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Entrepreneurial thinking: A signature pedagogy for an uncertain 21st century

Houston peschl.

a University of Calgary Haskayne School of Business, 2500 University Dr NW, Calgary, AB, T2N 1N4, Canada

Connie Deng

Nicole larson.

b University of Calgary Department of Psychology, 2500 University Dr NW, Calgary, AB, T2N 1N4, Canada

Associated Data

This paper outlines a pedagogical approach for entrepreneurship education, with a specific focus on students who do not necessarily identify as entrepreneurial. We advance seven essential and teachable entrepreneurial thinking skills (ET-7) to form future leaders: (1) problem solving, (2) tolerance for ambiguity, (3) failing forward, (4) empathy, (5) creativity with limited resources, (6) responding to critical feedback, and (7) teamwork approach. ET-7 offers an integrative framework that unites previously distinct perspectives of entrepreneurial competencies, and outlines how to teach and develop these skills in a 12-week mandatory entrepreneurship course through an innovative pedagogical approach. This approach to entrepreneurial education was built on the concept of a signature pedagogy (Shulman, 2005) and encompasses three components (i.e., the flipped classroom, learning through failure, and access to open educational resources). This pedagogical approach to entrepreneurial education supports entrepreneurial learning through experiential activities that simulate the environment entrepreneurs face. Thus, this paper contributes to the literature by outlining the entrepreneurial thinking skillset (ET-7) required to be successful in today's modern careers, along with considering the methods, tools, and pedagogy that is most likely to support ET-7 skill development.

1. Introduction

Undergraduate students will face a vast and increasing number of open, complex, dynamic, and networked problems in their future careers ( Dorst, 2015 ). For example, new graduates will work in many different sectors such as health care policy, alternative energy, and agriculture – all of which strive to innovate, and thus demand a new type of skillset and ways of thinking ( O'Connell, McNeely, & Hall, 2008 ). As such, new graduates require more than just explicit and procedural types of knowledge in order to be successful in today's changing technological, political, and social climates. We argue that all undergraduates require an entrepreneurial thinking skillset , which should not be limited to only nascent entrepreneurs. This will allow new graduates to adapt to the shifting needs of today's markets and industries. As educators, it is our responsibility to (1) identify the key competencies that will be essential for future leaders, and (2) offer the most effective methods of delivering entrepreneurial educational content in order to develop these new competencies.

Shulman (2005) defined the characteristic ways of teaching and learning competencies in a particular profession as a signature pedagogy . For a wide range of businesses, however, the previously valued professional competencies and skills are under threat from technological innovation as well as social and environmental pressure, which has led to significant disruption in many business models. For example, the impact of artificial intelligence, climate change, as well as global health and disease demonstrate that economic scenarios have radically changed over the past decade. The World Economic Forum (2019) highlighted these changing times, and commented: “Is the world sleepwalking into a crisis? Global risks are intensifying but the collective will to tackle them appears to be lacking” (p. 6). According to Shulman (2005) , uncertain social, economic, and environmental challenges provide the ideal conditions for creating a signature pedagogy. Thus, we argue that the time is ripe for refining the necessary entrepreneurial competencies required in the modern world, and for developing more innovative teaching approaches to impart these skills in the next generation of business leaders.

Our contribution is to demonstrate how to equip students with the necessary skills for managing uncertainty. We outline seven entrepreneurial skills (ET-7) and provide a practical pedagogical approach to developing them in undergraduate students. Specifically, the first author identified a set of essential and teachable skills based on a thorough literature review as well as his experience as a serial entrepreneur, angel investor, and post-secondary educator. Using design thinking methods, we continuously tested, refined, and improved learning outcomes for an Entrepreneurial Thinking course at a large North American university over several years. New iterations of the course design were based on student experience and best practices from the scholarship of teaching and learning. The signature pedagogy advanced in the paper adopts multiple methods and tools including a flipped classroom, opportunities to fail forward, experiential exercises that allow for adaptive anxiety, and open educational resources. Briefly, the flipped classroom approach allows for concrete and operational learning through interrelated experiential activities. Failing forward creates a safe opportunity for students to experience failure and learn through it. Third, we developed open educational resources (see  https://failingforward.ca/ ), which promotes students’ self-directed learning readiness ( Tseng, 2013 ), as well as collaboration among a global community of entrepreneurship educators to build free content.

To date, separate streams of research for entrepreneurial skills and pedagogical methods tend to persist. Specifically, when entrepreneurial skills are delineated, pedagogical methods and tools are often not presented alongside, or lack sufficient detail for educators to replicate. Thus, it may be challenging for educators to determine the appropriate methods for developing entrepreneurial skills. We argue that entrepreneurial skills and the pedagogical methods used to teach them are uniquely intertwined, and thus should not be considered in isolation. As such, this conceptual paper aims to bridge the gap between the two, and provide an integrative framework for entrepreneurial education that considers both entrepreneurial skills as well as the associated pedagogical methods and tools used to develop such skills. In doing so, this work builds upon Boyles’ (2012) model for developing 21st century knowledge, skills, and abilities in undergraduate students. This paper also contributes to the debate around the development of a pedagogy for entrepreneurship education ( Bridge, 2017 ; Hägg & Gabrielsson, 2020 ; Jones, Penaluna, & Pittaway, 2014 ; Maritz, 2017 ; Matlay, 2017 ; Seow, Pan, & Koh, 2019 ).

In the subsequent sections we first review pedagogical methods in entrepreneurial education. Next, we review literature on entrepreneurial education and identify seven skills required to form an entrepreneurial skillset in undergraduate students who generally do not identify as entrepreneurial, which we refer to as Entrepreneurial Thinking (ET-7): (1) problem solving, (2) tolerance for ambiguity, (3) failing forward, (4) empathy, (5) creativity with limited resources, (6) responding to critical feedback, and (7) teamwork approach. These seven skills are not tacit knowledge like writing a business plan, but rather focused on skills that are essential for business leadership. Last, we outline how our signature pedagogy is able to develop ET-7 through (1) the flipped classroom, (2) experiential learning activities, and (3) open educational resources (OER), which can be used to disseminate this pedagogy globally at no cost. 1

2. The evolution of entrepreneurship education

In the past, research in entrepreneurship education focused on how to overcome the myth that entrepreneurs are born, not made ( Kuratko, 2005 ). This debate centered around a trait-based versus a competency-based approach. The trait-based approach argues that entrepreneurs are born with unique, innate traits that cannot be learned ( Farhangmehr, Gonçalves, & Sarmento, 2016 ). The competency approach, however, argues that with experience and training, entrepreneurship can be developed and learned ( Kyndt & Baert, 2015 ). In support of the trait-based approach, some research found differences in entrepreneurs’ personality traits in comparison to managers (e.g., risk propensity, Stewart & Roth, 2001 ; achievement motivation, Stewart & Roth, 2007 ; big five personality dimensions, Zhao & Seibert, 2006 ) as well as in comparison to a sample of non-entrepreneurs (achievement motivation; Collins, Hanges, & Locke, 2004 ). This research suggests that there may be some innate qualities that entrepreneurs possess, however, personality traits do not fully explain entrepreneurial activity and success. As such, factors other than personality can contribute to entrepreneurial activity and enhance entrepreneurial success. For example, individuals are not born knowing how to write a business plan or how to identify opportunities. These skills can be taught and enhanced through education ( Kyndt & Baert, 2015 ; Man, Lau, & Chan, 2002 ). Accordingly, the question has shifted from whether entrepreneurship can be taughtto how it can be taught.

Early pedagogical methods in entrepreneurship education included traditional approaches such as lectures and were aimed at nascent entrepreneurs ( Hägg & Gabrielsson, 2020 ). Such methods emphasize a behaviorist paradigm grounded on transmission and reproduction of knowledge, encouraging passivity in student learning ( Nabi, Liñán, Fayolle, Krueger, & Walmsley, 2017 ). Movement away from these passive methods signified greater recognition that entrepreneurs learn from experience ( Rae & Carswell, 2000 ), whether positive or negative ( Cope, 2011 ; Politis & Gabrielsson, 2009 ). As such, more hands-on learning emerged in the 2000s when entrepreneurship education began to emphasize real-world opportunities and experience as an effective teaching method ( Hägg & Gabrielsson, 2020 ). Problem-based learning ( Tan & Ng, 2012 ), student business start-ups, live cases, and simulations ( Kassean, Vanevenhoven, Liguori, & Winkel, 2015 ) were reported as key pedagogical methods. These methods encourage active learning through solving real-life problems, which enable knowledge and learning to be more readily transferable to the real world ( Nabi et al., 2017 ). Furthermore, these methods introduced an experimental element that traditional pedagogies lack. Scholars emphasize that experimentation is important as it allows a learner to test and validate different assumptions, and then learn from the results of these experiments ( Brush, Neck, & Greene, 2015 ). As such, the role of the student becomes increasingly involved with greater use of hands-on approaches and learning by doing, while the role of the instructor becomes more of a facilitator in the student's learning process ( Neck & Corbett, 2018 ).

These active learning methods reflect both a constructivist and experiential learning approach to teaching and learning ( Hägg & Gabrielsson, 2020 ; Nabi et al., 2017 ). First, the constructivist approach suggests that “learning involves actively participating in the construction of new understanding” ( Nabi et al., 2017 , p. 280). Relatedly, experiential learning theory defines learning as “the process whereby knowledge is created through the transformation of experience” ( Kolb & Kolb, 2005 , p. 194). Experiential learning is a holistic integrative perspective that combines experience, perception, cognition, and behavior ( Kolb, 2015 ). In an experiential learning activity, students gain concrete experiences that enable reflective observation of the situation. This reflection is followed by an abstract conceptualization (i.e., thinking stage), which pushes students toward action (i.e., active experimentation stage). Taken together, both approaches emphasize the central role of the learner as being an active participant in learning experiences. Such approaches facilitate “deep learning whereby students develop a personal understanding of the material rather than simply retention of knowledge” ( Phillips & Trainor, 2014 , p. 106).

Although scholars have advocated for more action-oriented and experiential pedagogical methods in entrepreneurship education (e.g., Jones & English, 2004 ), the outcome measures used to assess the effectiveness of entrepreneurship education may not be appropriate. For example, previous research has focused on understanding the relationship between entrepreneurship education and the intention or the attitude to engage in entrepreneurial activity ( Liñán, Rodríguez-Cohard, & Rueda-Cantuche, 2011 ; Maresch, Harms, Kailer, & Wimmer-Wurm, 2016 ; Sánchez, 2013 ; Zulfiqar, Sarwar, Aziz, Ejaz Chandia, & Khan, 2018 ). Because individuals’ entrepreneurial intentions (EI) are frequently used to predict entrepreneurial activity ( Dickson, Solomon, & Weaver, 2008 ), EI has become a key outcome criteria for entrepreneurial courses ( Farhangmehr et al., 2016 ).

Interestingly, findings regarding the impact of entrepreneurship education on students' EI has been mixed, with some research finding increased EI (e.g., Rauch & Hulsink, 2015 ), decreased EI (e.g., Oosterbeek, van Praag, & Ijesselstein, 2010 ; von Graevenitz, Harhoff, & Weber, 2010 ), or no effect on EI (e.g., Fayolle & Gailly, 2015 ). A meta-analysis examining the relationship between entrepreneurship education and EI found a small positive relationship, which became non-significant when controlling for students' initial EI ( Bae, Qian, Miao, & Fiet, 2014 ). Fayolle and Gailly (2015) argued that initial beliefs and prior exposure to entrepreneurship may have a stronger influence on post EI than the entrepreneurship course itself. As such, EI may not be an appropriate measure of effectiveness. Furthermore, EI does not indicate whether the entrepreneurship education course was able to successfully impart students with the knowledge and skills needed to navigate through complex environments. In other words, the narrow focus on students’ EI overlooks the core competencies and skills that are required in order to become a successful entrepreneur ( Neck & Greene, 2011 ). Thus, we argue that other indicators such as skill development, may be more useful to measure, especially in students who do not identify as entrepreneurial.

In order to expand outcome measures beyond EI, we first need to clearly identify and delineate the specific entrepreneurial skills that are required in modern society. Furthermore, we need to recognize that not all students will become entrepreneurs, and many have no interest in doing so. Yet, organizations are continuously innovating and changing, which require leaders and employees to be adaptable, creative, tolerant to change, and have the ability to solve complex problems. Accordingly, it is important to recognize the value of these skills for undergraduate students across all disciplines, not just for those pursuing entrepreneurship. Extant literature has primarily focused on those who have self-selected into an entrepreneurship course (e.g., graduate entrepreneurship courses; Nabi & Holden, 2008 ), however, our discussion goes beyond current literature by describing how entrepreneurial skills can be developed in students who do not identify as entrepreneurial.

3. Identifying entrepreneurial thinking skills

Through a review of the literature, we identified several skills that previous work has described as necessary competencies for entrepreneurial activity 2 (e.g., Bacigalupo, Kampylis, Punie, & Van den Brande, 2016 ; Davis, Hall, & Meyer, 2016 ; Kier & McMullen, 2018 ; Morris, Webb, Fu, & Singhal, 2013 ). More specifically, subject matter experts (i.e., first author and scholars in entrepreneurial education) created an exhaustive list of entrepreneurial skills that were derived from the literature. Next, each skill was sorted into a cluster according to overlapping themes, and these categories were then named according to the content they best captured. This process allowed us to identify both unique and overlapping entrepreneurial skills that have been considered in other work. Thus, ET-7 is based on (a) the most dominant categories that emerged from the literature, (b) underemphasized skills that have the potential to add value in entrepreneurial education, and (c) skills that can be taught to undergraduate business students who are nascent entrepreneurs. In this section, we: 1) link the entrepreneurial competencies identified in the literature with our proposed ET-7 skills, and 2) describe how ET-7 adds value to the entrepreneurial education literature, as well as to educators.

3.1. Emerging themes

We focus on three previous comprehensive descriptions of entrepreneurial skills that have been linked to entrepreneurial activity (i.e., Bacigalupo et al., 2016 ; Davis, Hall, & Mayer, 2016 ; Kier & McMullen, 2018 ). Kier and McMullen (2018) drew upon the concept of imagination as a method of building cognitive skills to drive the process of generating and selecting new venture ideas. They conceptualized three distinct forms of imaginativeness: practical, creative, and social. The second framework we drew from is the Entrepreneurial Mindset Profile (EMP) from Davis et al. (2016) , which describes both personality traits and skills. However, we focus only on the skill component outlined by these authors. Lastly, Bacigalupo et al. (2016) presented the EntreComp, which is an entrepreneurial competency framework consisting of 15 skills. After carefully examining and sorting this exhaustive list of entrepreneurial skills, seven major themes emerged, which subsequently formed the ET-7 framework presented here.

  • Theme 1: Problem-solving. One theme that clearly emerged from previous literature and the aforementioned frameworks was problem-solving. For example, practical imaginativeness describes the cognitive capacity to connect, make inferences, and to solve problems. Related, the EMP describes idea generation, which is the ability to create multiple and novel business ideas, and thus involves the capacity to think of multiple solutions. Problem-solving is further captured in detail within EntreComp ( Bacigalupo et al., 2016 ), which describes three relevant skills that we grouped under problem-solving: 1) spotting opportunities, which is related to imagination and the ability to identify opportunities for creating value, 2) taking initiative, in which entrepreneurs strive to achieve goals, and 3) mobilizing resources, which involves gathering and managing resources. Notably, the EntreComp captures an aspect of problem-solving that is unique but critical: the ability to gather the required resources to execute a solution. Together, these skills describe key aspects of problem-solving (i.e., identifying a problem, coming up with solutions, and executing a plan to solve the problem).
  • Theme 2: Tolerance for ambiguity. Another theme that emerged from the review is tolerance for ambiguity and uncertainty. Recently, this theme has taken on greater significance for successful business strategy with the Covid-19 global pandemic and the ever increasing challenges climate change has on global economics and business models. Tolerance for ambiguity is clearly reflected in EntreComp's skill “coping with uncertainty, ambiguity and risk,” which helps entrepreneurs face unexpected situations that are common in the entrepreneurial context. Furthermore, the EMP describes optimism, which reflects the importance of maintaining a positive attitude, especially in contexts where there is a high level of uncertainty. Thus, tolerance for ambiguity is a skill that entails the ability to cope with and accept an uncertain future as well as the ability to maintain an optimistic attitude throughout.
  • Theme 3: Failing forward. A third theme that emerged is failing forward, which reflects an individual's ability to learn from their experiences, especially from negative ones. This is reflected in EntreComp's “learning through experience” competency which emphasizes learning by doing. Similarly, the EMP also reflects this theme through two skills: 1) self-confidence, which is belief in one's skills and talents, and 2) persistence, which is the ability to bounce back and keep trying after disappointment. Furthermore, failing forward is also reflected through practical imaginativeness, such that making inferences involves the ability to extrapolate lessons from one's experiences for use in future situations.
  • Theme 4: Empathy. A fourth theme that emerged is empathy. EMP named this skill interpersonal sensitivity, which is a concern for the well-being of others. Social imaginativeness maps onto this skill because it is related to considering different perspectives, intentions, and emotions of others. Consequently, these skills together describe a larger theme of empathy, which emphasizes the ability to take the perspective of another and consider their needs. EntreComp, on the other hand, does not clearly have skills that map onto empathy. For example, EntreComp delineates a partially relevant competency, “self-awareness and self-efficacy,” which reflects our belief in ourselves. While self-awareness may be useful in understanding how one's action has an impact on others, self-efficacy describes a more stable characteristic that has less overlap with one's ability to view others' perspectives.
  • Theme 5: Creativity with limited resources. Being creative with limited resources was another theme that emerged as a critical competency. EntreComp reflects this clearly through their creativity competency, which involves developing purposeful ideas. Relatedly, creative imaginativeness describes this theme because it entails the creation of new ideas through drawing connections from existing knowledge. Furthermore, EMP's persistence and self-confidence skills are also important to this theme as one must also be willing to try multiple ideas and experiment with the limited resources they have. As such, these entrepreneurial skills together describe a theme of creativity with limited resources through emphasizing the ability to come up with multiple new ideas about how to improve a business model, to quickly and cheaply test these ideas, and not become constrained with the limited available means.
  • Theme 6: Responding to feedback. The ability to respond to critical feedback was identified as a sixth major theme. The EntreComp captures this theme through two competencies. The first is valuing ideas, which invokes the ability to listen to others' perspectives and decide how best to proceed with the idea. The second is motivation and perseverance, which helps entrepreneurs to stay focused and not give up in situations when they receive negative or conflicting perspectives from others. Importantly, the EMP reflects this theme through: 1) future focus, which emphasizes the ability to think beyond the current context, and 2) execution, which is the ability to implement ideas. Both of which enable an individual's ability to find and act on the feedback received from others. Relatedly, practical imaginativeness is useful for responding to critical feedback by finding connections and drawing inferences from multiple sources of feedback, and may be particularly useful for feedback that lacks detail or is conflicting. As such, this theme emphasizes the ability to value and make use of feedback received.
  • Theme 7: Teamwork approach. The last theme that we identified is related to teamwork. In EntreComp, this is reflected in the following skills: 1) mobilizing others, which is a leadership competence that helps entrepreneurs inspire followers to embrace their ideas, and 2) working with others, which is the ability to work collaboratively with others. However, there is less overlap with the competencies in EMP and Kier and McMullen's (2018) work, but nonetheless this theme captures a key skill that is increasingly important as new graduates are required to work in team settings ( Riebe, Girardi, & Whitsed, 2016 ). This theme describes a teamwork approach that emphasizes collaboration, perspective-taking, and a leadership oriented method of working with various individuals.

Table 1 summarizes these different conceptualizations of entrepreneurial competencies from which we shaped our pedagogical entrepreneurial thinking approach and the associated ET-7. We labelled ET-7 clearly to reflect the core underlying feature of each skill. There is not complete overlap in ET-7 and the aforementioned models, but we believe our framework sufficiently captures and summarizes the vast array of competencies delineated in prior work. Accordingly, the ET-7 offers a more all-encompassing condensed set of teachable competencies that will advance the entrepreneurial education literature. It is worth noting here that skills focusing on the managerial competencies or tacit knowledge of a profitable venture (e.g., raising financial capital, writing a business plan), were not considered as the students are required to take multiple courses to develop these skills. While students were required to complete deliverables that covered these technical skills, ET-7 emphasizes the soft skills required to tackle open and complex problems.

Entrepreneurial skills.

Note: Not all of the competencies from EntreComp mapped onto ET-7 such as financial and economic literacy as these skills are not relevant to ET. Other competencies such as planning and management, are embedded in the coursework and are not formally addressed.

3.2. The value of ET-7

While the three frameworks discussed above (i.e., imaginativeness, EMP, and EntreComp) provided a useful overview of entrepreneurial skills, they come with their own set of limitations. First, Kier and McMullen (2018) used imaginativeness to delineate the cognitive skills required of entrepreneurs, however, this was captured using three broad features of imaginativeness. As seen on Table 1 , each of them encompassed many different types of skills and thus lack sufficient detail, which leads to ambiguity in both developing and measuring such competencies. Second, while Davis et al.’s (2016) EMP delineate entrepreneurial skills with terminology that is more frequently used across disciplines, their framework also contains personality traits, which focus on innate components that are arguably less teachable. Third, Bacigalupo et al.’s (2016) EntreComp framework includes a comprehensive list that may be too detailed, complex, and nuanced. It may be challenging for educators to develop appropriate and effective methods of teaching this exhaustive list of competencies, which we argue can be trimmed into a smaller set of competencies.

Accordingly, the ET-7 addresses the aforementioned limitations by (a) integrating competencies outlined in previous frameworks, (b) focusing on teachable skills rather than stable individual differences, and (c) delineating a set of skills that are broad enough to capture the competencies required in today's modern work environment, yet offers the specificity needed to target and develop each competency in the classroom. Moreover, we felt that empathy, and teamwork approach, were not well represented in previous research, and therefore the ET-7 improves our understanding of why these additional skills are important and how they can be taught. In summary, we condensed the number of entrepreneurial competencies represented in past research and identified critical yet underemphasized skills. The resulting ET-7 framework represents teachable skills, which we argue are the cornerstones of entrepreneurial education.

As previously noted, many entrepreneurial skill frameworks lack a consideration of the pedagogical methods needed to develop these skills in students. Although enterprise and entrepreneurship education guides (e.g., QAA, 2018 ) have recommended action-based and experiential learning strategies, there is a lack of information with respect to the specific tools, activities, and methods used to target and teach specific entrepreneurial skills. This highlights a gap between the two streams of entrepreneurship literature that this paper aims to bridge. Next, we describe how these skills can be taught and reinforced in entrepreneurial courses.

4. Teaching entrepreneurial thinking

Above we reviewed previous attempts to describe the competencies required by entrepreneurs, and have linked these skills with ET-7. Although much work has been conducted to identify entrepreneurial skillsets, less work has been done on how these skills can be taught. Despite research claiming that entrepreneurial skills can be taught ( Henry, Hill, & Leitch, 2005 ; von Graevenitz et al., 2010 ), they are rarely presented alongside methods aimed to teach such skills. For example, active and experiential pedagogical methods are common in entrepreneurship education ( Hägg & Gabrielsson, 2020 ), and incorporating such methods can facilitate skill development ( Nabi et al., 2017 ). However, these pedagogical methods often lack sufficient detail to successfully implement in practice. As such, we address this gap by first describing the course context, then providing a definition of each of the ET-7 skills, which is then followed by an example of a teaching method or activity that targets the development of each skill.

