Passion can nurture creativity and the recognition of new opportunities, enhances mental activity, provides meaning to everyday work and has been argued to be the fuel for entrepreneurial activities.

 

PI: Pawan Bhansing

Expected end of subproject: Autumn 2015

 


 

Passion is contagious and inspires

An entrepreneur’s motivational state of mind plays a central role in his/hers organizational success. How entrepreneurs feel about their entrepreneurial activities and the goals that these are directed to shape processes such as new product and service development and may be highly important in connecting an entrepreneur’s creativity to innovative organizational outcomes. Researchers have focused on personality traits such as the need for achievement, and quantitative goals such as financial performance and growth when investigating motivation. However, they have neglected social interactional nature of motivation; the role that other individuals have in motivating entrepreneurs. Therefore, new concepts are required when describing the motivations of cultural and creative entrepreneurs: passion and inspiration.

We argue that entrepreneurial passion increases when one is open to the passion of other individuals in the proximity. Passion can nurture creativity and the recognition of new opportunities, enhances mental activity, provides meaning to everyday work and has been argued to be the fuel for entrepreneurial activities. In short, passion is contagious and inspires. We will survey the creative and cultural entrepreneurs at 10 creative business centers throughout the Netherlands and developed new scales to measure the contagiousness of passion at these locations.