Entrepreneurial Passion

Starting a new venture is an incredibly difficult undertaking. Challenges and roadblocks arise at every juncture. To succeed, entrepreneurs need to persist through these obstacles and fight through hardships. They need personal motivation to drive their ventures forward, and perhaps more importantly, they need to inspire the stakeholders who work with them to continue to support their ventures as well. Entrepreneurial passion is one of the key elements that can catalyze all these processes. Entrepreneurial passion is experienced through strong emotions and motivations that are intertwined closely with an individual’s entrepreneurial identity. Entrepreneurial passion originates from engagement with self-defining activities over time; entrepreneurs are not born with passion, they develop it. The emerging research surrounding entrepreneurial passion indicates it can have powerful effects, both positive and negative. Regarding the positive, entrepreneurial passion drives beneficial cognitive and behavioral outcomes such as creativity, commitment, and effort. Regarding the negative, entrepreneurial passion can also drive rigidity and burnout. Moreover, research shows that entrepreneurial passion can be contagious; it has the power to infuse stakeholders surrounding entrepreneurs and attract new venture investors to provide early-stage funding. The construct of team entrepreneurial passion is also discussed. Unlike individual-level passions, team entrepreneurial passion reflects the level of shared intense positive feelings for a collective team identity. Across all the types of passion discussed in this article, the key elements that distinguish entrepreneurial passion as unique and distinct from related psychological constructs, such as motivation, affect, and enthusiasm, are highlighted.