4.1. Course context

The Entrepreneurial Thinking course is a mandatory 12-week course created for all second-year business undergraduate students. This course was not designed to motivate students to become successful entrepreneurs; rather, the goal was to teach them skills that a successful entrepreneur would exhibit. These skills are considered to be increasingly essential across a variety of professional roles that students may assume in their future careers. The decision to create this course was based on industry demand for new graduates to be equipped with skills that included problem solving, adaptability, working with uncertainty, and learning from failures. The challenge to meet these requirements were twofold. First, the scalability of teaching ET-7 presented a significant challenge given that the total enrolment for one academic year, across two semesters, is between 600 and 800 students. Second, many of these students did not consider entrepreneurial skills relevant to their majors (e.g., Entrepreneurship Majors represent approximately 4% of the undergraduate business student body versus Accounting Majors representing 60%). Thus, in addition to developing the ET-7 skills, the course had to be both scalable and of practical relevance across non-entrepreneurship business majors.

4.2. Skill 1: problem solving

We define problem-solving as the ability to follow an entrepreneurial method to solve complex problems and execute innovative, yet practical solutions. For example, we draw on both Kembel's (2007) Design Thinking methodology (empathize, define problem, ideate, prototype, test) and Ries' (2011) Lean Start Up method (build, measure, learn, cycle) to establish a set of steps to guide students through the process of learning and problem-solving.

Undergraduate students will face complex problems no matter what career path they follow. Problem-solving is the process that is used when searching for or creating solutions to a challenge or multiple challenges within a larger system. This skill is vital to entrepreneurs as it allows them to deal with real-life problems that need to be solved, and can ideally be monetized. As stated by Snyder and Snyder (2008) , for students to be effective in the work place, they must be able to solve problems and come up with effective solutions. However, this requires defining what is considered to be a problem. Mayer (1989) suggested that problems consist of the current state, the goal state, and obstacles between the current and goal states. The complexity and difficulty of the obstacles faced between the current and goal state may be exacerbated by the type of problem a student encounters. For example, Mayer (1989) distinguished between routine and nonroutine problems. Routine problems are familiar and often only require automatic answers or well-known procedures in order to be solved ( Mayer, 1989 ). Nonroutine problems, however, are unfamiliar in which well-known solutions and procedures cannot be applied ( Mayer, 1989 ). Solving these types of problems requires “productive thinking,” which involves adopting creative approaches, experimentation, and new ways of thinking. Education has previously focused on challenging students to solve routine problems, rather than nonroutine ones ( Mayer, 1989 ). However, in the business environment, the emphasis is largely on an individual's ability to solve non-routine problems.

Student learning experience. It is important to identify pedagogical methods that allow students to develop problem-solving skills that are transferable to the real world ( Nabi et al., 2017 ). In week one, students are required to identify a problem in society in which a solution does not currently exist, or the solution can be improved. Eighteen worksheets were developed to guide the students over the course, and served as the foundation for a flipped classroom model. The first worksheet is an “opportunity identification” exercise. This activity required students to find a problem, identify who has it, research whether solutions exist, and outline why the solutions are failing. During week two, students present their best problem and receive critical feedback from their peers. As a result of this exercise, students either abandon their problem or significantly improve their problem definition. This activity demonstrates that the process of problem solving is not static, and it continuously evolves with expanded available means ( Sarasvathy, 2001 ). In the next step, students are required to interview three individuals who have experience with their identified problem. This is guided by another worksheet to ensure students are asking the right type of questions. After conducting these interviews, students may realize that they need to evolve their problem or solution once more, which emphasizes the importance of pivoting. Thus, the focus is to develop an innovative and validated solution that engages and develops students’ problem-solving skills.

4.3. Skill 2: tolerance for ambiguity

We define tolerance for ambiguity as students’ ability to accept a degree of uncertainty, yet remain motivated to test their ideas and push them forward despite future threats and uncertainty. Students must become comfortable with uncertain outcomes, and be willing to conduct rapid and cheap experiments to gather enough information to make a decision without the certainty that it is the correct decision.

Given that entrepreneurs navigate through uncertain environments , some degree of failure is inevitable. Uncertainty is expected mainly in the early stage of a venture when the product and/or its commercial application are not yet fully developed or explored ( Politis & Gabrielsson, 2009 ). With respect to new graduates, they are likely to experience uncertainty when they begin to enter the workforce and take on new careers. Thus, the ability to adapt and develop a tolerance for ambiguous circumstances has become increasingly necessary in the global workplace ( Herman, Stevens, Bird, Mendenhall, & Oddou, 2009 ).

Other associated concepts are Intolerance of Ambiguity (IA) and Intolerance of Uncertainty (IU), which are both defined as cognitive processes employed in the interpretation of the environment ( Grenier, Barrette, & Ladouceur, 2005 ). For some individuals, uncertainty and ambiguity are more likely to trigger cognitive, emotional, and behavioral reactions such as discomfort, anxiety, and the avoidance of a situation. Importantly, Grenier et al. (2005) explained that IA is related to stimulus in the present (“here and now”), while IU embraces threat components located in the future. Differentiating between these concepts highlight aspects of ambiguity that are essential for students to develop; a future tolerance for ambiguity as well as in the present.

Student learning experience. During week three, students present their problem, solution, and customer segment to multiple external advisors who are business and technical professionals. Prior to this event, the students are given a worksheet to help them prepare a 30-second pitch of their idea. During the event, each student presents their pitch to the advisors and the advisors rapidly ask them questions and challenge the student's idea. At the end of the pitch, the student receives a simple score card in the form of traffic lights. All green lights mean the student can persist with the idea, yellow suggests that the student needs to conduct more research, and red means there are significant flaws. This activity enables students to gather multiple, often conflicting information and advice, which creates uncertainty in how to proceed next. The key element in this experiential activity is that students must make a decision on whether they will pivot their idea, persevere with their idea, or abandon their idea completely and start with a new idea. They then have to write a graded personal reflection on their decision making process and identify next steps.

4.4. Skill 3: failing forward

We define failing forward as the ability for students to learn from their failures, and reflect on how to prevent or minimize the failure from occurring in the future. This skill is developed when students understand how to minimize loss if their idea fails. Learning from failure is crucial because it creates a mindset of perseverance. Politis and Gabrielsson (2009) highlighted the significance of experiential learning as it related to failures, and recognized that failure plays an important role for learning and personal development. Learning from failure, however, cannot be considered an automatic process ( Shepherd, 2003 ). How an individual interprets and responds to failure is an attitude that should be considered in a learning context ( Politis & Gabrielsson, 2009 ). As Shepherd (2003) argued, business failure promotes a negative emotional response (e.g., grief) which delays the individual's learning. To learn from failure, entrepreneurs should recover from the negative emotional response, and use the information about their failure to revise their existing knowledge ( Shepherd, 2003 ).

Muehlfeld, Urbig, and Iitzel (2017) found that when compared to others, entrepreneurs had a higher likelihood of persisting in the face of failures. These authors further discuss that “rather than simply being averse to losses, their persistence when faced with adversity may partially result from accepting losses as an inevitable part of exploratory learning” (p. 535). It is crucial to shift the managerial mindset that links failure with its negative associations ( Cannon & Edmondson, 2005 ); failure is part of what allows entrepreneurs to create their path of learning, and thus fail forward. The classroom can be considered the perfect place to develop the failing forward skill. In the classroom, inexperienced entrepreneurs may find a secure and controlled environment to test and pivot their ideas, without any of the financial, social, and psychological costs associated with business failure ( Ucbasaran, Shepherd, Lockett, & Lyon, 2013 ).

Student learning experience. We have positioned many of our experiential exercises to create student experiences that result in adaptive anxiety. This means that the students are put into situations where they have incomplete information and would ideally like to have more information in order to make a decision about their next step. Every week, we ask the students to conduct a small experiment to learn more about their problem, solution, or customer segment. After the experiment is complete (e.g., building a landing page and getting customers to sign up for more information about the solution), they are asked if they will pivot, persevere, or abandon their idea. This gives students ample opportunity to experience small failures through these weekly experiments, whereby students may realize they have an untenable idea and need to abandon it. This “failure” allows them to learn quickly, move “forward,” and re-focus their valuable time and resources on a new idea, which they need to develop immediately. The key learning outcome is that the students reflect on their journey through these failures, and can still achieve a high grade despite failed ideas because the emphasis is on the process of failing forward.

4.5. Skill 4: empathy

We define empathy as a skill that allows a student to take the perspective of another person, even if they have different backgrounds or life experiences. Individuals with a higher level of empathy may be more likely to see the perspective of others, and thus may be more apt to help them ( Axtell, Parker, Holman, & Totterdell, 2007 ). As Wiggins and McTighe (2005) pointed out, empathy “is not simply an affective response or sympathy over which we have little control, but the disciplined attempt to feel as others feel, to see as others see” (p. 98). Based on this description, empathy is an important skill taught in diverse fields that entail human relationships, such as law ( Rosenberg, 2002 ), medicine ( Shapiro, Morrison, & Boker, 2014 ), and social work ( Gerdes, Segal, Jackson, & Mullins, 2011 ). Empathy is also a highly relevant skill needed in the business context. If organizations want to attract and retain customers, they must provide high-quality customer service that is based on the act of perspective-taking ( Schneider & Bowen, 2009 ). Furthermore, empathy is likely to facilitate the ability to design and deliver new products that will be adopted by customers, which is essential for maintaining competitiveness in the market (e.g., identifying the customer's pain points). The education context has recognized the importance of this skill, and more recent pedagogical approaches have highlighted this skill in the classroom (e.g., Armstrong, 2016 ).

Student learning experience. We introduce design thinking methodology in week two, during which students complete a 2-hour experiential learning activity called the gift giving exercise, created by the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford University (n.d.). We modified the exercise significantly in order to accommodate a class of 80 students. This activity requires students to solve a problem that they have never experienced, which promotes the use of empathetic insight in finding the correct solution. This introduces the importance of asking the correct questions and understanding others’ perspective and experience. Students must then seek an individual from their customer segment to interview. To assist students, we have modified an empathy map worksheet which provides students with a list of questions to ask in order to gain a better understanding of how the customer feels, the problem they are facing, and their perspective. Students must then write a personal reflection on what they learned from this interview, and how it will inform their next steps. Many students pivot their solution, or modify their problem based on their empathy map interview.

4.6. Skill 5: creativity with limited resources

We define creativity with limited resources as the student's ability to combine their available means (e.g., their social network) to develop their ideas and conduct fast experiments to determine if they are on the correct path. Creativity is more than an innate ability; it can be achieved through hard work, experience, and searching for solutions in innovative ways ( Amabile, 1996 ; Puccio & Cabra, 2010 ). Within the entrepreneurship literature, creativity encompasses “the development of a novel idea, product or problem solution that is of value to the individual and/or a larger social group” ( Eggers, Lovelace, & Kraft, 2017 , p. 267). Importantly, creativity with limited resources is also crucial for entrepreneurs in order to overcome initial constraints involved in creating a new venture, which is often associated with a scarcity of resources ( Lin & Nabergoj, 2014 ). Among these scarce resources, capital is often one of the most important resources required to start a new business. Furthermore, resources related to the organizational infrastructure have to be built, such as corporate practices, policies, and routines ( Mosakowski, 2002 ). Consequently, entrepreneurs must be creative in how they gather and use the resources required to initiate their start-up ( Ward, 2004 ).

Based on the importance of this skill, attempts to teach creativity have been described in the entrepreneurship education literature. For example, Baker and Baker (2012) argued that pedagogical methods employed in art schools to promote creativity should be applied in business schools. These methods focus on three strategies: (1) processes that foster a climate of exploration and reflection, (2) a liberal arts education that illuminates personal and societal attributes, and increases scientific knowledge, as well as (3) observational skills that expand the student's capacity for empathy and enhances problem-solving ( Baker & Baker, 2012 ). By adopting this approach in teaching and learning practices, business schools can develop students' reflection and promote creativity through exploratory practices and observational skills.

Student learning experience. Students are required to create a prototype of their final idea by week 12 and present it to their customer for feedback. They are not allowed to spend any money, and they are given one week to create the prototype. This lack of available means forces the students to be creative in order to complete this task. Many students will reach out to peers who are in computer science or liberal arts to help them create models. For example, some students have used Lego and duct tape to make a physical representation. Once the prototype is created, students present it to their customer segment for feedback which fosters reflection and empathy.

4.7. Skill 6: responding to critical feedback

We define responding to critical feedback as the willingness and ability to listen to the input and opinions provided by others, and to integrate such feedback to make an informed decision on how to proceed. A consistent element of entrepreneurship is uncertainty; navigating this context requires the ability to be comfortable with receiving critical feedback, and the ability to seek such feedback in order to adjust appropriately to demands. Thus, the development of students' feedback orientation, or their overall receptivity to feedback ( London & Smither, 2002 ), allows students to “seek, receive, interpret, and use feedback information and indirectly shape the performance outcomes” ( Dahling, Chau, & O'Malley, 2012 , p. 532). As such, students with higher feedback orientations are more likely to find value in feedback and act on it, and are less likely to ignore feedback from their environment ( Linderbaum & Levy, 2010 ).

Feedback-seeking behavior has been studied as a way to gauge how an individual pursues his/her skill development and explore how it is related to performance or promotion ( Crommelinck & Anseel, 2013 ). For example, Yanagizawa (2008) demonstrated that employees who seek feedback reached higher levels of goal achievement and learning in comparison to employees identified as low feedback seekers. Within the entrepreneurial environment, feedback-seeking behavior is also particularly important as entrepreneurs need to be keen to identify and exploit opportunities found in their environment. Furthermore, Weaver (2006) demonstrated that students find feedback to be valuable, but often require training on how to interpret and use different types of feedback (e.g., peer feedback, investor feedback, customer feedback). As such, developing students' feedback orientation can facilitate a greater understanding of the importance of feedback and how to interpret and use it to improve ones’ business ideas.

Student learning experience. We have over 250 advisors, mentors, and alumni who guide our students through the 12-week course. Each week students are given the opportunity to give and receive feedback on their ideas. Some of the experiences are formal, where they pitch to a panel of experts and receive written and verbal feedback. Other times, we have an informal event in class. For example, we use a piece of paper that has an image of a flying pig on one side which represents a bad idea, and an image of a rocket ship on the other side which represents a good idea. Each student team presents their idea, and the class provides their feedback by displaying the respective image denoting a bad or good idea. Then the instructors randomly ask four students to give feedback to the students. We instruct them to give one piece of positive feedback followed by an “and” statement on how to improve the idea or pitch. This allows the students to learn how to give and receive feedback.

4.8. Skill 7: teamwork approach

We define teamwork approach as the ability to work with others collaboratively in a situation where there is task interdependence and shared goals. Specifically, this skill encourages students to capitalize on the unique abilities of their teammates, avoiding relationship conflict, and work productively and collaboratively in a team environment. Students will encounter teamwork in their future careers, whether it is a short-term task force or a virtual team spread across the globe, teamwork is a necessary competency for business students to learn ( Kotey, 2007 ). Although teamwork is recognized as a key skill by many employers ( Riebe, Girardi, & Whitsed, 2017 ; Volkov & Volkov, 2015 ), it should be given explicit attention in entrepreneurship programs ( Kotey, 2007 ). As Neck and Greene (2011) highlighted, “the best opportunity in the world is of little value without a strong team that can execute” (p. 64). Teamwork, however, is often poorly executed in educational settings and is more characteristic of group work rather than highly interdependent teamwork ( Volkov & Volkov, 2015 ). As Volkov and Volkov (2015) pointed out, a team should create synergy towards a shared objective, which is distinct from group work that only requires pooling of, often independently completed, deliverables. The goal of teamwork is to obtain an outcome that is better than what can be achieved by one individual alone ( Kotey, 2007 ).

Student learning experience. We have partnered with the Individual and Team Performance Lab (ITP) to use their free suite of resources to guide students through their teamwork (see www.itpmetrics.com ). First, students complete a personality test that provides a detailed report of their personality, and during the first team meeting, students use this report to discuss which of their personal characteristics may be an asset to the team. Second, midway through the project, students complete a peer feedback ( O'Neill et al., 2019 ) and team dynamics assessment ( O'Neill et al., 2018 ), which provides students with an anonymous team-level (i.e., health and functioning of the team) and individual-level (i.e., 360° ratings of team member effectiveness) feedback report. Throughout the semester, students participate in a series of workshops aimed to debrief the reports. This provides the teams with the tools and methods to improve team and individual performance in a manner that targets deficient areas identified in the feedback reports (e.g., team-level – role clarity, team conflict, monitoring goals; individual-level – commitment, communication, task focus). At the end of the term, students are required to complete a worksheet in which points are allocated to each team member, including themselves, based on their contribution throughout the course.

5. A signature pedagogy

Signature pedagogies shape the ways in which future professionals are educated in their field, along with influencing how they think, perform, and behave with integrity ( Shulman, 2005 ). As stated by Shulman (2005) in a foundational paper, signature pedagogies are pedagogies of uncertainty and create a classroom that is unpredictable and surprising. The emergence of new technology, social unrest, as well as the presence of challenging and complex problems are described by Shulman as objective conditions that call for a new approach to learning such as a signature pedagogy. Despite this, a signature pedagogy for entrepreneurship education has not yet been delineated ( Jones, 2019 ). Rather, most articles in the entrepreneurship education literature offer a review of the pedagogical methods used in classrooms (e.g., Hägg & Gabrielsson, 2020 ; Mwasalwiba, 2010 ; Sirelkhatim & Gangi, 2015 ; Solomon, 2007 ), rather than developing methods and tools used to teach entrepreneurship. As such, this section focuses on comparing our proposed pedagogy against Shulman's features of a signature pedagogy. In doing so, we connect both the literature on entrepreneurial skills and entrepreneurial education, to outline a clear and innovative pedagogy that can be used to develop an entrepreneurial skillset.

We focus on the core pedagogical methods that best reflect our approach to teaching ET-7. Below, we consider each of Shulman's dimensions of a signature pedagogy (i.e., surface structure, deep structure, and implicit structure) to demonstrate that our approach clearly frames and prefigures professional preparation by creating many opportunities for the students to experience adaptive anxiety ( Shulman, 2005 ), resulting in skill development.

5.1. Surface structure - A flipped classroom and experiential learning activities

The surface structure of a signature pedagogy comprise of concrete and operational acts of teaching and learning, which include ways of demonstrating or interacting with learning objectives ( Shulman, 2005 ). This is accomplished through the use of experiential learning exercises, which provide in-class and out-of-class guidance for the students, and support a flipped classroom approach. Our course is designed to promote adaptive anxiety in students, and is necessary for learning ET-7. In other words, our course was designed in such a way that students are immediately faced with a failure, and iteratively advance through the fail cycle, while being encouraged to maintain their perseverance.

To achieve this, the first author developed materials that have a foundation for creating adaptive anxiety in students ( Shulman, 2005 ). In particular, 18 in-class experiential exercises and 13 out-of-class guiding worksheets were developed and form the foundation for our flipped classroom setting. A typical 3-hour class would require the students to come prepared, having completed the reading material and out-of-class guiding worksheets. For example, the “Empathy Map Worksheet” ask students to complete an interview with their early adopter customer in-person. Here, students need to learn about what motivates their customers, who influences them, and which problem they should try to solve through their business venture. This worksheet focuses on the perspective of the customer, not the students. The student and customer perspectives are typically very different, and is likely to result in adaptive anxiety. Next, during class, students share this worksheet in their teams and with the class. The instructor facilitates in-class experiential exercises to help students gain a deeper understanding of the focal concept and associated skills. Accordingly, the instructor acts as a mentor and facilitator when students realize that their original ideas might not work, and when they need to start a new idea generation cycle.

The sample activity described above highlights an important feature of our signature pedagogy, how the student and instructor interact. The combination of experiential learning activities and a flipped classroom approach work together to create an interactive element that shifts the instructor toward the role of a facilitator. Our pedagogy relies on this interaction to help students become more engaged with the learning process. In summary, the experiential learning activities and the flipped classroom approach establish the surface structure that is required for a signature pedagogy in entrepreneurship education.

5.2. Deep structure - adaptive anxiety

The deep structure component of the signature pedagogy proposed by Shulman (2005) lies on “a set of assumptions about how best to impart a certain body of knowledge and know-how” (p. 55). Through rewarding the students in their failures by allowing a high grade for a successful or a failed idea, they learn that failure and uncertainty are manageable. They begin to develop adaptive anxiety, which we argue is a fundamental deep structure that supports the development of ET-7. For example, students start by thinking they have found a problem and solution for a customer, and thus believe their business venture will be successful. However, students may discover that the “pain point” of their customer is not what they originally thought. We insist that every aspect of the student's business model must be validated in-person with customers or technical experts – a requirement that results in many of their assumptions failing. As a result, students need to “pivot” or “abandon” their ideas quickly. This realization allows them to adapt quickly to the new information, and effectively navigate through the uncertainty of creating a viable solution that addresses the “pain point” of the customer. This continual requirement of validation through primary research results in significant adaptive anxiety. Additionally, students are provided with multiple sources of feedback (i.e., teaching assistants who are peers that have successfully completed the course as well as business mentors), which support the students outside of the classroom. This support structure is essential to ensure students do not become overwhelmed or frustrated.

By the end of the course, the students become comfortable with adaptive anxiety. We believe that this is aligned with Shulman's (2005) deep structure for pedagogy and facilitates the development of ET-7. Thus, students gain knowledge of why ET-7 is important and learn how to apply these skills in the real-world. Here, deep structure is achieved through critical dialogue that allows the students to learn from instructors, peers, industry advisors, and customers' personal experiences. Accordingly, knowledge creation and formation that is based on collective experiences and assumptions, which is imparted through adaptive anxiety, from the “know-how” of ET-7 skills.

5.3. Implicit structure - entrepreneurial thinking

According to Shulman (2005) , the implicit structure of a signature pedagogy is a moral dimension that “comprises a set of beliefs about professional attitudes, values, and dispositions” (p. 55). This is reflected in what is taught using the signature pedagogy, encouraging a disposition towards entrepreneurial thinking. Specifically, the ET-7 establish a foundation for students to develop the professional attitudes and beliefs that are required in the workforce to become a leader. Indeed, the ET-7 aims to develop individuals who can adapt to uncertainty, solve problems efficiently, and do so with a deep understanding of others’ perspectives.

Additionally, traditional business courses have focused on developing managerial thinking and strategic thinking. This enables students to follow a “cookie-cutter” method of creating a business that drive profits for shareholders. Entrepreneurial thinking does not focus on these areas. Rather, it focuses on skills that transcend the simple profit motive of a business. Critical to this is developing perspective taking in students, and helping them understand that this is a crucial skill to have in their professional roles. Therefore, ET-7 aims to shift students’ mind toward understanding people and their concerns.

5.4. The value of a signature pedagogy for an uncertain 21st century

While we have described a signature pedagogy for teaching entrepreneurial thinking, we drew from existing methods and tools such as a flipped classroom approach, experiential learning activities, and open educational resources. Such methods and tools are not uncommon in other educational settings, however, it is the combination of these approaches and the extent to which this course relies on these methods that make this signature pedagogy novel. For example, other business courses may implement a few experiential activities (e.g., case study methods) but primarily rely on more traditional methods to transmit knowledge. The extent to which such business courses use traditional methods over active methods may signify their signature pedagogy. However, the space in which entrepreneurs operate differs significantly from typical business majors (e.g., accounting or finance) as much of the context revolves around uncertainty. As such, this course utilizes a significant number of experiential activities to simulate a turbulent and uncertain entrepreneurial environment. Indeed, Jones (2019) highlights that signature pedagogies may draw from existing pedagogical methods, but it is the unique combination of these methods that make it distinctive to entrepreneurship education.

Another important contextual element to pedagogical methods is the scale at which the methods can be delivered. For example, lecture-based methods are classified as a form of mass instruction (Elton, 1977 as cited in Gibb & Price, 2007 ) whereas tutorials, which are often held with a smaller group of students, may incorporate active methods more easily. However, due to potential timetabling constraints in higher education, the addition of a dedicated tutorial session for entrepreneurship courses may not be feasible. As such, a unique and valuable feature of our signature pedagogy is the scale at which this can be applied (i.e., the pedagogical methods and tools can be applied to larger classrooms sizes).

