Creativity and Entrepreneurship: An Exploratory Multiple Case Study of What Entrepreneurs Think

The purpose of this exploratory, quantitative and qualitative case study (Yin 1994) is to examine the importance of creativity in entrepreneurship. Is it creativity that leads to entrepreneurial success, or are there factors of entrepreneurial creativity, such as “opportunity recognition,” “programmatic implementation,” and “building networks,” which comprise creativity? Or perhaps creativity stands alone and is separate from the three factors? A review of selected literature on the relationship between creativity and entrepreneurship suggests that creativity is in part pre-cognitive, as well as cognitive processing as described in much of the entrepreneurial literature. This suggests that the above described factors may not be easily identifiable as creativity at all, but may in fact be equally or more important to entrepreneurship than creativity itself. Our findings are consistent with the latter idea, suggesting that even if entrepreneurial activities should theoretically be considered a creative output, entrepreneurs in our study don’t see it that way. Instead they seem to see creativity as separate from those entrepreneurial activities: opportunity recognition, programmatic implementation, and building networks.