in front of particular hardship and event.

The work focuses on a successful case of user-entrepreneurs with a case study in sports business, that is gaining increasing academic interest as a growing industry. The chapter presents the analysis of Roberto Ricci's entrepreneurial career, founder of the brand 'RRD', producing surf and windsurf boards and sportswear. We analyze the various phases that marked the birth of his venture and their subsequent success on the domestic and international markets.

The main contribution of the chapter is to explain the entrepreneurial passion as a self-identify feature of entrepreneurs that boosts success in fostering the love for the product, for the handmade production and the artisan's life and it also permits to react to adversity and external shock, showing resilience and persistence.

The results show also that the vocation and passion for the particular sport increasingly orient athletes or former professional athletes to take an entrepreneurial path. This is usually supported by a community of athletes and sportsmen that permits the improvement of the products and legitimate the new entrepreneur.

Chapter 10 - Passion and entrepreneurship: Research results and epilogue - by Enrico Baraldi, Simone Guercini, Marcus Lindahl & Andrea Perna. In this Chapter the Editors will offer a comprehensive discussion on the topic of passion/entr. and will indicate implications as well as avenues for further research.