6. Value to educators

Our goal is to provide educators with an established method of teaching ET-7 to students. Through placing all our exercises, worksheets, assignments, and teaching methods on our open educational resource at no cost to students or educators, we hope to create a collaborative community that builds and improves on our work. A creative commons licence allows for any educator to access our content and customize it to fit their requirements. To date, we have had over a dozen educators from around the world use our material, and provide helpful feedback to improve the content for others.

7. Discussion and conclusion

This conceptual paper makes two main contributions to the entrepreneurial education literature. First, based on the first author's experience as an entrepreneur and angel investor, as well as evidence from the literature, seven teachable entrepreneurial skills were identified (i.e., ET-7). The ET-7 were selected after an extensive review of the literature, and they capture the ability to solve complex problems, deal with uncertainty, learn from failures, see things from the perspective of another, think creatively, respond to feedback, and work effectively in a team. As argued earlier, these skills are highly relevant for both future entrepreneurs and for those pursuing other career paths. Moreover, we offered examples of student learning experiences as they pertain to each of the ET-7, which allows educators to replicate these activities in their classroom with students who do, and do not, identify as entrepreneurial. Furthermore, the ease of replicating these activities in their classroom is supported by access to the OER.

The second contribution of this paper is our signature pedagogical approach to teaching the ET-7, which is based on Shulman's (2005) recommendations. We designed a signature pedagogy that supports learning through experiential activities, which emulate the uncertain turbulent context faced by entrepreneurs but can be experienced by all undergraduate students. Concrete and operational learning occurs through the use of a flipped classroom and allows instructors to work within a series of experiential activities, rather than just transmitting content. In our pedagogical approach, deep structure is based on the assumption that the best way to convey entrepreneurial knowledge is through adaptive anxiety, which provides students the opportunity to fail forward. Finally, by teaching an entrepreneurial skillset (i.e., ET-7) via the signature pedagogy, the professional attitudes, values, and dispositions of an entrepreneur can be transmitted and practiced by future generations no matter what their career choice.

Given the conceptual and descriptive nature of this paper, one limitation of this research is that we have yet to collect evidence of the effectiveness of our framework for teaching ET-7. However, this would go beyond the scope of this paper, given that our goal was to describe our set of skills, methods, and signature pedagogy. While we theorize that students’ ET-7 should be higher after taking a course that follows our signature pedagogy, we have yet to empirically examine this proposition. Thus, future work should seek to empirically examine the degree to which the ET-7 skills change when adopting this signature pedagogy. More specifically, future research could examine whether ET-7 skill levels demonstrate significant improvements in courses that adopt this signature pedagogy. This could be tested using a pre- and post-intervention design with an experimental group and a control group (i.e., students not undergoing the signature pedagogy). In addition to this, it may also be fruitful to examine which experiential activities are most effective at developing specific ET-7 skills. While these are fruitful avenues to explore, we believe that the ET-7 and our proposed signature pedagogy will promote a deeper consideration of the skills and pedagogical methods that are required in order to prepare the future generation to perform well in a wide array of professional roles.

CRediT authorship contribution statement

Houston Peschl: Conceptualization, Writing - original draft, Supervision, Funding acquisition. Connie Deng: Writing - review & editing, Resources. Nicole Larson: Writing - review & editing, Methodology, Project administration.

Acknowledgement

This research was suppoprted through a grant from the University of Calgary's Taylor Institute for Teaching and Learning.

1 Please contact the first author for access to the OER.

2 Prior to becoming a business school instructor, the first author spent two decades as a serial entrepreneur, starting thirteen companies as well as having participated in an Initial Public Offering (IPO). This provided personal lived experience for what skills were valuable for undergraduate business students to be prepared for any career they chose.

Appendix A Supplementary data to this article can be found online at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijme.2020.100427 .

Appendix A. Supplementary data

The following is the Supplementary data to this article:

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What Is Creative Problem-Solving & Why Is It Important?

Business team using creative problem-solving

  • 01 Feb 2022

One of the biggest hindrances to innovation is complacency—it can be more comfortable to do what you know than venture into the unknown. Business leaders can overcome this barrier by mobilizing creative team members and providing space to innovate.

There are several tools you can use to encourage creativity in the workplace. Creative problem-solving is one of them, which facilitates the development of innovative solutions to difficult problems.

Here’s an overview of creative problem-solving and why it’s important in business.

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What Is Creative Problem-Solving?

Research is necessary when solving a problem. But there are situations where a problem’s specific cause is difficult to pinpoint. This can occur when there’s not enough time to narrow down the problem’s source or there are differing opinions about its root cause.

In such cases, you can use creative problem-solving , which allows you to explore potential solutions regardless of whether a problem has been defined.

Creative problem-solving is less structured than other innovation processes and encourages exploring open-ended solutions. It also focuses on developing new perspectives and fostering creativity in the workplace . Its benefits include:

  • Finding creative solutions to complex problems : User research can insufficiently illustrate a situation’s complexity. While other innovation processes rely on this information, creative problem-solving can yield solutions without it.
  • Adapting to change : Business is constantly changing, and business leaders need to adapt. Creative problem-solving helps overcome unforeseen challenges and find solutions to unconventional problems.
  • Fueling innovation and growth : In addition to solutions, creative problem-solving can spark innovative ideas that drive company growth. These ideas can lead to new product lines, services, or a modified operations structure that improves efficiency.

Design Thinking and Innovation | Uncover creative solutions to your business problems | Learn More

Creative problem-solving is traditionally based on the following key principles :

1. Balance Divergent and Convergent Thinking

Creative problem-solving uses two primary tools to find solutions: divergence and convergence. Divergence generates ideas in response to a problem, while convergence narrows them down to a shortlist. It balances these two practices and turns ideas into concrete solutions.

2. Reframe Problems as Questions

By framing problems as questions, you shift from focusing on obstacles to solutions. This provides the freedom to brainstorm potential ideas.

3. Defer Judgment of Ideas

When brainstorming, it can be natural to reject or accept ideas right away. Yet, immediate judgments interfere with the idea generation process. Even ideas that seem implausible can turn into outstanding innovations upon further exploration and development.

4. Focus on "Yes, And" Instead of "No, But"

Using negative words like "no" discourages creative thinking. Instead, use positive language to build and maintain an environment that fosters the development of creative and innovative ideas.

Creative Problem-Solving and Design Thinking

Whereas creative problem-solving facilitates developing innovative ideas through a less structured workflow, design thinking takes a far more organized approach.

Design thinking is a human-centered, solutions-based process that fosters the ideation and development of solutions. In the online course Design Thinking and Innovation , Harvard Business School Dean Srikant Datar leverages a four-phase framework to explain design thinking.

The four stages are:

The four stages of design thinking: clarify, ideate, develop, and implement

  • Clarify: The clarification stage allows you to empathize with the user and identify problems. Observations and insights are informed by thorough research. Findings are then reframed as problem statements or questions.
  • Ideate: Ideation is the process of coming up with innovative ideas. The divergence of ideas involved with creative problem-solving is a major focus.
  • Develop: In the development stage, ideas evolve into experiments and tests. Ideas converge and are explored through prototyping and open critique.
  • Implement: Implementation involves continuing to test and experiment to refine the solution and encourage its adoption.

Creative problem-solving primarily operates in the ideate phase of design thinking but can be applied to others. This is because design thinking is an iterative process that moves between the stages as ideas are generated and pursued. This is normal and encouraged, as innovation requires exploring multiple ideas.

Creative Problem-Solving Tools

While there are many useful tools in the creative problem-solving process, here are three you should know:

Creating a Problem Story

One way to innovate is by creating a story about a problem to understand how it affects users and what solutions best fit their needs. Here are the steps you need to take to use this tool properly.

1. Identify a UDP

Create a problem story to identify the undesired phenomena (UDP). For example, consider a company that produces printers that overheat. In this case, the UDP is "our printers overheat."

2. Move Forward in Time

To move forward in time, ask: “Why is this a problem?” For example, minor damage could be one result of the machines overheating. In more extreme cases, printers may catch fire. Don't be afraid to create multiple problem stories if you think of more than one UDP.

3. Move Backward in Time

To move backward in time, ask: “What caused this UDP?” If you can't identify the root problem, think about what typically causes the UDP to occur. For the overheating printers, overuse could be a cause.

Following the three-step framework above helps illustrate a clear problem story:

  • The printer is overused.
  • The printer overheats.
  • The printer breaks down.

You can extend the problem story in either direction if you think of additional cause-and-effect relationships.

4. Break the Chains

By this point, you’ll have multiple UDP storylines. Take two that are similar and focus on breaking the chains connecting them. This can be accomplished through inversion or neutralization.

  • Inversion: Inversion changes the relationship between two UDPs so the cause is the same but the effect is the opposite. For example, if the UDP is "the more X happens, the more likely Y is to happen," inversion changes the equation to "the more X happens, the less likely Y is to happen." Using the printer example, inversion would consider: "What if the more a printer is used, the less likely it’s going to overheat?" Innovation requires an open mind. Just because a solution initially seems unlikely doesn't mean it can't be pursued further or spark additional ideas.
  • Neutralization: Neutralization completely eliminates the cause-and-effect relationship between X and Y. This changes the above equation to "the more or less X happens has no effect on Y." In the case of the printers, neutralization would rephrase the relationship to "the more or less a printer is used has no effect on whether it overheats."

Even if creating a problem story doesn't provide a solution, it can offer useful context to users’ problems and additional ideas to be explored. Given that divergence is one of the fundamental practices of creative problem-solving, it’s a good idea to incorporate it into each tool you use.

Brainstorming

Brainstorming is a tool that can be highly effective when guided by the iterative qualities of the design thinking process. It involves openly discussing and debating ideas and topics in a group setting. This facilitates idea generation and exploration as different team members consider the same concept from multiple perspectives.

Hosting brainstorming sessions can result in problems, such as groupthink or social loafing. To combat this, leverage a three-step brainstorming method involving divergence and convergence :

  • Have each group member come up with as many ideas as possible and write them down to ensure the brainstorming session is productive.
  • Continue the divergence of ideas by collectively sharing and exploring each idea as a group. The goal is to create a setting where new ideas are inspired by open discussion.
  • Begin the convergence of ideas by narrowing them down to a few explorable options. There’s no "right number of ideas." Don't be afraid to consider exploring all of them, as long as you have the resources to do so.

Alternate Worlds

The alternate worlds tool is an empathetic approach to creative problem-solving. It encourages you to consider how someone in another world would approach your situation.

For example, if you’re concerned that the printers you produce overheat and catch fire, consider how a different industry would approach the problem. How would an automotive expert solve it? How would a firefighter?

Be creative as you consider and research alternate worlds. The purpose is not to nail down a solution right away but to continue the ideation process through diverging and exploring ideas.

Which HBS Online Entrepreneurship and Innovation Course is Right for You? | Download Your Free Flowchart

Continue Developing Your Skills

Whether you’re an entrepreneur, marketer, or business leader, learning the ropes of design thinking can be an effective way to build your skills and foster creativity and innovation in any setting.

If you're ready to develop your design thinking and creative problem-solving skills, explore Design Thinking and Innovation , one of our online entrepreneurship and innovation courses. If you aren't sure which course is the right fit, download our free course flowchart to determine which best aligns with your goals.

relationship between problem solving and entrepreneurship

About the Author

Transformational and entrepreneurial leadership: A review of distinction and overlap

  • Review Paper
  • Open access
  • Published: 22 March 2023

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  • Theo Émile Ravet-Brown   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-6915-652X 1 ,
  • Marco Furtner   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-7734-5459 1 &
  • Andreas Kallmuenzer   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-8808-1743 2  

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Entrepreneurship represents a key motor of economic growth, and entrepreneurial leadership (EL) represents a vital constituent thereof. However, its examination remains factious, and integration with the wider leadership literature is fragmentary. EL is claimed by some as representing a construct distinct from extant leadership styles, even though the major contribution made by transformational leadership (TL) theory remains under-researched and under-reported. Furthermore, TL is often used to measure leaders in entrepreneurship, resulting in a lack of clarity regarding the relationship between TL and EL. Our study seeks to contribute to the literature by elucidating the distinction and overlap between the two leadership constructs, as currently defined by available questionnaires. To this end, conceptual work, current findings, and research practice are reviewed. Drawn from a final sample of 25 articles, our findings show appreciable conceptual divergence. However, questionnaires of EL overlap significantly with TL and are subject to validation and discriminant validity issues; many researchers furthermore continue to use TL questionnaires to measure EL. Very little compelling empirical evidence for divergent validity was found, though strong correlations between EL and TL were observed. Our study contributes an overview of EL from the viewpoint of leadership science, providing recommendations to entrepreneurship researchers examining EL. We suggest that future work should satisfy two main goals: the establishment of a conceptualization of EL which can empirically demonstrate divergent validity versus other, accepted measures of leadership, and the creation of a cogent and a specific theoretical model to support it.

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Avoid common mistakes on your manuscript.

1 Introduction

The study of entrepreneurial leadership (EL) examines those who set out to improve their circumstances by founding new enterprises (Hensellek et al. 2023 ), and by gathering around them a group of like-minded followers who join them in realizing their vision (Liu et al. 2022 ). EL today presents a disparate array of conceptual and practical approaches to those interested in pinning down its measurement (Clark et al. 2019 ). Research using the term includes anything from the procedural examination of leadership of entrepreneurial ventures (Freeman and Siegfried 2015 ), to strategic considerations of the value of entrepreneurially-minded management in extant enterprises and their corporate venturing (Karol 2015 ; Niemann et al. 2022 ), to the behavioral delineation of a unique leadership style that is unalienably entrepreneurial (Bagheri and Harrison 2020 ). However, mainstream leadership research diverges from employing these kinds of broad definitions (Reid et al. 2018 ). More concrete, quantifiable operationalizations of leadership styles, such as empowering leadership (Cheong et al. 2019 ) or transformational leadership (TL) (Bass and Avolio 1997 ) have long proven fruitful (Derue et al. 2011 ) and continue to be sought after (Hemshorn de Sanchez et al. 2022 ). While some conceptual work on EL acknowledges this kind of convention (Leitch and Volery 2017 ), it rapidly swells to encompass a blend of interpersonal and strategic components (Bagheri and Harrison 2020 ). However, the importance to EL scholarship of arriving at a serviceable, shared definition is clear, as many scholars seek to measure EL as a distinct, operationalized style (e.g. Niemann et al. 2022 ). As leaders, entrepreneurs are undoubtedly a key ingredient in determining the viability of their idea and the success of the venture it begets (Liu et al. 2022 ; Tarí et al. 2023 ); their ability to marshal the resources needed for success, both human and non-human, is essential (Brush et al. 2001 ). In short, EL represents the crux of successful entrepreneurship (Faridian 2023 ), so how is it best measured? Is EL capturable through mainstream conceptions, as some have suggested (Vecchio 2003 ), or does it require some unique, distinct construct? The examination of these questions has remained fragmented, and their answer has yet to be found (Clark et al. 2019 ; Clark and Harrison 2019 ). Calls to integrate EL more closely with the field of leadership are not new (Antonakis and Autio 2012 ), even though a paucity of comprehensive integration of a theoretical framework persists from within mainstream leadership science into EL, such as the Full-Range Leadership Theory (FRLT; see Bass 1985 ; Bass and Avolio 1997 ). Conceptually, both TL and its parent theory, the FRLT, formulate leadership styles as a composition of concrete, visible behaviors and saliently displayed attributes, together constituting “a process whereby an individual influences a group of individuals to achieve a common goal” (Northouse 2018 , p. 43). Current measures of EL however do not fully conform to this theoretical framework (c.f. Bagheri and Harrison 2020 ; Renko et al. 2015 ), despite the three prominent operationalizations of EL drawing considerably on TL (Bagheri and Harrison 2020 ; Gupta et al. 2004 ; Renko et al. 2015 ). In fact, even a cursory examination of these measures reveals marked item overlap with questionnaires for TL, an issue which authors in the field of EL have previously pointed to (Renko et al. 2015 ). This kind of admixture obstructs the establishment of a distinct, behaviorally proximal definition of EL.

This alone represents sufficient reason to consider an examination of TL and EL in concert. Aside from the overwhelming acceptance of TL in mainstream leadership literature (Deng et al. 2022 ), it continues to be used “routinely” in the examination of entrepreneurial leaders (Reid et al. 2018 , p. 152). However, there are also conceptual differences which several authors have pointed to. The question of scope, of “leadership in” versus “leadership of” organizations, is crucial (Antonakis and Autio 2012 ). For example, some authors point to behaviors such as opportunity recognition (Renko 2017 ) or recruitment (Bagheri and Harrison 2020 ) which are not inherently connected to the leadership of employees, as representing the key differences between TL and EL. A further dimension is context; some acknowledge the behavioral similarities between the two forms of leadership behaviors, but then point to the position of the entrepreneurial leader within a firm that experiences evolving environmental contingencies as a key antecedent for their ability to motivate followers (Gupta et al. 2004 ). The genesis of leadership concepts is thought by some to represent another point of difference; TL, developed purely within leadership science, is deemed somehow limited in its applicability or dynamism (Cai et al. 2019 , p. 212; see for comparison Deng et al. 2022 ; Gerards et al. 2021 ; Jensen et al. 2020 ), while EL is considered as representing a new construct suitable for capturing leadership in the current era of economic upheaval and opportunity (e.g. Mehmood et al. 2021a ; Röschke 2018a ). While the progenitors of novel constructs convincingly claim their distinctiveness, originality, and usefulness, this does not necessarily make them so (Shaffer et al. 2016 ); proof of their divergent validity, and thus their utility, may be delivered only through empirical examination. Moreover, locating and positioning an entrepreneurial style within the field of extant leadership styles has long been called for (see Antonakis and Autio 2012 , p. 203) particularly in light of suggestions that there may be nothing unique about EL at all (e.g. Vecchio 2003 ). Some scholars even argue that the two fields of entrepreneurship and leadership are phenomenological derivatives of an underlying, deeper construct, namely EL (Becherer et al. 2008 ). Helpfully, several recent reviews have sought to bring clarity in one way or another (e.g. Clark et al. 2019 ; Faridian 2023 ; Harrison et al. 2018 ; Leitch and Harrison 2018a ; Leitch and Harrison 2018b ; Leitch and Volery 2017 ), even though these papers failed to substantively engage with the mainstream leadership discourse. A wide gap is also visible between these reviews, on the one hand, and review publications from within leadership science, on the other (e.g. Reid et al. 2018 ). Moreover, these EL-focused conceptual works refrained from engaging in an exhaustive examination of the overlap and differences between TL and EL, both comprehensively and at various levels of analysis, while combining the level of concept, measure, and findings. It is this contribution our paper seeks to provide.

In summary, the measurement of EL may be considered a key challenge facing entrepreneurship and leadership research; a distinct research gap exists around the current state of EL measurement, as well as its underlying theoretical conceptualization (Clark and Harrison 2019 ). It is also unclear whether current conceptualizations are inherently reliant on TL, or whether they present as sufficiently distinct to permit the measurement of a unique construct. How does the theoretical work behind them support such a distinction; how do the commonly used questionnaires differ in content; and how do researchers in the field of EL view this distinction? In short, is it currently possible to measure EL without measuring TL? To provide an answer, three specific research questions (RQs) will be examined:

RQ1: What is the conceptual overlap between EL and TL? RQ2: What is the overlap of content among the currently available operationalizations of EL and TL? RQ3: How does empirical research in the measurement of leadership within the field of entrepreneurship research reflect this potential overlap?

The authors deem it essential to take this kind of holistic, multi-leveled view, and it is this gap that the present review seeks to close. Adhering to previous convention (Bichler et al. 2022 ; Kraus et al. 2020 ), we adopted a systematic literature review with content analysis as the method for shedding light on this fragmented field (Leitch and Volery 2017 ). In doing so, our paper offers three sets of results. With respect to RQ1, a marked lack of mutual interaction is found on the one hand between the main corpus of theoretical development in EL and, on the other, mainstream leadership research. This hampers attempts to embed EL within the wider leadership literature, particularly concerning its relationship with TL. Regarding RQ2, a deeper analysis of the three extant measures of EL found not only strong overlap with TL, but also profound issues in their conceptualization and validation, particularly with regard to their discriminant validity relating to other leadership styles. Finally, in answering RQ3, the review found no consensus on the use of EL questionnaires in the current literature; notably, it found TL-questionnaires to be widely used in the measurement of EL. It furthermore found conflicting statistical results indicating a clear lack of discriminant validity between measures of the two constructs.

2 Theoretical background

2.1 transformational leadership.

Current leadership literature has been described as vast (Klijn et al. 2022 ), vibrant (Gardner et al. 2020 ) and mature (Cogliser and Brigham 2004 ). The FRLT (Bass 1985 ; Burns 1978 ), often termed the Full-Range Leadership Model, has long represented the dominant paradigm within it (Gardner et al. 2020 ). Implicitly, the FRLT subscribes to a model of leadership based on the interaction between followers and leaders. This interaction constitutes an influence process, the agent of which is the leader, and the objective of which is the motivation of individual followers towards the achievement of a shared goal (Banks et al. 2022 ). In other words, such conceptions of leadership are considered as constituting “an interactional phenomenon that unfolds through discrete observable behaviors” (Hemshorn de Sanchez et al. 2022 , p. 342). This perspective may broadly be conflated with what Antonakis and Autio ( 2012 ) termed “leadership in” organizations, as opposed to the more strategically oriented “leadership of.” The conception of leadership as a granular, behavioral, interpersonal influence process forms the theoretical paradigm in which the present review remains grounded, especially since it informs most current, mainstream leadership research, including the FRLT (Yukl 2013 ).

TL is the most active and effective style of leadership posited in the FRLT (e.g. Żywiołek et al. 2022 ). Furthermore, and in contrast to the closely related, similarly effective, but poorly defined concept of charismatic leadership (Antonakis et al. 2016 ; House 1977 ), TL is clearly established to encompass four key dimensions based on Avolio ( 2010 ). First, idealized influence denotes a leader who is considered moral, trustworthy, and principled, and who displays a sense of purpose and power while reassuring, guiding, and ennobling their followers. Inspirational motivation, the second facet, is the evocation of motivation through the articulation of an engaging, challenging, compelling vision of a shared future. This goes hand in hand with intellectual stimulation, the third constituent, which is essentially the furtherance of the ability of both oneself and followers to consider problems in novel, unusual, and productive ways. Individual consideration finally encompasses a leader’s mandate to pay due attention to his or her followers, assisting in their development, listening, mentoring, and nurturing (Avolio 2010 ). Crucial here is the aspect of individuality, with due care being given to each and every follower as a unique individual whose needs diverge from those of others, and from those of the group at large. Taken together, proper practice of these dimensions has shown itself overwhelmingly effective (Wang et al. 2011 ). Aside from the transformational-transactional paradigm, numerous further approaches are currently trending, such as digital (Oberer and Erkollar 2018 ), empowering (Cheong et al. 2019 ) and servant leadership (Eva et al. 2019 ). Most, however, have long conceptualized leadership as an influence process largely aligned with the FRLT’s underlying paradigmatic perspective (Yukl 1989 ), and continue to do so (cf. Montano et al. 2023 ; Tarí et al. 2023 ).

The importance of leadership to organizational outcomes can hardly be overstated (Banks et al. 2017 ), and TL in particular has repeatedly shown itself to be an eminently effective tool in a leader’s kit (e.g. Deng et al. 2022 ; Judge and Piccolo 2004 ; Lowe et al. 1996 ). Specifically, TL has been found to stimulate organizational citizenship behaviors (e.g. Khan and Khan 2022 ), performance (e.g. Prabhu and Srivastava 2023 ), attitudes, and employee satisfaction (Alwali and Alwali 2022 ) to name just a few. In particular, transformational leaders have been shown to facilitate not only followers’ performance, but also their creativity (e.g. Żywiołek et al. 2022 ) and innovation (e.g. Begum et al. 2022 ), two vital constituents “inseparable” from entrepreneurship (Gilad 1984 , p. 151). These beneficial effects have been theoretically and empirically linked to each of the four facets of TL noted above. For example, inspirational motivation is considered as boosting followers’ intrinsic motivation, which in turn is crucial to creativity (Amabile 1996 ; de Jesus et al. 2013 ), while intellectual stimulation engages and promotes followers’ capacity for critical and exploratory thinking (Sosik et al. 1998 ), thereby boosting creativity and innovation (e.g. Thuan 2020 ; Yasin et al. 2014 ), which has been shown to mediate the positive effect of TL on firm performance (Overstreet et al. 2013 ). In addition to its widely accepted utility, there are further reasons for explicitly examining TL as it relates to EL. First, TL is the one mainstream style of leadership most routinely applied to entrepreneurship (e.g. Fries et al. 2021 ; Luu 2023 ; Soomro and Shah 2022 ), having been used to predict entrepreneurial creativity (Gumusluoglu and Ilsev 2009 ) and performance (Harsanto and Roelfsema 2015 ), among other outcomes. Second, as their respective authors state, the three most eminent measures for EL currently available (Bagheri and Harrison 2020 ; Gupta et al. 2004 ; Renko et al. 2015 ) relied on TL to varying degrees during their conceptualization, in particular on the sub-facets of visionary leadership (inspirational motivation) and encouraging novel ways of thinking in followers (intellectual stimulation). These three eminent measures together represent the vast majority of citations for any measures of EL, and lie at the heart of much of the theoretical discourse on EL (see e.g. Clark et al. 2019 ; Leitch and Harrison 2018b ). Third, other researchers continue to use TL, as defined in the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire (Bass and Avolio 1997 ), to measure the leadership of entrepreneurs, in place of any of the three currently available EL questionnaires (see e.g. Bamiatzi et al. 2015 ; Ensley et al. 2006 ; Ng and Kee 2018 ; Verma and Kumar 2021 ). In addition, numerous studies have recently sought to replicate the results achieved with TL using novel conceptualizations of EL (e.g. Newman et al. 2018 ). Finally, a select few studies have actually quantitatively examined the two together (Cai et al. 2019 ; Lee et al. 2020 ; Newman et al. 2018 ); their contribution has yet to be considered within the larger picture. The interaction between EL and TL is therefore intensifying.

In summary, TL may be considered a staple of mainstream leadership science, with extensive evidence accrued in support of its predictive power and validity. It has been repeatedly used to measure EL, is considered by some to represent the leadership component of EL and is heavily represented in EL questionnaires.

2.2 Entrepreneurial leadership

Entrepreneurship is an important engine for both national and global economies (Carlsson et al. 2013 ; van Praag and Versloot 2007 ). Central issues in entrepreneurship research continue to include opportunity recognition, innovation, and risk-taking (Carlsson et al. 2013 ), mirroring classical lines of thought which conceptualized the entrepreneur as a risk-taker (Knight 1921 ), a creator (Schumpeter 1942 ), or an arbitrator of economic disequilibria (Kirzner 1973 ). All of these emphasize the person of the entrepreneur, who represents by definition a leader of sorts. Though more modern approaches, such as effectuation (Hubner et al. 2022 ), knowledge spillover (Iftikhar et al. 2022 ), or bricolage (Crupi et al. 2022 ), have sought more holistic and process-oriented frameworks for understanding entrepreneurship, this emphasis has remained central. For example, Sarasvathy argues that entrepreneurs are effectuators first, and that the charismatic or visionary leadership frequently attributed to them is often misperceived ( 2008 , p. 235). In contrast, the bricolage approach seeks to take a firm-wide perspective, tackling the phenomenon of entrepreneurship through socio-economic analysis (Baker and Nelson 2005 ). A wide variety of approaches are now available which variously examine entrepreneurship as a mindset (e.g. Kuratko et al. 2021 ), a process (e.g. Hikkerova et al. 2016 ), or a collection of traits (e.g. Munir et al. 2019 ), although the general focus remains on the figure of the entrepreneur. Over the last two decades, however, the debate has widened in its appreciation of the scope and nature of entrepreneurship (Landström 2020 ), kicked off by a widely quoted assertion by Shane and Venkataraman ( 2000 , p. 218) that “the field involves the study of sources of opportunities, the process of discovery, evaluation, and exploitation of opportunities, and the set of individuals who discover, evaluate, and exploit them”.

As may be expected, such a wide field has given rise to an equally extensive range of appreciations of what EL may be understood to be. Even though the progenitor fields of entrepreneurship and leadership display certain similarities in their historical development (Harrison and Leitch 1994 ; Leitch and Volery 2017 ), the explicit, scientific examination of their intersection is a comparatively novel field of inquiry (Fernald et al. 2005 ), regardless of whether it is considered as starting with Lippitt ( 1987 ), or with Cogliser and Brigham ( 2004 ). Numerous definitions of EL have been proposed, some prominent examples of which are given in Table  1 . Cunningham and Lischeron’s ( 1991 ) definition is foundational, and the aftereffects that were conjured by the breadth of its scope continue to be felt in the disparity of the field three decades later. Following this, Ireland et al. ( 2003 ) as well as Cogliser and Brigham ( 2004 ) are both often referenced. The former, with its emphasis on leading others to strategically manage resources, somewhat evokes the concept of empowering leadership (Cheong et al. 2019 ). In contrast, Cogliser and Brigham’s ( 2004 ) definition makes no real mention of leading followers, instead stating that resources must be marshaled, detailing how an entrepreneur must adapt leadership of their venture along with its growth; this bears little resemblance to mainstream theories of leadership, and has yet to give rise to any instruments of measurement. Finally, the most influential definition has almost certainly been that of Gupta et al. ( 2004 ), which will be discussed in detail below. However, even at this early stage, it may be noted that their definition bears some resemblance to TL, with its emphasis on vision (Gupta et al. 2004 ). Though some still adhere to this conceptualization (e.g. Pu et al. 2022 ), most now engage with the definition of Renko et al. ( 2015 ), the use of which has been increasing in recent publications (e.g. Hoang et al. 2022 ; Lin and Yi 2022 ; Malibari and Bajaba 2022 ; Strobl et al. 2022 ).

An increasing body of work is seeking to pin down EL, with two clearly visible overarching perspectives emerging: leadership or entrepreneurship (Leitch and Harrison 2018a ; Röschke 2018b ). The latter generally conceptualizes EL as a mindset, with leadership subsumed into the overall application of entrepreneurship. This point of view is typified by Gupta et al. ( 2004 ) and Kuratko ( 2007 ), though some more recent work follows in the same vein (e.g. Lyons et al. 2020 ). Others take a slightly different tone, clearly stating that EL is not a “style” of leadership, but instead describes the leadership role performed in entrepreneurial ventures (Leitch and Volery 2017 ). This thread of research embraces the notion that, as such, leadership is not merely a subordinate component in a hierarchical topology that emanates from entrepreneurship, but that, indeed, entrepreneurship may be regarded as the essence of EL (Harrison et al. 2016 ). In contrast, the approach exists which defines EL from the standpoint of leadership science (Baumol 1968 ; Leitch and Volery 2017 ). The pinnacle of this viewpoint was seen with Vecchio ( 2003 ), who framed EL merely as leadership carried out within the narrow context of an entrepreneurial venture, and nothing more. Within this school of thought, a further division may be made between adherents to behavior (e.g. Bagheri and Harrison 2020 ; Hoang et al. 2022 ) or trait-based (e.g. Kuratko 2007 ; Nicholson 1998 ) theories. The latter is however criticized for its relatedness to now-outmoded trait-based theories in mainstream leadership science (e.g. Kempster and Cope 2010 ). Complicating the debate is the atheoretical and fragmented nature of the EL field (Leitch and Harrison 2018a ), due in part to the various streams of inquiry from which the modern pool of research has long drawn its inspiration, including areas as diverse as education (Peck 1991 ; Raby et al. 2023 ), political (Schneider and Teske 1992 ; Vivona 2023 ) , and community entrepreneurship (Dongul and Artantaş 2022 ; Selsky and Smith 1994 ). Some consider a kind of “cross-pollination” between entrepreneurship, leadership, and their area of focus to be increasing, with the flow becoming increasingly multi-directional (Leitch and Harrison 2018a ), while others suggest that both the field of leadership and entrepreneurship stem from a common phenomenon (EL) or the need to create (Becherer et al. 2008 ). Consensus in short is lacking, and definitions vary.

To summarize, EL is a field of scholarship undergoing rapid development, which has hitherto lacked a coherent, widely accepted definition of its subject of inquiry. In light of the reviewed literature, it may be noted that TL and EL are two concepts that often intermingle in the study of entrepreneurship (Reid et al. 2018 ). While a number of reviews (e.g. Clark et al. 2019 ; Faridian 2023 ) have recently sought to bring some clarity, and have done so with admirable depth and acuity, questions remain. Two points remain unclear: the differences between the recognized role of TL in informing questionnaires of EL, the actual distinction these measures show from measures of TL and their unique contributions beyond TL; and the resulting research landscape with respect to the questionnaire-based measurement of EL. In the next section we present the method which we used to help us answer our RQs.

3 Methodology

3.1 planning the review.

In line with the methodology set out in Tranfield et al. ( 2003 ), Kraus et al. ( 2020 ) and Kraus et al. ( 2022 ), the present systematic literature review was split into distinct stages. Before commencing, a purely exploratory reading of the recent literature on EL was carried out, encompassing a primary analysis of all literature available under the search term “Entrepreneurial Leadership” on the Clarivate Web of Science. This established several primary antecedents for the creation of a systematic literature review (SLR) (Kraus et al. 2020 ). First, a sufficient number of articles were found, as was a clear surge in the number of articles published over the last five years. Second, a lack of both solid theory and formally agreed-upon definitions were noted by a number of authorities in the field (e.g. Ahmed and Harrison 2022 ; Leitch and Harrison 2018a ). Finally, the specific area under investigation presented a broad range of literature based on inconsistent terminologies, and displayed considerable fragmentation (Clark et al. 2019 ). As such, it was determined that the application of the SLR methodology bore the potential to establish a worthwhile contribution to current research.

After the primary, unstructured analysis of the current literature had established the need for an SLR, a panel of experts on the study of leadership in entrepreneurship was convened. In line with the reasoning detailed in Sects.  1 and 2 above, the three RQs stated in the Introduction were derived and formalized to circumscribe the scope of the present review more precisely. Regarding RQ1, the current literature was to be examined with respect to the similarities and distinctions between EL and TL, including theoretical and conceptual contributions that considered EL with explicit reference to TL. This simultaneously included examining the conceptual placement of EL, as well as the implicit and explicit extent to which it cohered with TL’s theoretical framework, embedded within the FRLT, i.e. leadership as an interpersonal influence process. Regarding the second RQ, the literature was to be examined with respect to the similarities and distinctions between EL and TL at the level of specific operationalizations, i.e. questionnaire based measures available to those intent on measuring EL quantitatively. Regarding the third RQ, the literature was to be examined to yield empirical findings on both EL and TL, contextualizing the relationships between EL and TL discerned in the answers to questions 1 and 2.

Furthermore, inclusion criteria were established to increase the transparency and replicability of the results, and to ensure that only papers of sufficient quality were included. Since the objective of the present review was to furnish readers with a comprehensive, multi-level overview of the overlap and differences between TL and EL, both conceptual and empirical papers were accepted, the latter including both qualitative and quantitative investigations of EL. All included papers had to be published in English, and had to be presented as full-length, original articles, which represented either an empirical or a conceptual contribution relevant to answering one of the three RQs. Furthermore, the included papers had to be available in one of the seven databases and meta-database search engines used (see Sect.  3.2.1 - Primary Search ). In addition to these criteria for inclusion, an SLR demands specific exclusion criteria. These were thus defined, with the goal of ensuring that no papers of low quality or thematic unsuitability were accepted into the sample. Following the recommendations for reviews of research on entrepreneurship by Kraus et al. ( 2020 ), books, conference proceedings, letters to the editor, responses to these, and other, non-peer-reviewed articles were specifically excluded. Furthermore, papers were excluded if they appeared in journals with an impact factor of less than 1 at the time of the search (April 2022), in line with previous SLRs in the Review of Managerial Science (e.g. Ribeiro-Navarrete et al. 2022 ; Salmony & Kanbach 2022 ). Finally, papers were excluded if abstract or full-text screening showed that they failed to discuss as a main topic either TL used as EL, or both TL and EL in explicit concert.

figure 1

Flowchart, showing the stages of the systematic literature review

3.2 Conducting the review

3.2.1 primary search.

In order to adhere to the subject matter while ensuring that all possible, pertinent contributions would be included, an exhaustive all-fields search was carried out across a number of major databases and search engines. These were identified via analysis of previous SLRs, both within the field of EL (e.g. Clark et al. 2019 ; Harrison et al. 2016 ) and within the journal targeted for publication, the Review of Managerial Science (e.g. Feser 2022 ; Salmony and Kanbach 2022 ). This led to the selection of the databases of Taylor and Francis, Emerald, Wiley Online , and SAGE Journals , as well as the meta-database search engines Web of Science, ScienceDirect , and JSTOR . In line with previous publications (e.g. Alaassar et al. 2022 ; but see also Deyanova et al. 2022 ), Google Scholar’s search engine was additionally utilized, and findings compared to the final sample to determine whether a significant number of peer-reviewed works might have been excluded due to selection of these databases. No major contributions were found that had been excluded without warrant.

Keyword strings were kept constant across all databases and search engines. The combination of “Entrepreneurial leadership” coupled with “Transformational leadership” was employed, using the Boolean operator “AND” to conjoin the two, thus excluding any articles which failed to mention both. Since the RQs focus on examining the overlap and difference between the concepts of EL and TL specifically, using these concrete terms without variation was deemed most fitting. Including research on entrepreneurial or visionary leaders, for example, would have broadened the scope beyond the core definitional and conceptual discourse the RQs sought to unravel; articles not even containing the term “Entrepreneurial leadership” were considered to represent a tangential contribution to the discourse. The same logic was applied to articles not explicitly referencing TL. This step, while potentially subject to type-1 errors, represented the only clear and replicable path to the creation of a sample of manageable size. Limiting the search to title, abstract, and subject terms would have excluded an excessive number of relevant results, even using truncated forms (such as entre* and transf* and leader*). Using an all-fields search with truncated forms would have yielded an excess of 10,000 articles without guaranteeing full coverage due to the terminological disunity surrounding EL. The coverage period was chosen to stretch up until April 31st, 2022, given that data collection was carried out in May 2022. In response to the authors’ initial sighting of the literature, no bound on past papers was considered necessary, as an explicit mention of both EL and TL would not pre-date the creation of the FRLT. Any potential early articles which dealt with the topic were considered valuable input. This search methodology yielded a primary pool of 428 articles. The searches had already filtered by publication type, with only peer-reviewed articles accepted, and all others rejected. Duplicates were then removed, leaving 398 articles.

3.2.2 Abstract screening and full-text screening

Synthesis of the literature followed a two-step approach, in line with recently published SLRs (e.g. Feser 2022 ). First, abstract screening led to the inclusion of 110 papers, with 298 removed (see Fig.  1 ). This involved removing all articles which failed to explicitly examine EL or TL, were deemed inadmissible by type but had passed the database filtering, were duplicates the first screening had missed, or were not published in English. For example, many articles were found which mentioned either TL or EL only once or twice, included references in the bibliography that contained those terms, or had abstracts in English but were written in another language. Such articles were removed from the sample.

Finally, a full reading of the remaining 110 articles was carried out, leading to the exclusion of a further 85 papers. All papers were read by two researchers, and decisions had to be unanimous for exclusion to occur; in cases where the researchers failed to agree, a third member of the team made the decision to include or reject. Only a few articles were found which required this measure. This screening phase addressed two main points: quality and relevance. With respect to quality, papers were examined for appropriate referencing; for a presentation of results that was both unambiguous, and sufficiently underpinned by coherent arguments; and for publication in reputable and widely cited journals, with an impact factor of greater than 1. Regarding the second point of concern, i.e. relevance, attention was paid to the features of the articles which would help in answering the three RQs (see above). The topicality of the articles was examined, in line with the reasoning stated in Sect.  3.1 ; it should be noted that articles which framed EL purely in terms of TL were not excluded. In addition, papers were cross-referenced while reading to make sure that no key works had been missed. Some contributions were identified that could have offered a potential benefit but appeared in journals with an impact factor lower than 1.

3.2.3 Synthesis and content analysis

As a consequence of the screening procedures detailed above, a sample of 25 papers was conserved for data extraction and analysis; these are listed in Sect.  4 , Table  2 . Due to the fragmentation of the field, the heterogeneity of the resulting sample, and the conceptual and terminological disunity, a qualitative methodology was combined with a synthesizing approach (Gentles et al. 2016 ). In doing this, both deductive and inductive codes were used, while reference to the underlying framework of the FRLT provided a guideline for the categorization of approaches to EL determined in the sample (cf. Feser 2022 ). In a first step, key characteristics of the articles were identified, permitting a rough separation along formal lines. Conceptual and empirical articles were separated, with all purely conceptual articles forming the first category. Articles which examined EL explicitly using measures of TL were then grouped into a second category. This led to a remainder of articles that could be split into two final categories: three articles that proposed measures of EL, as well as four articles which used such measures to empirically examine EL. In all, four categories emerged which will inform the discussion below. A second step then saw the content analysis of all articles by all three authors, identifying thematic and conceptual similarities and differences, with the researchers engaged in a constant and iterative exchange. The resulting corpus of content was then analyzed with respect to the RQs, elucidated in the Results section, and key findings drawn for further contextualization in the Discussion section.

The results of the SLR paint a clear picture of a thriving and rapidly growing field of research. As can be seen in Fig.  2 , research on the intersection between EL and TL has increased markedly within the last decade, catalyzed perhaps by the Journal of Small Business Management ’s 2015 special issue on EL. As can be seen from the overlay with general search results for EL, specific interest in the role of TL in EL increased in tandem during the previous decade. The final sample is depicted in Table  2 .

figure 2

Chart showing publication frequency of articles covering EL, and both EL and TL, by year

In the present systematic literature review, 25 articles were examined to gain a better understanding of the conceptual and practical relationship between TL and EL. Four categories of articles were thematically distinguished (see Table  4 ), and each was analyzed with specific regard to their particularities and individual contributions. The first group of seven articles discusses EL and TL conceptually, some systematically, and some in a narrative manner. These offer an interesting meta-informational view, and shall inform the discussion both with regard to similarities between the two leadership styles, and concerning the distinctness which researchers at large attribute to current conceptualizations of EL. These papers will inform the answer to RQ1. A second category of three papers contains the three extant measures of EL (Bagheri and Harrison 2020 ; Gupta et al. 2004 ; Renko et al. 2015 ). Examining their component items and dimensions will offer first-hand input for a direct comparison of EL and TL operationalization, and will be central to answering RQ2. Vital for answering RQ3 are first four articles quantitatively examining EL, three doing so side by side with TL (Cai et al. 2019 ; Lee et al. 2020 ; Newman et al. 2018 ), and the other replicating results previously garnered with respect to TL, but using EL instead. The statistical results contained within these four will offer vital clues to the discriminant validity at the level of pure data, of EL versus TL. Finally, the fourth and largest group of eleven articles examined EL using TL both quantitatively and qualitatively. As such, they lend an interesting counterpoint to current conceptions which determine EL to be a distinct style (e.g. Renko 2017 ). Of particular interest will be an analysis and synthesis of the arguments put forth within them for the use of TL within the entrepreneurial paradigm. The results of the content analysis of each article are offered below, by category, beginning with previous reviews and conceptual contributions, followed by extant measures of EL, moving on to quantitative examinations of EL and TL, and ending with papers that examine EL purely in terms of TL.

figure 3

Proportion of overall sample according to category

4.1 Reviews and conceptual contributions

In beginning the content analysis of the results, the theoretical articles of Category I offer an interesting window into the previous theoretical discussion regarding the relationship between EL and TL at the construct level. Moreover, by assessing their implicit and explicit adherence to the FRLT’s paradigm of leadership, interaction-based leader-follower influence, a description of their congruence with the mainstream of leadership literature is made possible.

Of seven purely conceptual articles, only two lead with the assumption that EL should be regarded as a coherent and distinct concept or style (Harrison et al. 2020 ; Leitch and Volery 2017 ). In contrast, the other articles reveal the breadth of current, alternative perspectives. These share no theoretical accord in their view of EL; whether in their level of analysis of leadership (Lyons et al. 2020 ), their epistemic approach (Kimbu et al. 2021 ), or the centrality they accord to the measures and concepts currently at the heart of EL (Reid et al. 2018 ; Leitch and Volery 2017 ) definitively argue that EL represents a new and distinct paradigm at the intersection of its two parent fields of entrepreneurship and leadership, offering three reasons. First, they argue that numerous scholars view entrepreneurs as leaders by default (e.g. Cunningham and Lischeron 1991 ); second, they mention the similar evolutionary paths of the two fields; finally, they adduce the similarities between EL on the one hand, and TL, charismatic, and authentic leadership on the other. With respect to the theoretical paradigm of the FRLT, the authors initially confirm and acknowledge that leadership “revolves around the process of influencing others” (Leitch and Volery 2017 , p. 147). However, thereafter, the separation between “leadership in” and “leadership of” is quickly subsumed by a broader, phenomenological interpretation of EL as a field of research, as opposed to a concrete, operationalizable style of leadership. Concretely, the authors consider EL as a “leadership role performed in entrepreneurial ventures, rather than in the more general sense of an entrepreneurial style of leadership” (Leitch and Volery 2017 , p. 148). In a similar vein, Harrison et al. ( 2020 ) also argue that EL is a distinct phenomenon. Though providing extensive and useful theoretical exploration, however, their treatment of TL is somewhat perfunctory; they make no mention of its pertinent role in informing all extant conceptualizations of EL (Bagheri and Harrison 2020 ; Gupta et al. 2004 ; Renko et al. 2015 ), nor of the numerous authors who use TL in lieu of EL (see e.g. Category II). These authors argue for what may be termed the positive integration perspective (Fernald et al. 2005 ), which posits that EL as a field emerged from the positive integration of its two parents.

At the root of this perspective lies a paper by Harrison and Leitch ( 1994 ) that represents a foundational text in the field of EL. They cite Carsrud and Johnson ( 1989 ) to claim that the fields of entrepreneurship and leadership have evolved in parallel, laying the groundwork for numerous later authors who take this line (e.g. Harrison et al. 2020 ; Harrison and Leitch 1994 ; Leitch and Volery 2017 ). However, instead of claiming EL as representing a distinct construct at that point, Harrison and Leitch ( 1994 ) use these parallels to suggest a theoretical paradigm which future research at the carrefour of the two fields could follow: contingency. Arguing that leadership research developed from trait over situation to contingency, they note that entrepreneurship had yet to embrace the last step, and quote numerous studies advocating the use of contemporary developments in leadership (e.g. Chell et al. 1991 ; Greenberger and Sexton 1987 ). The contingency approach has indeed been applied to EL, though more so from within the field of leadership than recent conceptual developments in EL (Antonakis and Autio 2012 ; Baldegger and Gast 2016 ). The remaining four purely conceptual papers in the present sample take differing, more generalist perspectives. One discusses identity construction in female entrepreneurial leaders in Ghana and Nigeria through the lens of poststructural feminism (Kimbu et al. 2021 ). Building on the socially constructed nature of EL, the authors challenge the endemic, essentialist claims which implicitly couch entrepreneurship and EL in relation to norms that are predominantly male (Kakabadse et al. 2018 ; Tlaiss and Kauser 2019 ) and embedded in the Northern Hemisphere (Figueroa-Domecq et al. 2020 ). Similarly, the notion of TL and transactional leadership being respectively typical of women and men is tempered with the argument that both context, and the social construction of entrepreneurial identity, play a vital yet under-researched moderating role (Cliff et al. 2005 ; Zapalska et al. 2015 ). This viewpoint is invigorating, and moves beyond conceptualizations which focus merely on dichotomizing the theoretical heritage defining the current field of EL (e.g. Röschke 2018a ). In contrast, Lyons et al. ( 2020 ) focus on a far more tangible, skill-based perspective of rural entrepreneurship, subsuming TL as a part thereof, but making no mention of the ongoing debates surrounding the definition of the term “EL” (e.g. Harrison et al. 2020 ; Leitch and Volery 2017 ). The authors determine TL, as defined by Bass ( 1985 ) as representing a mere one in 30 of the skills necessary for successful entrepreneurship. In doing so, they may implicitly be deemed as acknowledging the FRLT’s paradigm of leadership.

Finally, Reid et al. ( 2018 ) provide an overview of the cross-fertilization of entrepreneurship and leadership, in accordance with the five key dimensions described in the foundational work by Cogliser and Brigham ( 2004 ). The contribution of Reid et al. ( 2018 ) extensively discusses the contributions made by leadership research which have directly impacted the field of EL research. With respect to leadership, their perspective may be considered firmly aligned with the FRLT’s underlying paradigm, of “leadership in” versus “leadership of” organizations. Numerous contributions are discussed, among them the utility of TL in enhancing creativity and innovation in entrepreneurial ventures and its place as a primary tool for growth-oriented entrepreneurs, while the effect of TL on stakeholder perceptions of entrepreneurial vision is stated as a possible question for future research. A final contribution examines leadership styles and leadership behaviors in varying types of family-owned businesses (Fries et al. 2021 ). These authors through their own literature review establish a number of leadership styles and leadership behaviors typical of family businesses. As one of five of the latter, they define EL behavior in accordance with Pistrui et al. ( 2000 ), while adhering to the more widespread definition of TL in accordance with Bass ( 1985 ). In doing so, these authors also implicitly adopt the FRLT’s framework of leadership as a leader-follower process.

4.2 Measures of entrepreneurial leadership

Although the above-mentioned theoretical work provides insight into the conceptual debates surrounding EL, the key interface between theory and empirical findings is represented by operationalized tools for measurement. The present sample contains the three most prominent measures of EL, as well as several articles which employ them, discussed in the next subsection. First, there is Gupta et al.’s ( 2004 ) questionnaire, and a study which used it (Paudel 2019 ); second, Renko et al.’s ( 2015 ) measure, also found in two publications (Cai et al. 2019 ; Newman et al. 2018 ), themselves included in an in-sample meta-analysis (Lee et al. 2020 ). Finally, the recent contribution by Bagheri and Harrison ( 2020 ), though not used by any articles in the present sample, represents a major step in the creation of an operationalized measure of EL. The first operationalization of EL still in common usage is represented by Gupta et al.’s ( 2004 ) model. Not parsed directly as a questionnaire measure, the contribution instead develops a list of behaviors considered unique to an entrepreneurial style of leadership. Numerous steps of development occurred which will be examined in detail in the discussion, resulting in five behavioral dimensions: Framing the challenge, absorbing uncertainty, path clearing, building commitment, and specifying limits. Several of these behaviors clearly mirror certain aspects of TL, such as “Has a vision and imagination of the future”, “Sets high standards of performance”, or “Inspires emotions, beliefs, values and behaviors of others, inspires others to be motivated to work hard” (Gupta et al. 2004 , p. 250). While the authors discuss these similarities, they point to differences such as “ambitious foresight and pattern recognition capabilities” required in entrepreneurial leaders which are absent in TL (Gupta et al. 2004 , p. 254).

Renko et al.’s ( 2015 ) ENTRELEAD was developed as a short measure for EL, in part to explicitly remedy the issues inherent in the previously used measure (i.e. Gupta et al. 2004 ). Using standard procedures of scale development and validation, the authors settle on an eight-item scale for the measurement of EL. Just as in the previously examined scale, a strong resemblance to TL is evident. Three of ENTRELEAD’s eight items (“Has creative solutions to problems”, “Challenges and pushes me to act in a more innovative way”, “Wants me to challenge the current ways we do business”) bear a striking resemblance to the TL sub-dimension of intellectual stimulation, while one is identical in content to inspirational motivation (“Has a vision of the future of our business”), and another is strongly reminiscent of idealized influence behavior (“Demonstrates passion for his/her work”). Building on both of these previous scales, Bagheri and Harrison ( 2020 ) presented the longest and most detailed scale of EL to date, composed of 40 items along eight dimensions, and with high internal validity. Among these eight dimensions, numerous items can be found that are strongly reminiscent of other leadership styles, such as empowering leadership (e.g. “Creates an environment where organization staff feel free to try new things”; cf. Cheong et al. 2019 ), self-leadership (e.g. “Shows awareness of their strengths and weaknesses”, “Demonstrates the ability to manage time effectively”; c.f. Houghton et al. 2003 ) or TL (e.g. “Leads their followers by serving as a role model”, “Inspires emotions, beliefs, values and behaviors of followers”, “Shows empathy towards his/her followers”; Bass 1985 ), while further items fit poorly with a mainstream conceptualization of leadership as an inter-personal, goal-oriented influence process (e.g. “Anticipates possible future events”, “Recognises existing market opportunities”, “Actively identifies, develops and goes after new business”). While Bagheri and Harrison’s scale, due to its novelty, has yet to be widely applied, the former two scales have found considerable use since their creation.

4.3 Quantitative studies of entrepreneurial and transformational leadership

Four contributions in the sample examine EL quantitatively. Of these, two publications examine both EL and TL quantitatively (Cai et al. 2019 ; Newman et al. 2018 ), while a third incorporates these and others into a meta-analysis (Lee et al. 2020 ). A fourth paper by Paudel (2018) examines only EL, employing the ENTRELEAD scale to replicate results connecting TL with innovation, and finds that EL predicts it ( β  = 0.58, p  = .00). Meanwhile, two studies directly assessed both EL and TL using designated measures. Cai et al. ( 2019 ) linked the ENTRELEAD scale with creativity and innovation, two aspects highly relevant to entrepreneurship. With respect to their treatment of TL, they cursorily noted that it failed to explain employee creativity when recognizing business opportunities. The authors do not further discuss the FRLT or its underlying theoretical framework, but adduce a definition of leadership as “influencing and directing the performance of group members towards the achievement of organizational goals that involve recognizing and exploiting entrepreneurial activities” by Renko et al. ( 2015 , p. 55). Apart from the emphasis on opportunity recognition, this matches well with the FRLT’s conceptualization of leadership as an interpersonal, goal-oriented influence process. Their results found significant predictive effects by EL, and none whatsoever by TL for employees’ creative self-efficacy ( r  = .52, p  < .01), team creative self-efficacy ( r  = .35, p  < .05), employee creativity ( r  = .58, p  < .01), and team creativity ( r  = .64, p  < .01). Furthermore, they demonstrated no statistical correlation between EL and TL. In contrast, Newman et al. ( 2018 ) found a strong positive relationship between TL and EL ( r  = .81, p  < .05) while showing only a correlation of EL with innovative behavior ( r  = .14, p  < .05). TL was also found to correlate with innovative behavior ( r  = .10, p  < .10). Like the publication by Cai et al. ( 2019 ), this contribution focuses on Bandura’s social cognitive theory ( 1986 ) to explain the positive effects of EL on creative self-efficacy and innovation (Newman et al. 2018 ). Incorporating both of these results is a meta-analysis by Lee et al. ( 2020 ), which tied EL with authentic leadership for the strongest correlation to creativity (Spearman’s ρ  = 0.47) with a weaker correlation to innovation ( ρ  = 0.29), comparable to TL, which hovered at around ρ  = 0.30 for both creativity and innovation.

4.4 Studies using transformational in lieu of entrepreneurial leadership

To provide an interesting narrative counterpoint, Category IV examines the large swathe of articles which examined EL using the construct of TL, thereby implicitly adopting the theoretical framework of the FRTL. Four examined TL as an antecedent variable with respect to performance (Ng et al. 2019 ; Zaech and Baldegger 2017 ), and were variously moderated by environmental dynamism (Ensley et al. 2006 ) and personality (Hensel and Visser 2018 ). Overall, three main streams of argumentation can be found that pertain to the RQ. First, several argue for using TL in the study of entrepreneurship, either due to its intrinsically useful general effects (e.g. Ng et al. 2019 ; Xu and Jin 2022 ), or because measures of EL are deemed insufficiently focused on leadership in its classical definition (Baldegger and Gast 2016 ; Zaech and Baldegger 2017 ), or simply by default (Bamiatzi et al. 2015 ; Ensley et al. 2006 ). A second grouping (Hensel and Visser 2018 ; Ng and Kee 2018 ) examines the positive effect of TL on innovation, drawing on the wealth of literature supporting this link (Gumusluoglu and Ilsev 2009 ), as well as the equally well-supported link between innovation and entrepreneurial success (Ireland et al. 2003 ). Finally, a third tranche does not employ TL in particular, instead either examining it for beneficial effects in comparison with a number of other leadership styles (Verma and Kumar 2021 ), or finding TL, through inductively qualitative analysis, to be the main style applied by entrepreneurs or in entrepreneurial ventures (McCarthy et al. 2010 ; Wang et al. 2012 ). The theoretical arguments in each will be traced to provide clarity with respect to the RQs.

Ng et al. ( 2019 ) introduce their own, brief literature review in which a number of sources are cited supporting the value of TL to the success of enterprises. However, the relevance of some of these sources to entrepreneurship appears tenuous (e.g. Schaubroeck et al. 2007 ), and no explicit justification is given regarding why other measures, which are more visibly relevant, are avoided (e.g. Renko et al. 2015 ). Ensley et al. ( 2006 ) in contrast discuss at great length their rationale for employing the transactional-transformational paradigm. In essence, they define the entrepreneur as a leader by default, given the need to garner resources if opportunities are to be exploited. From there on, the use of the most prominent paradigm for the measurement of leadership is arrived at, equally, by default (Ensley et al. 2006 ). Another contribution traces the evolution of leadership style from within the paradigm of leadership emergence, documenting a shift from transformational to transactional with increasing maturity of the venture (Baldegger and Gast 2016 ). The rationale given here for the use of TL hinged on a clear separation between entrepreneur and entrepreneurial leader: EL is considered simply as leadership within an entrepreneurial context in the tradition of Vecchio ( 2003 ), the measurement which is considered perfectly achievable through the use of established tools (Baldegger and Gast 2016 ). The co-authored publication by Zaech and Baldegger ( 2017 ) follows the same line of reasoning. Only one article explicitly examined the female leadership of entrepreneurial ventures, by correlating Full Range Leadership Theory styles with entrepreneurial competencies (Bamiatzi et al. 2015 ). Here, the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire (Bass and Avolio 1997 ) is used, supplemented by specific but not further defined questions on leadership style (e.g. autocratic vs. democratic). Finally, Xu and Jin ( 2022 ) empirically examine stressors typically encountered within entrepreneurship, and how these moderate the expression of TL in its function as EL. These authors point to the considerable body of work that has demonstrated the effectiveness of TL when exhibited by entrepreneurial leaders.

Hensel and Visser ( 2018 ) offer a causal chain of reasoning for using TL. First, they state the importance of innovation to entrepreneurial effectiveness (Lukes and Stephan 2017 ), offering evidence for the undisputed importance of TL for team innovation (García-Morales et al. 2012 ), ultimately stating that little research has examined the latter assertion in teams under shared leadership. It is this gap they thereafter choose to exploit, finding that a variety of personality traits affect the two key dimensions of vision articulation and intellectual stimulation (Hensel and Visser 2018 ; Ng and Kee 2018 ), as in their paper detailed above, adduce TL together with entrepreneurial competences, examining their effect on SME performance. Again, no clear justification is established for a potentially direct, beneficial effect which TL might have that makes it suitable for entrepreneurship, except through the interposed variable of innovation (Ng and Kee 2018 ; Verma and Kumar 2021 ) do not explicitly state that TL is EL; instead, they examine a number of leadership styles (charismatic, visionary, TL, servant) and the interactions with “green entrepreneurship” which may affect overall firm growth. Interestingly, they refrain from including any extant measures of EL in their analysis. Finally, two publications can be distinguished by their use of a qualitative approach. One examines the relationship between EL, conceptualized as lying on the continuum between TL and transactional leadership, and traditional Chinese paradigms of leadership (Wang et al. 2012 ). The second paper analyzed open-ended questionnaires from 130 entrepreneurs using content analysis methodology to inductively categorize and identify common leadership styles. Their result showed an overwhelming proportion of entrepreneurs adhering to an “open” leadership style, which the authors determined to be “consistent with the characteristics of TL” (McCarthy et al. 2010 , p. 55).

5 Discussion

5.1 rq1 (theory).

In the previous section, we delineated the output of the content analysis and the identification of thematic groupings and their conceptual significance, with respect to the RQs this work is devoted to. Regarding RQ1, the results detailed above offer a conflicting picture. Two conceptual contributions examined here embrace the suggestion that EL is a distinct phenomenon (Harrison et al. 2020 ; Leitch and Volery 2017 ). Other recent works advocate a similar position (Clark et al. 2019 ; Harrison et al. 2016 ), in line with early work that foreshadowed a split appreciation of EL (Harrison and Leitch 1994 ). Indeed, this central cluster of scholarship in the field of EL (including Ahmed and Harrison 2021 ; Clark et al. 2019 ; Leitch and Volery 2017 ) is informed by the notion of “diametrically opposed views” of EL, caused by research on EL being anchored “either in the leadership or in the entrepreneurship field” (Leitch and Volery 2017 , p. 150). Even these authors however explicitly confirm the relevance of TL (Leitch and Volery 2017 ), and begin by considering leadership as “the process of influencing … to accomplish shared objectives” (Leitch and Volery 2017 , p. 147). This is completely in line with the FRLT’s theoretical conception of leadership, but the authors quickly proceed to vastly broaden the scope of what they consider to fall under the term of EL. As such, it could be argued that the authors argue more for a distinct paradigm than a distinct style, in contrast to others (e.g. Renko 2017 ). This represents a key issue; numerous key conceptual works, including those by Gupta et al. ( 2004 ), Leitch and Volery ( 2017 ) and Harrison et al. ( 2020 ), examine EL as an issue fundamentally collocated at several levels of analysis. Others are even more broad in their definition, considering EL “a new leadership style that is required to fulfill the current business changes in the fourth industrial revolution” (Pauceanu et al. 2021 ). While such a holistic appreciation may be useful in stimulating debate, it is this intermingling of levels of analysis which problematizes the creation of a conceptual basis suitable for greater operational specificity. This specificity is necessary for the development of an operational definition of EL that can be used by scholars for measurement; one that is sufficiently distinct from TL and one that is accepted by mainstream leadership science to meet the currently dominant definition of leadership as a behavioral influence process between leader and follower (Antonakis and Autio 2012 ; Hemshorn de Sanchez et al. 2022 ). Only if both these aspects were sufficiently realized could the gap between EL and the wider leadership literature be bridged, and a measure of EL found that is capable of receiving a greater degree of acceptance by researchers across their clusters. Furthermore, previous contributions exist which sought to establish definitions that could serve as a framework for such developments (e.g. Antonakis and Autio 2012 ), and recent work has already begun to determine behaviorally proximal components of EL (e.g. Maran et al. 2019 ).

Regardless of the precise terminology, an apparent consequence of this conceptual school of thought is the creation of a form of EL, detailed in the findings above, which stands somewhat apart from established measures of leadership (Harrison et al. 2020 ; Leitch and Volery 2017 ). Proponents of this model argue for its value, but both these and other review articles on the subject (e.g. Clark et al. 2019 ; Harrison et al. 2016 ) fail to acknowledge the extremely limited scope with which the current measures of EL have been accepted in mainstream leadership research (e.g. Reid et al. 2018 ). Issues also surround Harrison et al.’s ( 2020 ) conceptual discussion of TL. In their review of EL, which specifically seeks to disentangle the components of leader and entrepreneur, overviews are given of both fields of study. TL is briefly discussed, even though mention of the parent FRLT is absent, as is its value in supplying other, validated styles, such as transactional leadership, as is the central role of TL in informing all three measures of EL currently available (Harrison et al. 2020 ). Nor is mention made of the statistical results detailed in the present review. The authors point out, somewhat confusingly, that there have been failed attempts to redefine TL “by including vision” (Harrison et al. 2020 , p. 6), which the authors consider key to EL; vision has been a central component of TL since its inception (Bass 1985 ; Burns 1978 ). Nevertheless, in elucidating their theoretical basis for this position, the authors provide strong, implicit claims of comprehensiveness and authority in their discussion (Harrison et al. 2020 ), stemming from an epistemic narrative derived from earlier work (Fernald et al. 2005 ; Harrison and Leitch 1994 ). Furthermore, while partially acknowledging the role of TL, they detract from it rather vigorously, pointing to a “lack of empirical evidence” for its effectiveness (Harrison et al. 2020 , p. 6) among other factors, but making no mention of the wealth of studies, reviews, and meta-analyses which offer the opposite picture (e.g. Dvir et al. 2002 ; Gumusluoglu and Ilsev 2009 ; Judge and Piccolo 2004 ; Lowe et al. 1996 ; Wang et al. 2011 ; see also Sect.  2.1 - Transformational Leadership ). As such, while these authors argue for a clear separation of EL from TL, the lack of engagement with mainstream leadership literature obscures how a broader dialogue might reflect their proposed, distinct construct. Instead, the suggestion is made that both entrepreneurship and leadership may be better understood by integrating them “via the lens of the EL paradigm”; it is not completely clear what this paradigm is, however (Harrison et al. 2020 , p. 12).

This school of thought contrasts with other theoretical appreciations, both of the place of EL within leadership, and of EL as a style of leadership, that barely mention the EL construct elaborated above (Harrison et al. 2020 ; Leitch and Volery 2017 ), nor the measures deriving from it. For example, the review of leadership styles by Fries et al. ( 2021 ) makes no mention of the currently available scales of EL (Bagheri and Harrison 2020 ; Gupta et al. 2004 ; Renko et al. 2015 ). In contrast, they find EL behaviors to overlap strongly with, and only with, TL (Fries et al. 2021 ; see also Peters and Kallmünzer 2018 ). Similarly, in their comprehensive analysis of the intersection between entrepreneurship and leadership, Ried et al. ( 2018 ) touch on these measures of EL briefly, but merely to note their use of vision as a key component of measuring it. Neither engages with the theoretical arguments supporting their conception. Therefore, the value of these extant operationalizations of EL has not yet been fully accepted by more mainstream leadership researchers, indicating that the lack of engagement emanates not only from the nuclear field of EL, but also from the wider research community. For example, Kimbu et al. (2018) refrained from emphasizing the existence of a distinct style of EL, even though theirs represents a sweeping examination of leadership theory within entrepreneurship. This reality is paralleled in other, highly cited works on entrepreneurial leadership (e.g. Schoemaker et al. 2018 ). Similarly, Lyons et al. ( 2020 ) consider EL as representing the full gamut of behaviors a leader-entrepreneur must show in order to arrive at a successful venture, with the emphasis on the “entrepreneur.” The specific component of leading followers, they deem, is well served by the extant construct of TL. This conceptualization clashes with Leitch and Volery’s ( 2017 ) proposition that extricating EL from the “leadership in” or “leadership of” debate is incidental, precisely because EL should be more comprehensive, including interactions with shareholders and, more broadly, the dynamism of the phenomenon of entrepreneurship (Leitch and Volery 2017 ).

In summary, results show that several publications find EL and TL to overlap at the concept (e.g. Kimbu et al. 2021 ; Lyons et al. 2020 ) and construct (e.g. Fries et al. 2021 ; McCarthy et al. 2010 ) levels, while others argue for its value as a distinct construct (e.g. Harrison et al. 2020 ; Leitch and Volery 2017 ). In response to RQ1, it can be stated that a lack of clear and reciprocal engagement between theoretical work on EL and TL renders a determination of their overlap inconclusive, a result in line with previous reviews of EL (Antonakis and Autio 2012 ). As such, it is suggested that this area in particular could benefit from further study, a greater exchange between scholars, and a more nuanced integration of extant leadership frameworks into EL.

5.2 RQ2 (content)

The theoretical landscape is inconsistent, as demonstrated above. The effects these inconsistencies have exerted on the three measures of EL currently in use will now be charted to answer RQ2. Gupta et al.‘s conceptualization (2004) was chronologically the first of those still in use, and continues to inform current developments. It is however by no means unanimously adopted. Renko et al. ( 2015 ) specifically detract from the earlier measure, stating, among other concerns, that it was not specific to entrepreneurship, a suggestion seconded by Clark et al. ( 2019 ) in more recent works. Furthermore a number of its items were “characteristic of TL” (Renko et al. 2015 , p. 60). In addition, this overlap with TL is admitted by the original authors (Gupta et al. 2004 , p. 245). However, a more fundamental issue exists. Though largely ignored by those employing this measure, it was neither methodologically conceived nor suitably validated as a questionnaire. Gupta et al. themselves note that the GLOBE (House et al. 1999 ) data they employ was “not originally intended” for the development of a novel construct (2004, p. 257), let alone the creation and validation of a new scale. In addition, their methodology in doing so was highly unorthodox. A first step saw five behaviors, deemed necessary for entrepreneurial leaders drawn from the existing concepts of TL, team-building, and value-based leadership (Gupta et al. 2004 ). As stated (Renko et al. 2015 , p. 60), these five behaviors indeed appear significantly indebted to TL (e.g. “The articulation of a compelling vision”). In a number of further steps, five specific EL “roles” were established: framing the challenge, absorbing uncertainty, path-clearing, building commitment and specifying limits (Gupta et al. 2004 , p. 247). Thereafter, the authors selected from 112 attributes of “outstanding leadership” contained in the GLOBE data-set a total of 19 that they “expected to load” onto the five previously established roles of EL (Gupta et al. 2004 , p. 249). However, though the following factor analysis yielded results deemed acceptable, and the subdimensions did indeed inter-correlate to an acceptable degree, the authors warn that “the fit indices for the confirmatory factor analysis at individual levels of analysis deteriorated substantially” (Gupta et al. 2004 , p. 251). Furthermore, external validity was established only within the GLOBE data-set, by correlating EL with several Hofstede cultural dimensions deemed relevant to entrepreneurship, but only at the level of entire societies (Shane et al. 1995 ). Such claims of ecological validity have been sharply criticized, with regard to the GLOBE studies as a whole (Graen 2006 ). The above shows numerous diversions from standard practice of scale development, which normatively entails the creation of an item pool, either from solid conceptual foundations or from specific, related, previously validated scales; the administration of these items to multiple unique samples of respondents; and progressive exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses of these unique responses (DeVellis and Thorpe 2021 ). Leadership styles that were elucidated in accordance with this process include, among others, ethical leadership (Kalshoven et al. 2011 ), servant leadership (Van Dierendonck and Nuijten 2011 ), and authentic leadership (Walumbwa et al. 2008 ). Scale development for leadership-related constructs also follows this process, as seen in publications operationalizing Machiavellianism in leaders (Dahling et al. 2009 ) or leader-member-exchange (Liden and Maslyn 1998 ), among others.

However, Gupta et al.’s measure (2004) is employed as a questionnaire by numerous researchers with only minor adaptation (e.g. Huang et al. 2014 ), demonstrating that this long and laborious process of explicit scale creation and validation has been curtailed (see e.g. Boateng et al. 2018 ; Hinkin 1995 ). In addition to being criticized for its similarity to TL (Renko et al. 2015 ), this scale should thus be viewed with caution with respect to validity. This issue is of central importance, as it may help to explain the large number of publications studying EL without recourse to either this measure or those derived from it (see Category IV in Results ). Returning to the criticism leveled by Renko et al. ( 2015 ), that Gupta et al. ( 2004 ) overly relied on TL, it must be noted that the critics appear to fall prey to the same issue. Their ENTRELEAD scale is the most widely used questionnaire measure of a distinct EL style after Gupta et al. ( 2004 ), though this ratio is shifting as most authors now use ENTRELEAD (e.g. Dabić et al. 2021 ; Niemann et al. 2022 ). As detailed in the Results section, several items on the ENTRELEAD scale closely resemble items used to assess TL. Table  5 shows the ENTRELEAD scale (Renko et al. 2015 ) side by side with a shortened measure for TL by Carless et al. ( 2000 ). This same measure was used alongside ENTRELEAD to assess TL in two of the papers in the sample.

The last three items of each scale (Table  5 ) vary considerably. Aside from these, numerous items show strong similarities in meaning and formulation; the short length of each scale necessitates the assumption of considerable issues of conflation. Furthermore, both the Gupta and Renko publications discuss the differences between EL and TL, and both list non-EL leadership behaviors. However, these lists differ on numerous points. For example, Gupta et al. ( 2004 , p. 250) consider EL as encompassing an “Unusual ability to persuade others of his/her viewpoint”. This is reminiscent of charisma and charismatic leadership, which Renko et al. explicitly state is not a requirement for EL (2015, p. 57). Finally, the remaining items found on the ENTRELEAD scale (“Often comes up with radical improvement ideas for the products/services we are selling”, “Often comes up with ideas of completely new products/services that we could sell”, “Takes risks”) are in no direct way related to mainstream definitions of leadership, such as “a process whereby an individual influences a group of individuals to achieve a common goal” (Northouse 2018 , p. 43). This raises two main points. First, previous research has sought to unite aspects of strategic entrepreneurship with EL (Covin and Slevin 2002 ; Ireland et al. 2003 ). While this conceptual heritage is discussed by Renko et al. ( 2015 ), works from within mainstream leadership science which have responded to the limitations of such an approach, and suggested potential remedial steps, are not mentioned (e.g. Antonakis and Autio 2012 ).

Second, leadership research has shown eminent success in focusing on proximal, clearly definable behaviors salient in leader-follower interactions (Derue et al. 2011 ). This approach, if anything, is gathering momentum rather than being overtaken by other paradigms (e.g. Hemshorn de Sanchez et al. 2022 ). Aspects relevant to the leadership of venture instead of followers, such as opportunity recognition (Emami et al. 2022 ) or risk-taking, could represent interference in determining a leadership style in this manner. Until the role of leadership in entrepreneurship is clearer, any extraneous aspects should therefore be examined under the aegis of their respective conceptualizations; opportunity recognition and risk taking both have little to do with the leading of employees, and both have produced extensive, theoretically coherent research of their own (e.g. Angelsberger et al. 2017 ; Grégoire et al. 2010 ; Palich and Bagby 1995 ). For example, behaviors which encourage employees to take risks are a component of the style of leadership known as empowering (Cheong et al. 2019 ). However, this stands apart from a leader’s own tendency towards risk-taking, the measurement of which, in any case, can be accomplished with far greater subtlety and accuracy than through asking “Do you take risks?” (an item of ENTRELEAD, Renko et al. 2015 ; see in contrast Lejuez et al. 2002 ). A potential role-modeling effect may well be worth exploring (Newman et al. 2018 ), but this should be done in its own right, perhaps by examining leader perceptions as a mediating factor between leaders’ and followers’ displays of risk, instead of as an afterthought on leadership questionnaires. The same holds true for opportunity recognition. While some argue that such a distinction is not of primary importance (Leitch and Volery 2017 ), this overlooks the fact that many researchers seek to use conceptualizations of EL as they would, for example, the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire (Antonakis 2001 ): as a concretely quantifiable, questionnaire-measured, exogenous variable. This includes Cai et al. ( 2019 ), who explicitly state that “recently, scholars have consistently proposed the treatment of EL as a specific leadership style” (Cai et al. 2019 , p. 205). Similarly, Newman et al. ( 2018 ) and Paudel ( 2019 ) use EL in this manner, as do numerous further studies of EL not included in the present sample, such as by Dabić et al. ( 2021 ) or Mehmood et al. ( 2021b ). In summary, it may be observed that the ENTRELEAD scale also suffers from certain issues of discriminant validity and overlap. This might serve to explain why, though the most frequently used of the three measures of EL, it was nevertheless disregarded in the many recent studies of EL which used scales of TL (see Sect.  4.4 - Studies using transformational in lieu of EL ).

Finally, results show that the most recent measure of EL by Bagheri and Harrison ( 2020 ) demonstrates the greatest divergence from scales of TL. As detailed above, this extensive questionnaire offers numerous items clearly distinct from TL, though several items continue to linger that seem highly indebted to it. In this, they strongly resemble the creation of the conceptualization by Gupta et al. ( 2004 ), whose theoretical foundation Bagheri and Harrison ( 2020 ) acknowledge as the basis for their own measure. Here, however, a number of issues emerge. The authors argue for the value of Gupta et al.’s ( 2004 ) scale as a basis, asserting that it is the most widely used scale of EL, and implicitly argue for its acceptance by scholars. However, this assertion seems incongruous. First, numerous scholars have presented strongly opposing views (e.g. Harrison et al. 2018 ; Leitch et al. 2013 ; Leitch and Volery 2017 ), among them one of the two authors in recent publications (Harrison et al. 2016 , 2020 ), who suggested that the underlying data-set was no longer relevant and had limited potential (Clark et al. 2019 ). Second, of the studies included in the recent meta-analysis by Lee et al. ( 2020 ), all four employed the ENTRELEAD scale (Renko et al. 2015 ), with two of these authored by the other author of the new measure (Bagheri 2017 ; Bagheri and Akbari 2018 ). At least one more recent publication by this author also used ENTRELEAD (Bagheri et al. 2022 ), as have an increasing number of others (e.g. Hensellek et al. 2023 ; Hoang et al. 2022 ; Lin and Yi 2022 ; Malibari and Bajaba 2022 ; Strobl et al. 2022 ). Gupta et al.‘s conceptualization (2004) is thus by no means unanimously adopted which, particularly in light of the inherent conceptual and methodological issues discussed above, makes its use as the basis for a novel measure problematic. A further issue complicates the adoption of this novel scale: the lack of a coherent analysis of divergent validity via a nomological network. As stated in the Results section, while the scale is less dependent on TL, it nevertheless incorporates items typical of both this and other, established leadership styles. Previous work has pointed to the futility of introducing novel leadership styles that show high overlap with extant conceptualizations (Deng et al. 2022 ; see also Banks et al. 2016 and Hoch et al. 2018 ). Furthermore, and mirroring the issues surrounding ENTRELEAD, those items not representative of extant leadership styles largely fail to conform to a classical, theoretical appreciation of leadership as an influence process between leader and follower. The authors specifically state in the introduction to their paper that most previous measures of EL failed to focus on the “critical aspects of the construct such as risk taking, innovation …opportunity recognition” (Bagheri and Harrison 2020 , p. 660). This issue gains momentum from recognition of numerous results demonstrating the benefits of authentic (Jensen and Luthans 2006 ), autonomous (Felix et al. 2018 ), charismatic (Men et al. 2021 ), empowering (Cheong et al. 2019 ), transactional (Ma and Jiang 2018 ) and shared leadership (Zhou et al. 2015 ) in entrepreneurship. Finally, whereas Bagheri and Harrison’s eight-dimensional model provided “acceptable” model fit (2020, p. 670), this was not true of any proposed model which considered EL as a single-factor construct (p. 669), mirroring the measure by Gupta et al. ( 2004 ). This stands in contrast to most established leadership styles, which will often undergo combination into one overall variable measuring how strongly a certain style such as TL is expressed (Hughes et al. 2018 ). It is therefore uncertain whether this proposed, unified concept of EL shows an advantage in practice compared to the utilization of existing measures of leadership, risk taking behavior, and so forth. In other words, does it in fact capture one distinct, coherent entrepreneurial style of leadership?

In response to RQ2, therefore, a number of points may be observed. First, regarding the content of their items, current questionnaire measures of EL overlap significantly with TL. Second, there is a paucity of statistical analyses of discriminant validity, hampering the identification and dimensional elucidation of EL into TL and non-TL aspects. Third, non-overlapping items do not conform to a theoretical paradigm in which leadership is a leader-follower influence process. Finally, several of the scales display issues with scale development and validation, calling into question their use.

5.3 RQ3 (practice)

Finally, RQ3 remains of whether the overlap between TL and EL was reflected at the level of empirical researchers examining it. The relationship between the conceptual foundations of these papers and the FRLT will also be discussed. Two groups of articles from the sample offer a substrate for discussion. First, there are the quantitative and qualitative papers that explicitly used TL in lieu of EL; second, there were the few papers which quantitatively examined both EL and TL. The former group in particular appears only loosely connected to theoretical and operational conceptualizations of EL that claim it as a unique style. Overall, Category IV in particular shows the prevalence, only partially acknowledged by some (e.g. Harrison et al. 2020 ), of TL in the study of leadership within the field of entrepreneurship. Moreover, all these papers implicitly align with the FRLT’s conceptualization of leadership as an influence process between leader and follower. 11 papers within Category IV, all published after the appearance of the first measure explicitly designed for EL (Gupta et al. 2004 ), choose to use TL as locum tenens for EL. Xu and Jin ( 2022 ) touch on articles engaged in debating the constitution of EL (e.g. Leitch and Volery 2017 ), yet skirt entirely any acknowledgement of preexisting measures thereof, instead pointing to the “considerable body of research” which has demonstrated the effectiveness of TL as EL (Xu and Jin 2022 , p. 280). A further publication which regards the entrepreneur as a leader by default employs what it deems the most prominent theoretical paradigm in leadership: TL (Ensley et al. 2006 ). It should however be noted that this publication appeared a mere two years after the first concrete measure for entrepreneurship (Gupta et al. 2004 ). At this point, EL was only marginally established as a field in its own right, and the authors’ research was on “the leadership of entrepreneurs” (Ensley et al. 2006 , p. 246). However, Ng and Kee ( 2018 ) also use TL with reference to the body of previous research demonstrating its positive effects, as do five further publications of the 11 in this category (Baldegger and Gast 2016 ; Bamiatzi et al. 2015 ; Ensley et al. 2006 ; Hensel and Visser 2018 ; Ng et al. 2019 ). While the precise application of TL therein varies, the common thread is an implicit recognition of its utility as a measure in the context of EL. Some authors consciously argue for it. For example, one contribution embraces the dipolar nature of TL and transactional leadership to chart the evolution of leadership requirements in a maturing entrepreneurial venture (Baldegger and Gast 2016 ). As mentioned in the Results section, these authors specifically dismiss extant measures of EL, due to their inclusion of aspects deemed unrelated to leadership. Others however arrive at TL by default, in itself an interesting commentary on the acceptance of EL-scales (e.g. Ng and Kee 2018 ).

Noteworthy too is that this association of EL and TL extends beyond the Western sphere into work examining EL in Ghana and Nigeria (Kimbu et al. 2021 ) as well as in China (Wang et al. 2012 ). While acknowledging the existence of a measure for EL (Gupta et al. 2004 ), these authors deem its conceptual development to be at an “embryonic stage,” and thus decide to follow in what they view as standard practice, drawing on mainstream leadership literature (Wang et al. 2012 , p. 507). Representing scholars from both the fields of leadership (e.g. Baldegger and Gast 2016 ) and entrepreneurship (Verma and Kumar 2021 ), these publications offer strong support to the notion that, at the level of empirical research practice, EL and TL appear indistinguishable. This trend stands in marked contrast to the previously detailed assertions of the wide adoption of EL scales in the study of EL (Bagheri and Harrison 2020 ). Moreover, it opens up the question of why a swathe of recent reviews on EL skirt the central role TL has in measuring it in practice (e.g. Clark et al. 2019 ; Leitch and Volery 2017 ). Even so, most authors in the sample examined do not go so far as to claim that EL and TL are identical. However, the study examining Russian EL style inductively found that most entrepreneurs applied a style “consistent with the characteristics of transformational leadership” (McCarthy et al. 2010 , p. 55). This offers firm credence to the relevance of TL within entrepreneurship, as well as intimating further the inherent, construct-level overlap between TL and EL (McCarthy et al. 2010 ).

This certainly provides a partial answer to RQ3 by demonstrating that empirical practice often considers TL and EL synonymous, confirming previous research which finds TL to be used as EL “routinely” (Reid et al. 2018 , p. 152). However, a final portion of the sample remains to be discussed: those results which quantitatively examined TL and EL together. A caveat is the publication by Paudel (2018), which instead successfully replicated results linking TL with innovation using a measure of EL (Renko et al. 2015 ). This result may well be explained by Paudel’s use of the ENTRELEAD scale, and the similarity with TL regarding item content discussed above. With these similarities in mind, an examination of the meta-analysis by Lee et al. ( 2020 ) may be illuminating. As stated above, it found significant correlations between innovation and EL as well as TL, with EL outperforming TL as a predictor. Central to answering the RQs of the present review, however, is their finding a relationship of ρ  = 0.93 between EL and TL (Lee et al. 2020 ), even though EL was examined across only four samples, two of which are included in the present review. While the scale used in one publication could not be ascertained, at least three used ENTRELEAD; the high correlation between EL and TL, as demonstrated at an item level in Table  5 , is therefore confirmed in statistical analysis. The two samples included here, also found in Lee et al. ( 2020 ), are those by Cai et al. ( 2019 ) who measured creativity, and Newman et al. ( 2018 ), who measured innovation. Upon closer examination, these two studies paint a picture whose contrast could not be stronger, even though both employed the ENTRELEAD scale alongside the same, shortened instrument for TL by Carless et al. ( 2000 ; see Table  5 ). As detailed in Results , Cai et al. ( 2019 ) found strong positive effects between EL and various aspects of creativity. Simultaneously, they found no correlation between EL and TL, remarkable given the visible item-level content shared by these two scales (see Table  5 above). However, any elucidation of item-level correlations is lacking which might precisely reveal whence these wildly diverging correlations between two such similar measures stem, as is any substantive discussion (see Cai et al. 2019 , p. 212-4). This is regrettable, as it is these that would offer valuable insights into the precise mechanism through which EL offers such substantial gains over TL in the prediction of creativity, an area in which TL has repeatedly proven itself in the past (Gumusluoglu and Ilsev 2009 ; Jung et al. 2003 ; Shin and Zhou 2003 ). Both this publication and that by Newman et al. ( 2018 ) adduce Bandura’s social cognitive theory ( 1986 ) to conceptualize the transposition of behaviors such as risk taking from leaders to followers. Within this tripartite agentic distinction made by Bandura ( 2001 ), the definition of agent refers to “producers as well as products of social systems,” reminiscent of the definition of an entrepreneur as issued by Gartner et al. ( 1992 ). The question posed in the introduction thus reemerges. Is it currently possible to measure EL without measuring TL? One last set of results may illuminate the answer.

Using the two exact same questionnaire measures and a larger sample, Newman et al. ( 2018 ) find wildly differing results from Cai et al. ( 2019 ). Specifically, they confirmed the predictive effect of EL on innovation, but found a similar effect for TL. Their results present themselves far more in line both with the overlap visible in Table  5 between EL and TL, and the authors’ own argumentation, who acknowledge both the similarities between EL and TL, and the predictive effects of TL on creativity. Such a strong contrast with the results of Cai et al. ( 2019 ) cautions patience for further findings. The divergent results in this case may rest on the difference between creativity and innovation, even though the two are intrinsically related (Anderson et al. 2014 ). However, the value of TL for both creativity and innovation, considered “inseparable” from entrepreneurship (Gilad 1984 , p. 151) is not only empirically established (Gumusluoglu and Ilsev 2009 ), but clear causal paths for this effect have also been traced and elaborated upon theoretically (Jung et al. 2003 ). By eliciting high motivation and increasing followers’ self-esteem and self-worth, transformational leaders increase spontaneous acts of innovation (Mumford et al. 2002 ). Individual consideration serves as a reward, while intellectual stimulation specifically fosters novel and creative thinking (Sosik et al. 1998 ). However, more vital than the conflicting findings regarding creativity and innovation is the following. Newman et al. ( 2018 ) find a strong correlation between TL and EL ( r  = .81, p  < .05), suggesting that recent studies using ENTRELEAD may have measured TL, rather than some distinctly unique style of EL (e.g. Dabić et al. 2021 ; Mehmood et al. 2021a ; Mehmood et al. 2021b ; Niemann et al. 2022 ; Pauceanu et al. 2021 ). The relationship found by Newman et al. ( 2018 ) between the ENTRELEAD scale and Carless et al.’s ( 2000 ) measure of TL clearly indicates an almost complete lack of divergent validity at the instrument level ( r  = .81, p  < .05; Newman et al. 2018 ), particularly given that the result is confirmed in meta-analysis ( ρ  = 0.93; SDρ = 0.04; Lee et al. 2020 ).

With respect to Question 3, the present analysis thus finds that, in practice, TL and EL are poorly separated. Numerous authors consider TL as representing EL, and many authors use TL by default when measuring EL, acknowledging the conceptualization of leadership inherent to the FRLT. Meanwhile, statistical results directly comparing the two may be termed inconclusive at best (Cai et al. 2019 ). At worst, results cast serious doubt on the discriminant validity of currently available measures of EL versus TL (Newman et al. 2018 ; Lee et al. 2020 ).

6 Conclusion

The present review examined the relationship between TL and EL across a sample of 25 articles and over various levels of analysis. A number of key findings can be stated in answer to the RQs posed in the Introduction . RQ1 concerned the conceptual overlap and distinction between EL and TL. We found a cluster of conceptual work advocating EL as a form or paradigm of leadership distinct from TL; differences here include for example the incorporation of strategically oriented behaviors such as opportunity recognition (Harrison et al. 2020 ; Leitch and Volery 2017 ). However, we also find that work hailing from the wider leadership literature fails to appreciate this distinction in numerous instances, with most authors considering EL and TL as overlapping both conceptually (Kimbu et al. 2021 ; Lyons et al. 2020 ) and at the level of concrete, defined constructs (Fries et al. 2021 ; McCarthy et al. 2010 ). The analysis suggests a need for greater mutual fertilization of concepts and methods between the field of EL and leadership studies as a contributing factor. RQ2 examined the overlap of currently available measures of EL and TL, with two key findings to report. First, the three available scales of EL contain items at odds with the widely used understanding of leadership as an interpersonal influence process directed towards the achievement of shared goals. Aspects of EL such as opportunity recognition fall outside this conceptual paradigm, an issue considered problematic by researchers in the field (e.g. Baldegger and Gast 2016 ). Those items that do conform to the interpersonal understanding of leadership demonstrate a high degree of overlap with TL. For example, items of the ENTRELEAD that measure interpersonal leadership are practically indistinguishable from items from TL scales. Second, all three scales suffer to varying degrees from issues of validation and model fit. The most recent contribution appears least afflicted, representing a valuable step towards an operational definition of EL (Bagheri and Harrison 2020 ). Testing for discriminant validity versus TL is however lacking, while overlap in item content is notable. Finally, RQ3 sought an answer to the role of TL in measuring EL, and the testimony of available quantitative results examining both EL and TL. In response, it is found that many researchers continue to use TL to measure EL for various reasons (e.g. Lyons et al. 2020 ; Ng et al. 2019 ). Available EL scales have thus failed to gain overarching acceptance as measures of EL. Moreover, quantitative examinations have failed to show a definitive degree of discriminant validity between EL and TL, with some results indicating almost complete overlap (Newman et al. 2018 ; Lee et al. 2020 ).

Our study offers a first critical, up-to-date examination of the overlap between TL and the fragmented scholarship surrounding EL. We draw firm conclusions based on the examination of conceptual developments, research practice, and previous empirical findings. In summary, the present contribution thus creates a road map for those measuring and studying EL, and points out several significant issues and discursive paradigms the researcher should be aware of. Moreover, we embed the nascent literature on EL within the broader, more accepted theoretical framework of the FRLT. This lays a path towards an increased exploration of EL by mainstream leadership research and, in particular, an increase in scholarly communication and exchange. The limitations of the present study, the implications of the findings and suggestions for future research are offered below.

6.1 Limitations

The present contribution claimed to clarify the interplay between EL and TL, seeking to curb the catachresis plaguing EL research. However, this paper is subject to a number of limitations. First and most importantly, the scope of the review was not exhaustive. The present SLR followed a structured and literature-based approach. Despite this, it is impossible to guarantee that all relevant articles were included in the databases chosen. As stated in Sect.  2.1 , only articles that explicitly mentioned TL and EL were examined. For a more comprehensive picture, this pool could be expanded along two dimensions. First, research could be included that explicitly examines TL within organizations that are emphasizing entrepreneurial action, such as those in the process of spinning off sub-units, acquiring startups, or engaging in corporate venturing. In short, this could identify organizational contexts in which leadership is examined that falls under a broad definition of EL, but where the specific term is not used. Conversely, all papers could be included which explicitly examine EL, and from these only those that examine leadership behaviors typical of TL without explicitly employing the term. A second limitation lies in the comparative brevity with which some of the articles were necessarily treated for the sake of space. The statistical results in Cai et al. ( 2019 ), Newman et al. ( 2018 ), and Lee et al. ( 2020 ) would for example permit a far more in-depth discussion with respect to RQ3. Finally, several review articles with interesting insights fell outside the bounds of this sample because they were either thematically off-point, not found in any of the databases examined (e.g. Clark and Harrison 2019 ; Clark et al. 2019 ), or the impact factor of the publishing journal was below 1 (Harrison et al. 2016 ).

6.2 Implications

The current study contributes by offering theoretical implications in three areas of literature where gaps were observed. First, we have provided an important contribution to the wider, fragmented discourse on entrepreneurial leaders. We offer a road map by showing that research past (e.g. Ensley et al. 2006 ; Wang et al. 2012 ) and present (e.g. Ng et al. 2019 ; Verma and Kumar 2021 ) employ TL as a valid adjunct to measuring EL, and by demonstrating that the use of current measures of EL (Bagheri and Harrison 2020 ; Gupta et al. 2004 ; Renko et al. 2015 ) is plagued by issues. Specifically, their use guarantees neither measurement of EL, as opposed to TL, nor measurement of leadership behaviors, as accepted under the widely acclaimed FRLT paradigm. Further, two of three available EL questionnaires failed to provide conclusive, statistical evidence for a unified construct of EL (Bagheri and Harrison 2020 ; Gupta et al. 2004 ). The recent inclusion of additional leadership concepts such as empowering or self-leadership (Harrison and Bagheri 2020 ; cf. Cheong et al. 2019 ; Houghton et al. 2003 ) fails to ameliorate the lack of cross-validation and dedicated sampling for discriminant validity, and our findings thus contribute by demonstrating that measurement of EL should be accompanied by, at minimum, a proven questionnaire measure of TL (e.g. Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire, Bass and Avolio 1997 ). Such combined use would permit meta-analysis of its divergent validity and enable further refinement or dimensional reduction. Moreover, we find an increasing number of studies employing the ENTRELEAD scale (Renko et al. 2015 ), most by entrepreneurship researchers, whose familiarity with leadership literature may be limited (e.g. Dabić et al. 2021 ; Mehmood et al. 2021a ; Mehmood et al. 2021b ; Pauceanu et al. 2021 ). Our contribution is therefore a demonstration to these researchers of the issues with EL-measures noted above.

We further contribute to the ongoing discourse by drawing together previous research to show that TL provides four concrete, theoretically elucidated sub-dimensions that are suitable for further analysis of EL outcomes (e.g. Hensel and Visser 2018 ; Lee et al. 2020 ), and that TL has the ability to transcend cultural boundaries (Crede et al. 2019 ). This has been specifically demonstrated for entrepreneurial leaders in various cultures (Kimbu et al. 2021 ; Wang et al. 2012 ). The FRLT additionally provides an equally validated, alternative style, transactional leadership, which is effective in many other contexts. Finally, it delineates a concrete, ineffective, negative leadership style: laissez-faire (Antonakis 2001 ).Our study also contributes by outlining that non-TL items on current measures of EL largely reflect non-leadership aspects, such as opportunity recognition, and suggest their measurement via dedicated instruments. For example, entrepreneurial opportunity recognition has recently been measured by examining both perceived proficiency in recognizing opportunities, as well as by gauging the actual number of opportunities exploited (Maran et al. 2021 ).

Second, we contribute to the literature by contextualizing the work of a core community of EL researchers (e.g. Harrison et al. 2016 ; Leitch and Volery 2017 ), which claims a high degree of authority and centrality in EL matters. By examining it from the perspective of leadership research, our study offers more insights into the practice of EL research as currently found around the world. Despite claims that EL is a distinct and valid construct, the present study finds that EL, as an operationalized set of behaviors that portray the leader-follower influence process, has yet to be established. Our work therefore contributes directly to the debate by offering as a primary goal the differentiation of EL from other extant, mainstream styles of leadership, such as transformational (Bass 1985 ), empowering (Cheong et al. 2019 ), and authentic leadership (Jensen and Luthans 2006 ). While Bagheri and Harrison’s ( 2020 ) recent measure of EL has taken great strides in this direction, we contribute by demonstrating how this and other measures diverge from accepted norms of scale development, and by suggesting the outline of a process of scale development and validation to remedy this. In addition, our study contributes by clearly connecting the currently confused picture of EL-TL measurement, both in terms of research practice and conflicting statistical results, with this non-normative history of development of EL scales. We further offer a modest contribution to this process by pointing to previous literature reviews which could serve as groundwork for ongoing development, and which have determined traits such as tenacity, a need for power and control, charisma, flexibility and an internal locus of control to be related to EL (e.g. Harrison et al. 2016 ). However, the authors caution that the leadership literature itself has observed an overproliferation of leadership styles, and empirical testing has repeatedly revealed purportedly new leadership styles such as authentic or empowering as overlapping significantly with TL (Deng et al. 2022 ).

Third, the present study provides a modest contribution to the leadership literature. We carry on and strengthen work by Fries et al. ( 2021 ) and Ried et al. ( 2018 ), which sought to examine EL as one of numerous styles. The present review details several areas of distinction and overlap between EL and other, established styles of leadership. Furthermore, we offer additional support to the recent findings which indicate that a proliferation of leadership styles may often fail to provide extra value beyond TL (Deng et al. 2022 ; cf. Shaffer et al. 2016 ). Overall, we provide value by couching the current, fragmented literature on EL more clearly in the terminology of mainstream leadership research, thus hopefully opening the door for a renewed “assault” on the delineation of EL’s fundamental building blocks.

Our study also contributes by providing several managerial implications. The holistic approach taken by EL research noted above, while hindering scale development, may be useful in obtaining a coherent and comprehensive understanding of EL in the field. However, considering the overlap of current definitions of EL with TL (e.g. Newman et al. 2018 ), the implication for managerial practice is clearly that TL is a suitable style in many contexts with entrepreneurial features. This is further inferred by the many studies that purport to examine EL using the ENTRELEAD scale, which find some positive effect of EL on a variety of outcomes (Dabić et al. 2021 ; Mehmood et al. 2021a , b ). As stated in the Discussion , ENTRELEAD overlaps considerably with TL. Taken together with recent findings from the field of leadership, our study thus contributes to transfer and practice by underlining the value of TL versus novel models of leadership (Deng et al. 2022 ). Therefore, professionals in management and human resources may consider TL as representing a key leadership style for entrepreneurial ventures. With regard to policy implications, our findings contribute by suggesting that TL may be used as an adjunct to EL in the training of entrepreneurs. This concerns executive education, which has shown that entrepreneurship and an entrepreneurial mindset can be aided by educational means (e.g. Bachmann et al. 2021 ). Until a true, distinct leadership style of EL is found and widely accepted, therefore, the use of TL to cover the leadership aspect of entrepreneurship may be considered as representing best practice. The vision communication and charisma of the transformational leader has persistently been shown to encourage exceptional performance in employees (Ng 2017 ); their intellectual stimulation has proven vital in breaching the boundaries of convention, and delivering innovations of product, service or business model (e.g. Begum et al. 2022 ). The individual consideration awarded followers has repeatedly engendered job satisfaction, low turnover, and improved personal outcomes in the examined samples (e.g. Alwali and Alwali 2022 ). Our findings further contribute by suggesting that executive education and transfer make use of dedicated resources for non-leadership EL components, such as opportunity recognition, supplementary to TL.

6.3 Future research directions

The authors identify two main areas that could benefit from further inquiry. First, we encourage future research to create a clear definition differentiating EL “in” versus “of” (entrepreneurial ventures). The owner-entrepreneur who leads might show “leadership of” behaviors, but his subordinates within a startup who lead employees may only show “leadership in” behaviors. Separating these precedes the elucidation of a concrete, behavioral delineation of EL to capture the “leadership in” component (Antonakis and Autio 2012 ), in line with the dominant paradigm of leadership research, the FRLT (Bass and Avolio 1997 ). A wider understanding of EL, one that does not focus on leader-follower behaviors, may be termed a “leadership of” understanding. However, such an understanding of EL overlaps significantly with research into entrepreneurs and entrepreneurial orientation (Covin et al. 2020 ), given its inclusion of risk-taking (Renko et al. 2015 ) and opportunity recognition (e.g. Bagheri and Harrison 2020 ). Separating EL “in” versus “of” represents a necessary step which several authors have already taken (Ng and Kee 2018 ; Ng et al. 2019 ; Harrison et al. 2018 ) proposed a differentiation between internally and externally driven studies on EL. Similarly, Antonakis and Autio ( 2012 ) assigned extant leadership styles to phases of the entrepreneurial venture such as Precreation, Start-up and Consolidation . We suggest both as useful starting points for further examining and defining EL. Dismissing all non-behavioral aspects of EL could impede a full appreciation of entrepreneurship’s economic and social value (Antonakis and Autio 2012 ), while more carefully separating its dimensions could lead to a more granular appreciation of EL as a procedural phenomenon. Context is a crucial if often overlooked aspect in leadership (Liden and Antonakis 2009 ; Lowe and Gardner 2000 ), particularly in entrepreneurship. For example, when pre-founding, the entrepreneur by necessity must be a risk-taker and opportunity seeker; later, management and leadership often replace these attributes in terms of importance (Alvarez and Barney 2007 ; Gray et al. 2003 ). We suggest that future research should further engage with such differences (Baldegger and Gast 2016 ), in line with Cogliser and Brigham’s ( 2004 ) foundational definition of EL.

Second, moving beyond the “leadership in” versus “leadership of” issue, there is a drastic lack of substantive research on the concrete leader behaviors shown by female entrepreneurs. Although some studies do exist (e.g. Harrison et al. 2018 ; Yousafzai et al. 2015 ), they are far too few (Clark et al. 2019 ). A further aspect is that of “co-leadership.” While entrepreneurial ventures, in particular the modern, “techie” startup, often rely on teams of founders sharing leadership responsibilities at both the managerial and strategic levels (Ensley et al. 2006 ), no current conceptualization of EL directly addresses this interpersonal perspective, even though the paradigm of leader-member-exchange would lend itself to such an investigation (Leitch and Volery 2017 ). This reflects a wider issue, i.e. that conceptualizations of EL which take a less leader-centric approach may well be worth exploring, as mentioned by previous reviewers of the field (Leitch and Harrison 2018a ).

Data Availability

Regarding the underlying data, the papers which form the sample underlying the present SLR are available from the databases stated in the manuscript.

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Ravet-Brown, T.É., Furtner, M. & Kallmuenzer, A. Transformational and entrepreneurial leadership: A review of distinction and overlap. Rev Manag Sci (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11846-023-00649-6

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  • Entrepreneurial
  • Transformational
  • Systematic Literature Review

JEL Classification

  • L26 Entrepreneurship
  • M12 Personnel Management
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  • 4.2 Creativity, Innovation, and Invention: How They Differ
  • Introduction
  • 1.1 Entrepreneurship Today
  • 1.2 Entrepreneurial Vision and Goals
  • 1.3 The Entrepreneurial Mindset
  • Review Questions
  • Discussion Questions
  • Case Questions
  • Suggested Resources
  • 2.1 Overview of the Entrepreneurial Journey
  • 2.2 The Process of Becoming an Entrepreneur
  • 2.3 Entrepreneurial Pathways
  • 2.4 Frameworks to Inform Your Entrepreneurial Path
  • 3.1 Ethical and Legal Issues in Entrepreneurship
  • 3.2 Corporate Social Responsibility and Social Entrepreneurship
  • 3.3 Developing a Workplace Culture of Ethical Excellence and Accountability
  • 4.1 Tools for Creativity and Innovation
  • 4.3 Developing Ideas, Innovations, and Inventions
  • 5.1 Entrepreneurial Opportunity
  • 5.2 Researching Potential Business Opportunities
  • 5.3 Competitive Analysis
  • 6.1 Problem Solving to Find Entrepreneurial Solutions
  • 6.2 Creative Problem-Solving Process
  • 6.3 Design Thinking
  • 6.4 Lean Processes
  • 7.1 Clarifying Your Vision, Mission, and Goals
  • 7.2 Sharing Your Entrepreneurial Story
  • 7.3 Developing Pitches for Various Audiences and Goals
  • 7.4 Protecting Your Idea and Polishing the Pitch through Feedback
  • 7.5 Reality Check: Contests and Competitions
  • 8.1 Entrepreneurial Marketing and the Marketing Mix
  • 8.2 Market Research, Market Opportunity Recognition, and Target Market
  • 8.3 Marketing Techniques and Tools for Entrepreneurs
  • 8.4 Entrepreneurial Branding
  • 8.5 Marketing Strategy and the Marketing Plan
  • 8.6 Sales and Customer Service
  • 9.1 Overview of Entrepreneurial Finance and Accounting Strategies
  • 9.2 Special Funding Strategies
  • 9.3 Accounting Basics for Entrepreneurs
  • 9.4 Developing Startup Financial Statements and Projections
  • 10.1 Launching the Imperfect Business: Lean Startup
  • 10.2 Why Early Failure Can Lead to Success Later
  • 10.3 The Challenging Truth about Business Ownership
  • 10.4 Managing, Following, and Adjusting the Initial Plan
  • 10.5 Growth: Signs, Pains, and Cautions
  • 11.1 Avoiding the “Field of Dreams” Approach
  • 11.2 Designing the Business Model
  • 11.3 Conducting a Feasibility Analysis
  • 11.4 The Business Plan
  • 12.1 Building and Connecting to Networks
  • 12.2 Building the Entrepreneurial Dream Team
  • 12.3 Designing a Startup Operational Plan
  • 13.1 Business Structures: Overview of Legal and Tax Considerations
  • 13.2 Corporations
  • 13.3 Partnerships and Joint Ventures
  • 13.4 Limited Liability Companies
  • 13.5 Sole Proprietorships
  • 13.6 Additional Considerations: Capital Acquisition, Business Domicile, and Technology
  • 13.7 Mitigating and Managing Risks
  • 14.1 Types of Resources
  • 14.2 Using the PEST Framework to Assess Resource Needs
  • 14.3 Managing Resources over the Venture Life Cycle
  • 15.1 Launching Your Venture
  • 15.2 Making Difficult Business Decisions in Response to Challenges
  • 15.3 Seeking Help or Support
  • 15.4 Now What? Serving as a Mentor, Consultant, or Champion
  • 15.5 Reflections: Documenting the Journey
  • A | Suggested Resources

Learning Objectives

By the end of this section, you will be able to:

  • Distinguish between creativity, innovation, and invention
  • Explain the difference between pioneering and incremental innovation, and which processes are best suited to each

One of the key requirements for entrepreneurial success is your ability to develop and offer something unique to the marketplace. Over time, entrepreneurship has become associated with creativity , the ability to develop something original, particularly an idea or a representation of an idea. Innovation requires creativity, but innovation is more specifically the application of creativity. Innovation is the manifestation of creativity into a usable product or service. In the entrepreneurial context, innovation is any new idea, process, or product, or a change to an existing product or process that adds value to that existing product or service.

How is an invention different from an innovation? All inventions contain innovations, but not every innovation rises to the level of a unique invention. For our purposes, an invention is a truly novel product, service, or process. It will be based on previous ideas and products, but it is such a leap that it is not considered an addition to or a variant of an existing product but something unique. Table 4.2 highlights the differences between these three concepts.

One way we can consider these three concepts is to relate them to design thinking. Design thinking is a method to focus the design and development decisions of a product on the needs of the customer, typically involving an empathy-driven process to define complex problems and create solutions that address those problems. Complexity is key to design thinking. Straightforward problems that can be solved with enough money and force do not require much design thinking. Creative design thinking and planning are about finding new solutions for problems with several tricky variables in play. Designing products for human beings, who are complex and sometimes unpredictable, requires design thinking.

Airbnb has become a widely used service all over the world. That has not always been the case, however. In 2009, the company was near failure. The founders were struggling to find a reason for the lack of interest in their properties until they realized that their listings needed professional, high-quality photographs rather than simple cell-phone photos. Using a design thinking approach, the founders traveled to the properties with a rented camera to take some new photographs. As a result of this experiment, weekly revenue doubled. This approach could not be sustainable in the long term, but it generated the outcome the founders needed to better understand the problem. This creative approach to solving a complex problem proved to be a major turning point for the company. 7

People who are adept at design thinking are creative, innovative, and inventive as they strive to tackle different types of problems. Consider Divya Nag , a millennial biotech and medical device innovation leader, who launched a business after she discovered a creative way to prolong the life of human cells in Petri dishes. Nag’s stem-cell research background and her entrepreneurial experience with her medical investment firm made her a popular choice when Apple hired her to run two programs dedicated to developing health-related apps, a position she reached before turning twenty-four years old. 8

Creativity, innovation, inventiveness, and entrepreneurship can be tightly linked. It is possible for one person to model all these traits to some degree. Additionally, you can develop your creativity skills, sense of innovation, and inventiveness in a variety of ways. In this section, we’ll discuss each of the key terms and how they relate to the entrepreneurial spirit.

Entrepreneurial creativity and artistic creativity are not so different. You can find inspiration in your favorite books, songs, and paintings, and you also can take inspiration from existing products and services. You can find creative inspiration in nature, in conversations with other creative minds, and through formal ideation exercises, for example, brainstorming. Ideation is the purposeful process of opening up your mind to new trains of thought that branch out in all directions from a stated purpose or problem. Brainstorming , the generation of ideas in an environment free of judgment or dissension with the goal of creating solutions, is just one of dozens of methods for coming up with new ideas. 9

You can benefit from setting aside time for ideation. Reserving time to let your mind roam freely as you think about an issue or problem from multiple directions is a necessary component of the process. Ideation takes time and a deliberate effort to move beyond your habitual thought patterns. If you consciously set aside time for creativity, you will broaden your mental horizons and allow yourself to change and grow. 10

Entrepreneurs work with two types of thinking. Linear thinking —sometimes called vertical thinking —involves a logical, step-by-step process. In contrast, creative thinking is more often lateral thinking , free and open thinking in which established patterns of logical thought are purposefully ignored or even challenged. You can ignore logic; anything becomes possible. Linear thinking is crucial in turning your idea into a business. Lateral thinking will allow you to use your creativity to solve problems that arise. Figure 4.5 summarizes linear and lateral thinking.

It is certainly possible for you to be an entrepreneur and focus on linear thinking. Many viable business ventures flow logically and directly from existing products and services. However, for various reasons, creativity and lateral thinking are emphasized in many contemporary contexts in the study of entrepreneurship. Some reasons for this are increased global competition, the speed of technological change, and the complexity of trade and communication systems. 11 These factors help explain not just why creativity is emphasized in entrepreneurial circles but also why creativity should be emphasized. Product developers of the twenty-first century are expected to do more than simply push products and innovations a step further down a planned path. Newer generations of entrepreneurs are expected to be path breakers in new products, services, and processes.

Examples of creativity are all around us. They come in the forms of fine art and writing, or in graffiti and viral videos, or in new products, services, ideas, and processes. In practice, creativity is incredibly broad. It is all around us whenever or wherever people strive to solve a problem, large or small, practical or impractical.

We previously defined innovation as a change that adds value to an existing product or service. According to the management thinker and author Peter Drucker , the key point about innovation is that it is a response to both changes within markets and changes from outside markets. For Drucker, classical entrepreneurship psychology highlights the purposeful nature of innovation. 12 Business firms and other organizations can plan to innovate by applying either lateral or linear thinking methods, or both. In other words, not all innovation is purely creative. If a firm wishes to innovate a current product, what will likely matter more to that firm is the success of the innovation rather than the level of creativity involved. Drucker summarized the sources of innovation into seven categories, as outlined in Table 4.3 . Firms and individuals can innovate by seeking out and developing changes within markets or by focusing on and cultivating creativity. Firms and individuals should be on the lookout for opportunities to innovate. 13

One innovation that demonstrates several of Drucker’s sources is the use of cashier kiosks in fast-food restaurants. McDonald’s was one of the first to launch these self-serve kiosks. Historically, the company has focused on operational efficiencies (doing more/better with less). In response to changes in the market, changes in demographics, and process need, McDonald’s incorporated self-serve cashier stations into their stores. These kiosks address the need of younger generations to interact more with technology and gives customers faster service in most cases. 15

Another leading expert on innovation, Tony Ulwick , focuses on understanding how the customer will judge or evaluate the quality and value of the product. The product development process should be based on the metrics that customers use to judge products, so that innovation can address those metrics and develop the best product for meeting customers’ needs when it hits the market. This process is very similar to Drucker’s contention that innovation comes as a response to changes within and outside of the market. Ulwick insists that focusing on the customer should begin early in the development process. 16

Disruptive innovation is a process that significantly affects the market by making a product or service more affordable and/or accessible, so that it will be available to a much larger audience. Clay Christensen of Harvard University coined this term in the 1990s to emphasize the process nature of innovation. For Christensen, the innovative component is not the actual product or service, but the process that makes that product more available to a larger population of users. He has since published a good deal on the topic of disruptive innovation, focusing on small players in a market. Christensen theorizes that a disruptive innovation from a smaller company can threaten an existing larger business by offering the market new and improved solutions. The smaller company causes the disruption when it captures some of the market share from the larger organization. 17 , 18 One example of a disruptive innovation is Uber and its impact on the taxicab industry. Uber’s innovative service, which targets customers who might otherwise take a cab, has shaped the industry as whole by offering an alternative that some deem superior to the typical cab ride.

One key to innovation within a given market space is to look for pain points, particularly in existing products that fail to work as well as users expect them to. A pain point is a problem that people have with a product or service that might be addressed by creating a modified version that solves the problem more efficiently. 19 For example, you might be interested in whether a local retail store carries a specific item without actually going there to check. Most retailers now have a feature on their websites that allows you to determine whether the product (and often how many units) is available at a specific store. This eliminates the need to go to the location only to find that they are out of your favorite product. Once a pain point is identified in a firm’s own product or in a competitor’s product, the firm can bring creativity to bear in finding and testing solutions that sidestep or eliminate the pain, making the innovation marketable. This is one example of an incremental innovation , an innovation that modifies an existing product or service. 20

In contrast, a pioneering innovation is one based on a new technology, a new advancement in the field, and/or an advancement in a related field that leads to the development of a new product. 21 Firms offering similar products and services can undertake pioneering innovations, but pioneering the new product requires opening up new market space and taking major risks.

Entrepreneur In Action

Pioneering innovation in the personal care industry.

In his ninth-grade biology class, Benjamin Stern came up with an idea to change the personal care industry. He envisioned personal cleaning products (soap, shampoo, etc.) that would contain no harsh chemicals or sulfates, and would also produce no plastic waste from empty bottles. He developed Nohbo Drops , single-use personal cleansing products with water-soluble packaging. Stern was able to borrow money from family and friends, and use some of his college fund to hire a chemist to develop the product. He then appeared on Shark Tank with his innovation in 2016 and secured the backing of investor Mark Cuban . Stern assembled a research team to perfect the product and obtained a patent ( Figure 4.6 ). The products are now available via the company website.

Is a pioneering innovation an invention? A firm makes a pioneering innovation when it creates a product or service arising from what it has done before. Pokémon GO is a great example of pioneering innovation. Nintendo was struggling to keep pace with other gaming-related companies. The company, in keeping with its core business of video games, came up with a new direction for the gaming industry. Pokémon GO is known worldwide and is one of the most successful mobile games launched. 22 It takes creativity to explore a new direction, but not every pioneering innovation creates a distinctly new product or capability for consumers and clients.

Entrepreneurs in the process of developing an innovation usually examine the current products and services their firm offers, investigate new technologies and techniques being introduced in the marketplace or in related marketplaces, watch research and development in universities and in other companies, and pursue new developments that are likely to fit one of two conditions: an innovation that likely fits an existing market better than other products or services being offered; or an innovation that fits a market that so far has been underserved.

An example of an incremental innovation is the trash receptacle you find at fast-food restaurants. For many years, trash cans in fast-food locations were placed in boxes behind swinging doors. The trash cans did one job well: They hid the garbage from sight. But they created other problems: Often, the swinging doors would get ketchup and other waste on them, surely a pain point. Newer trash receptacles in fast-food restaurants have open fronts or open tops that enable people to dispose of their trash more neatly. The downside for restaurants is that users can see and possibly smell the food waste, but if the restaurants change the trash bags frequently, as is a good practice anyway, this innovation works relatively well. You might not think twice about this everyday example of an innovation when you eat at a fast-food restaurant, but even small improvements can matter a lot, particularly if the market they serve is vast.

An invention is a leap in capability beyond innovation. Some inventions combine several innovations into something new. Invention certainly requires creativity, but it goes beyond coming up with new ideas, combinations of thought, or variations on a theme. Inventors build. Developing something users and customers view as an invention could be important to some entrepreneurs, because when a new product or service is viewed as unique, it can create new markets. True inventiveness is often recognized in the marketplace, and it can help build a valuable reputation and help establish market position if the company can build a future-oriented corporate narrative around the invention. 23

Besides establishing a new market position, a true invention can have a social and cultural impact. At the social level, a new invention can influence the ways institutions work. For example, the invention of desktop computing put accounting and word processing into the hands of nearly every office worker. The ripple effects spread to the school systems that educate and train the corporate workforce. Not long after the spread of desktop computing, workers were expected to draft reports, run financial projections, and make appealing presentations. Specializations or aspects of specialized jobs—such as typist, bookkeeper, corporate copywriter—became necessary for almost everyone headed for corporate work. Colleges and eventually high schools saw software training as essential for students of almost all skill levels. These additional capabilities added profitability and efficiencies, but they also have increased job requirements for the average professional.

Some of the most successful inventions contain a mix of familiarity and innovation that is difficult to achieve. With this mix, the rate of adoption can be accelerated because of the familiarity with the concept or certain aspects of the product or service. As an example, the “videophone” was a concept that began to be explored as early as the late 1800s. AT&T began extensive work on videophones during the 1920s. However, the invention was not adopted because of a lack of familiarity with the idea of seeing someone on a screen and communicating back and forth. Other factors included societal norms, size of the machine, and cost. It wasn’t until the early 2000s that the invention started to take hold in the marketplace. 24 The concept of a black box is that activities are performed in a somewhat mysterious and ambiguous manner, with a serendipitous set of actions connecting that result in a surprisingly beneficial manner. An example is Febreeze, a chemical combination that binds molecules to eliminate odors. From a black box perspective, the chemical engineers did not intend to create this product, but as they were working on creating another product, someone noticed that the product they were working on removed odors, thus inadvertently creating a successful new product marketed as Febreeze.

What Can You Do?

Did henry ford invent the assembly line.

Very few products or procedures are actually brand-new ideas. Most new products are alterations or new applications of existing products, with some type of twist in design, function, portability, or use. Henry Ford is usually credited with inventing the moving assembly line Figure 4.7 (a) in 1913. However, some 800 years before Henry Ford, wooden ships were mass produced in the northern Italian city of Venice in a system that anticipated the modern assembly line.

Various components (ropes, sails, and so on) were prefabricated in different parts of the Venetian Arsenal, a huge, complex construction site along one of Venice’s canals. The parts were then delivered to specific assembly points Figure 4.7 (b) . After each stage of construction, the ships were floated down the canal to the next assembly area, where the next sets of workers and parts were waiting. Moving the ships down the waterway and assembling them in stages increased speed and efficiency to the point that long before the Industrial Revolution, the Arsenal could produce one fully functional and completely equipped ship per day . The system was so successful that it was used from the thirteenth century to about 1800.

Henry Ford did not invent anything new—he only applied the 800-year-old process of building wooden ships by hand along a moving waterway to making metal cars by hand on a moving conveyor ( Figure 4.7 ).

Opportunities to bring new products and processes to market are in front of us every day. The key is having the ability to recognize them and implement them. Likewise, the people you need to help you be successful may be right in front of you on a regular basis. The key is having the ability to recognize who they are and making connections to them. Just as those ships and cars moved down an assembly line until they were ready to be put into service, start thinking about moving down the “who I know” line so that you will eventually have a successful business in place.

The process of invention is difficult to codify because not all inventions or inventors follow the same path. Often the path can take multiple directions, involve many people besides the inventor, and encompass many restarts. Inventors and their teams develop their own processes along with their own products, and the field in which an inventor works will greatly influence the modes and pace of invention. Elon Musk is famous for founding four different billion-dollar companies. The development processes for PayPal , Solar City , SpaceX , and Tesla differed widely; however, Musk does outline a six-step decision-making process ( Figure 4.8 ):

  • Ask a question.
  • Gather as much evidence as possible about it.
  • Develop axioms based on the evidence and try to assign a probability of truth to each one.
  • Draw a conclusion in order to determine: Are these axioms correct, are they relevant, do they necessarily lead to this conclusion, and with what probability?
  • Attempt to disprove the conclusion. Seek refutation from others to further help break your conclusion.
  • If nobody can invalidate your conclusion, then you’re probably right, but you’re not certainly right.

In other words, the constant underlying Musk’s decision process is the scientific method. 25 The scientific method , most often associated with the natural sciences, outlines the process of discovering an answer to a question or a problem. “The scientific method is a logical organization of steps that scientists use to make deductions about the world around us.” 26 The steps in the scientific method line up quite nicely with Musk’s decision-making process. Applying the scientific method to invention and innovation makes sense. The scientific method involves becoming aware of a problem, collecting data about it by observing and experimenting, and coming up with suggestions on how to solve it.

Economists argue that processes of invention can be explained by economic forces. But this hasn’t always been the case. Prior to 1940, economic theory focused very little on inventions. After World War II, much of the global economy in the developed world needed to be rebuilt. New technologies were developing rapidly, and research and development investment increased. Inventors and economists alike became aware of consumer demand and realized that demand can influence which inventions take off at a given time. 27 However, inventors are always up against an adoption curve. 28

The Rogers Adoption Curve was popularized through the research and publications of the author and scientist Everett Rogers . 29 He first used it to describe how agricultural innovations diffused (or failed to) in a society. It was later applied to all inventions and innovations. This curve illustrates diffusion of an innovation and when certain people will adopt it. First is the question of who adopts inventions and innovations in society: The main groups are innovators, early adopters, early and late-majority adopters, and “laggards” (Rogers’s own term). 30 The innovators are the ones willing to take a risk on a new product, the consumers who want to try it first. The early adopters are consumers who will adopt new inventions with little to no information. Majority adopters will adopt products after being accepted by the majority. And finally, laggards are often not willing to readily adopt change and are the hardest to convince to try a new invention. 31

Rogers’s second way of looking at the concept is from the point of view of the invention itself. A given population partially or completely adopts an invention or rejects it. If an invention is targeted at the wrong population or the wrong population segment, this can dramatically inhibit its chances of being adopted widely. The most critical point of adoption often occurs at the end of the early adoption phase, before the early majority steps in and truly confirms (or not) the diffusion of an invention. This is called the diffusion chasm (though this process is usually called the diffusion of innovations , for our purposes, it applies quite well to new inventions as we define them here).

The diffusion curve depicts a social process in which the value of an invention is perceived (or not) to be worth the cost ( Figure 4.9 ). Early adopters generally pay more than those who wait, but if the invention gives them a perceived practical, social, or cultural advantage, members of the population, the popularity of the invention itself, and marketing can all drive the invention over the diffusion chasm. Once the early majority adopts an innovation (in very large numbers), we can expect the rest of the majority to adopt it. By the time the late majority and the laggards adopt an innovation, the novelty has worn off, but the practical benefits of the innovation can still be felt.

Inventors are constantly trying to cross the diffusion chasm, often with many products at a time. Crossing the diffusion chasm is a nearly constant concern for business-focused or outcomes-focused inventors. Inventors put many of their resources into an invention during the innovation and early adoption stages. Inventions may not turn a profit for investors or the inventors themselves until they are well into the early majority stage of adoption. Some inventors are pleased to work toward general discovery, but most in today’s social and cultural context are working to develop products and services for markets.

One shortcoming of the diffusion of innovations model is that it treats inventions and innovations as though they are finished and complete, though many are not. Not all inventions are finished products ready for market. Iterative development is more common, particularly in fields with high levels of complexity and in service-oriented ventures. In the iterative development process, inventors and innovators continuously engage with potential customers in order to develop their products and their consumer bases at the same time. This model of business learning, also known as the science of customer development, is essential. 32 Business learning involves testing product-market fit and making changes to an innovation or invention many times over until either investment funding runs out or the product succeeds. Perhaps the most accurate way to summarize this process is to note that many inventions are hit-or-miss prospects that get only a few chances to cross the diffusion chasm. When innovators follow the build-measure-learn model (discussed in detail in Launch for Growth to Success ), they try to work their way across the diffusion chasm rather than making a leap of faith.

Work It Out

The safety razor was an innovation over the straight razor. Safety razor blades are small enough to fit inside a capsule, and the location and type of handle was altered to suit the new orientation of handle to blade ( Figure 4.10 ). Most contemporary razors are themselves innovations on the safety razor, whether they have two, three, four, or more blades. The method of changing razor blades has evolved with each innovation on the safety razor, but the designs are functionally similar.

The electric razor is a related invention. It still uses blades to shave hair off the face or body, but the blades are hidden beneath a foil or foils. Hairs poke through the foils when the razor is pressed against the skin, and blades moving in various directions cut the hairs. Although electric razors use blades as do mechanical razors, the new design and the added technology qualified the electric razor as an invention that offered something new in the shaving industry when Jacob Schick won the patent for a shaving machine in 1930. 33 Still other innovations in the shaving genre include gender-specific razors, beard trimmers, and, more recently, online clubs such as Dollar Shave Club and Harry’s Shave Club .

Think about the conceptual difference between innovation and invention. Is the safety razor a pioneering innovation or an incremental one? What makes the electric razor an invention, as we define it here? What makes it stand out as a leap from previous types of razors? Do you think the electric razor is a “sure thing”? Why or why not? Consider the availability of electricity at the time the first electric razors were being made. Why do you think the electric razor made it over the diffusion chasm between early adopters and early majority adopters? Do you think the electric razor was invented iteratively with small changes to the same product in response to customer preferences? Or did it develop in a series of black box inventions, with each one either diffusing or not?

  • 7 “How Design Thinking Transformed Airbnb from Failing Startup to Billion Dollar Business.” First Round Review . n.d. https://firstround.com/review/How-design-thinking-transformed-Airbnb-from-failing-startup-to-billion-dollar-business/
  • 8 “Divya Nag, 26.” Fortune . n.d. http://fortune.com/40-under-40/2017/divya-nag-27/
  • 9 Rikke Dam and Teo Siang. “Introduction to the Essential Ideation Techniques Which Are the Heart of Design Thinking.” Interaction Design Foundation . April 2019. https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/article/introduction-to-the-essential-ideation-techniques-which-are-the-heart-of-design-thinking
  • 10 Dawn Kelly and Terry L. Amburgey. “Organizational Inertia and Momentum: A Dynamic Model of Strategic Change.” Academy of Management Journal 34, no. 3 (1991): 591–612.
  • 11 Ian Fillis and Ruth Rentschler. “The Role of Creativity in Entrepreneurship.”  Journal of Enterprising Culture  18, no. 1 (2010): 49–81.
  • 12 P. F. Drucker. Innovation and Entrepreneurship: Practices and Principles . New York: Harper & Row Publishers, 1986.
  • 13 P. F. Drucker. Innovation and Entrepreneurship: Practices and Principles . (New York: Harper & Row Publishers, 1986), 35.
  • 14 P. F. Drucker. Innovation and Entrepreneurship: Practices and Principles . New York: Harper & Row Publishers, 1986.
  • 15 Blake Morgan. “5 Fresh Examples of Customer Service Innovation.” Forbes . July 17, 2017. https://www.forbes.com/sites/blakemorgan/2017/07/17/5-fresh-examples-of-customer-experience-innovation/#3ae5a46e5c18
  • 16 Tony Ulwick. “Reinventing Innovation for 25 Years.” Strategyn . n.d. https://strategyn.com/tony-ulwick/?network=g&matchtype=p&keyword=tony%20ulwick&creative=268244402567&device=c&devicemodel=&placement=&position=1t1&campaignid=1394486829&adgroupid=57939305027&loc_physical_ms=9015694&loc_interest_ms=&gclid=CjwKCAjw29vsBRAuEiwA9s-0B2jD3BYbm-BEiPWHKfd6R6mnW4XCHuhXbX_JhUof76IdXh6joIzlWRoCqJAQAvD_BwE
  • 17 Chris Larson. “Disruptive Innovation Theory: What It Is & 4 Key Concepts.” Harvard Business School . November 15, 2016. https://online.hbs.edu/blog/post/4-keys-to-understanding-clayton-christensens-theory-of-disruptive-innovation
  • 18 Rosamond Hutt. “What Is Disruptive Innovation?” World Economic Forum . June 25, 2016. https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/06/what-is-disruptive-innovation/
  • 19 Lloyd Waldo. “What’s a Pain Point? A Guide for Startups.” StartupYard Seed Accelerator . December 1, 2016. https://startupyard.com/whats-pain-point/
  • 20 Abdul Ali, Manohar U. Kalwani, and Dan Kovenock. “Selecting Product Development Projects: Pioneering versus Incremental Innovation Strategies.”  Management Science  39, no. 3 (1993): 255–274.
  • 21 Abdul Ali. “Pioneering versus Incremental Innovation: Review and Research Propositions.”  Journal of Product Innovation Management  11, no. 1 (1994): 46–61.
  • 22 JV Chamary. “Why ‘Pokémon GO’ Is the World’s Most Important Game.” Forbes . February 10, 2018. https://www.forbes.com/sites/jvchamary/2018/02/10/pokemon-go-science-health-benefits/#2b6f07fd3ab0
  • 23 Morten Thanning Vendelø. “Narrating Corporate Reputation: Becoming Legitimate through Storytelling.”  International Studies of Management & Organization  28, no. 3 (1998): 120–137.
  • 24 Thomas J. Fitzgerald. “For the Deaf: Communication without the Wait.” The New York Times . December 18, 2003. https://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/18/technology/for-the-deaf-communication-without-the-wait.html
  • 25 Abby Jackson. “Elon Musk Uses This 6-Step Process to Make Decisions.” Business Insider . November 16, 2017. https://www.inc.com/business-insider/how-elon-musk-makes-decisions-rolling-stone.html
  • 26 Joan Whetzel. “Formula for Using the Scientific Method.” Owlcation . February 11, 2017. https://owlcation.com/academia/FormulaForUsingScientificMethod
  • 27 N. Rosenberg. “Science, Invention and Economic Growth.”  The Economic Journal  84, no. 333 (1974): 90–108.
  • 28 Everett M. Rogers.  Diffusion of Innovations , 5th ed. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2010.
  • 29 John-Pierre Maeli. “The Rogers Adoption Curve & How You Spread New Ideas Throughout Culture.” The Political Informer . May 6, 2016. https://medium.com/the-political-informer/the-rogers-adoption-curve-how-you-spread-new-ideas-throughout-culture-d848462fcd24
  • 30 Everett M. Rogers.  Diffusion of Innovations , 5th ed. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2010.
  • 31 Wayne W. LaMorte. “Diffusion of Innovation Theory.” September 9, 2019. http://sphweb.bumc.bu.edu/otlt/MPH-Modules/SB/BehavioralChangeTheories/BehavioralChangeTheories4.html
  • 32 Eric Ries. The Lean Startup: How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses . Largo, Maryland: Crown Books, 2011.
  • 33 “Jacob Schick Invents the Electric Razor.” Connecticut History . May 13, 2017. https://connecticuthistory.org/jacob-schick-invents-the-electric-razor/

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  • Authors: Michael Laverty, Chris Littel
  • Publisher/website: OpenStax
  • Book title: Entrepreneurship
  • Publication date: Jan 16, 2020
  • Location: Houston, Texas
  • Book URL: https://openstax.org/books/entrepreneurship/pages/1-introduction
  • Section URL: https://openstax.org/books/entrepreneurship/pages/4-2-creativity-innovation-and-invention-how-they-differ

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  • Best Applications For Entrepreneurs
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  • Small Business & Entrepreneurship

The Relationship Between Entrepreneur and Entrepreneurship

relationship between problem solving and entrepreneurship

While entrepreneur and entrepreneurship are both connected terms, they have some differences.

Is entrepreneur and entrepreneurship the same? Entrepreneur and entrepreneurship are not the same. An entrepreneur refers to the person who builds and operates a business. On the other hand, Entrepreneurship is a process or an activity. Entrepreneurs carry out entrepreneurship.  

If you’re interested in learning more about the relationship between an entrepreneur and entrepreneurship…keep reading!

Table of Contents

What Is the Meaning of Entrepreneurship and Entrepreneur? 

Definition of entrepreneur.

An entrepreneur is someone who introduces new products and services to the market by innovation .  

An entrepreneur is responsible for their own success. Therefore, they bear all the risk that comes with a business. 

An entrepreneur is a leader who guides their employees to achieve success in their business. 

Also, an entrepreneur turns creative ideas into reality. 

Examples of famous entrepreneurs include Mark Zuckerberg , Bill Gates , Jeff Bezos , Steve Jobs , and so on…

Definition of Entrepreneurship

Entrepreneurship is a process or an activity that establishes new businesses. Entrepreneurship includes the initiation, development, management, and operation of a startup company. 

Entrepreneurs carry out entrepreneurship to run and manage businesses. 

Entrepreneurs use entrepreneurship to develop strong relationships with distributors, suppliers, banks, creditors, investors, and other entrepreneurs. These relationships can greatly value the entrepreneur as they help the entrepreneur in difficult times. 

Entrepreneurship has four types: small business entrepreneurship, large company entrepreneurship, social entrepreneurship, and scalable startup entrepreneurship. 

Entrepreneur vs. Entrepreneurship

Entrepreneur and entrepreneurship are both similar words, but there are a few differences between them, such as:  

Characteristics of Entrepreneur

Now let’s discuss the characteristics of an entrepreneur. An entrepreneur has lots of great and unique qualities and characteristics. A few of them includes: 

1. Self-Confidence : An entrepreneur is someone who believes in themselves. They know their strength and weaknesses, hence they have confidence in themselves. They know that they can achieve anything only if they have self-confidence.

2. Leader : An entrepreneur knows the importance of leadership. They understand how leadership can lead to success in business. Hence, they become the best leaders because their business will go down the drain without it. 

3. Responsible : An entrepreneur is in charge of his/her own business, making them the sole responsible and accountable for their own success or failure. 

4. Risk-Taker : An entrepreneur is well aware of the risk that comes with the business. They are great risk-takers because the greater the risk, the greater reward. 

5. Creative : An entrepreneur is a creative thinker. Their creative thinking leads to innovations that solve society’s problems. 

6. Passionate : The key to great success is a passion for what you do. Entrepreneurs are well aware of this. Hence they are very passionate and focused people who work very hard to achieve their goals. 

7. Self-Disciplined : A self-disciplined entrepreneur is more inclined towards success than the one who is not. Self-discipline helps an entrepreneur keep on track. 

8. Time Management : As the saying says, “Time is money.” A successful entrepreneur knows the value of time. A time spent productive can reap too much reward in the future. Hence entrepreneurs are good at time management. 

9. Communication Skills : If something that can make you thrive in business is good communication skills. Entrepreneurs have excellent communication skills because they want themselves to be successful. 

10. Problem-Solving : An entrepreneur is someone who has great problem-solving abilities. Entrepreneurs face many problems throughout their lives, so problem-solving qualities are necessary. 

Characteristics of Entrepreneurship

The characteristics of entrepreneurship include: 

1. Process : Entrepreneurship is how entrepreneurs run and operate a business.

2. Idea : Entrepreneurship gives shape to the ideas which an entrepreneur comes up with. 

3. Promotion : Entrepreneurship helps in its unique way by promoting the new products and services introduced by entrepreneurs. 

4. Innovation : Entrepreneurship helps to look for opportunities in the market. It fulfills the market need by innovation. Hence innovation is the critical characteristic of entrepreneurship. 

In conclusion, both are similar words, but they have some differences. Such as entrepreneur is a person, and entrepreneurship is a process or an activity. An Entrepreneur carries out business and entrepreneurship through how an entrepreneur carries out business. 

If you are intrested learning more about entrepreneurship and entrepreneurs than checkout my blog.

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Read our research on: Immigration & Migration | Podcasts | Election 2024

Regions & Countries

How americans view the situation at the u.s.-mexico border, its causes and consequences, 80% say the u.s. government is doing a bad job handling the migrant influx.

relationship between problem solving and entrepreneurship

Pew Research Center conducted this study to understand the public’s views about the large number of migrants seeking to enter the U.S. at the border with Mexico. For this analysis, we surveyed 5,140 adults from Jan. 16-21, 2024. Everyone who took part in this survey is a member of the Center’s American Trends Panel (ATP), an online survey panel that is recruited through national, random sampling of residential addresses. This way nearly all U.S. adults have a chance of selection. The survey is weighted to be representative of the U.S. adult population by gender, race, ethnicity, partisan affiliation, education and other categories. Read more about the ATP’s methodology .

Here are the questions used for the report and its methodology .

The growing number of migrants seeking entry into the United States at its border with Mexico has strained government resources, divided Congress and emerged as a contentious issue in the 2024 presidential campaign .

Chart shows Why do Americans think there is an influx of migrants to the United States?

Americans overwhelmingly fault the government for how it has handled the migrant situation. Beyond that, however, there are deep differences – over why the migrants are coming to the U.S., proposals for addressing the situation, and even whether it should be described as a “crisis.”

Factors behind the migrant influx

Economic factors – either poor conditions in migrants’ home countries or better economic opportunities in the United States – are widely viewed as major reasons for the migrant influx.

About seven-in-ten Americans (71%), including majorities in both parties, cite better economic opportunities in the U.S. as a major reason.

There are wider partisan differences over other factors.

About two-thirds of Americans (65%) say violence in migrants’ home countries is a major reason for why a large number of immigrants have come to the border.

Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents are 30 percentage points more likely than Republicans and Republican leaners to cite this as a major reason (79% vs. 49%).

By contrast, 76% of Republicans say the belief that U.S. immigration policies will make it easy to stay in the country once they arrive is a major factor. About half as many Democrats (39%) say the same.

For more on Americans’ views of these and other reasons, visit Chapter 2.

How serious is the situation at the border?

A sizable majority of Americans (78%) say the large number of migrants seeking to enter this country at the U.S.-Mexico border is eithera crisis (45%) or a major problem (32%), according to the Pew Research Center survey, conducted Jan. 16-21, 2024, among 5,140 adults.

Related: Migrant encounters at the U.S.-Mexico border hit a record high at the end of 2023 .

Chart shows Border situation viewed as a ‘crisis’ by most Republicans; Democrats are more likely to call it a ‘problem’

  • Republicans are much more likely than Democrats to describe the situation as a “crisis”: 70% of Republicans say this, compared with just 22% of Democrats.
  • Democrats mostly view the situation as a major problem (44%) or minor problem (26%) for the U.S. Very few Democrats (7%) say it is not a problem.

In an open-ended question , respondents voice their concerns about the migrant influx. They point to numerous issues, including worries about how the migrants are cared for and general problems with the immigration system.

Yet two concerns come up most frequently:

  • 22% point to the economic burdens associated with the migrant influx, including the strains migrants place on social services and other government resources.
  • 22% also cite security concerns. Many of these responses focus on crime (10%), terrorism (10%) and drugs (3%).

When asked specifically about the impact of the migrant influx on crime in the United States, a majority of Americans (57%) say the large number of migrants seeking to enter the country leads to more crime. Fewer (39%) say this does not have much of an impact on crime in this country.

Republicans (85%) overwhelmingly say the migrant surge leads to increased crime in the U.S. A far smaller share of Democrats (31%) say the same; 63% of Democrats instead say it does not have much of an impact.

Government widely criticized for its handling of migrant influx

For the past several years, the federal government has gotten low ratings for its handling of the situation at the U.S.-Mexico border. (Note: The wording of this question has been modified modestly to reflect circumstances at the time).

Chart shows Only about a quarter of Democrats and even fewer Republicans say the government has done a good job dealing with large number of migrants at the border

However, the current ratings are extraordinarily low.

Just 18% say the U.S. government is doing a good job dealing with the large number of migrants at the border, while 80% say it is doing a bad job, including 45% who say it is doing a very bad job.

  • Republicans’ views are overwhelmingly negative (89% say it’s doing a bad job), as they have been since Joe Biden became president.
  • 73% of Democrats also give the government negative ratings, the highest share recorded during Biden’s presidency.

For more on Americans’ evaluations of the situation, visit Chapter 1 .

Which policies could improve the border situation?

There is no single policy proposal, among the nine included on the survey, that majorities of both Republicans and Democrats say would improve the situation at the U.S.-Mexico border. There are areas of relative agreement, however.

A 60% majority of Americans say that increasing the number of immigration judges and staff in order to make decisions on asylum more quickly would make the situation better. Only 11% say it would make things worse, while 14% think it would not make much difference.

Nearly as many (56%) say creating more opportunities for people to legally immigrate to the U.S. would make the situation better.

Chart shows Most Democrats and nearly half of Republicans say boosting resources for quicker decisions on asylum cases would improve situation at Mexico border

Majorities of Democrats say each of these proposals would make the border situation better.

Republicans are less positive than are Democrats; still, about 40% or more of Republicans say each would improve the situation, while far fewer say they would make things worse.

Opinions on other proposals are more polarized. For example, a 56% majority of Democrats say that adding resources to provide safe and sanitary conditions for migrants arriving in the U.S. would be a positive step forward.

Republicans not only are far less likely than Democrats to view this proposal positively, but far more say it would make the situation worse (43%) than better (17%).

Chart shows Wide partisan gaps in views of expanding border wall, providing ‘safe and sanitary conditions’ for migrants

Building or expanding a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border was among the most divisive policies of Donald Trump’s presidency. In 2019, 82% of Republicans favored expanding the border wall , compared with just 6% of Democrats.

Today, 72% of Republicans say substantially expanding the wall along the U.S. border with Mexico would make the situation better. Just 15% of Democrats concur, with most saying either it would not make much of a difference (47%) or it would make things worse (24%).

For more on Americans’ reactions to policy proposals, visit Chapter 3 .

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Table of contents, fast facts on how greeks see migrants as greece-turkey border crisis deepens, americans’ immigration policy priorities: divisions between – and within – the two parties, from the archives: in ’60s, americans gave thumbs-up to immigration law that changed the nation, around the world, more say immigrants are a strength than a burden, latinos have become less likely to say there are too many immigrants in u.s., most popular.

About Pew Research Center Pew Research Center is a nonpartisan fact tank that informs the public about the issues, attitudes and trends shaping the world. It conducts public opinion polling, demographic research, media content analysis and other empirical social science research. Pew Research Center does not take policy positions. It is a subsidiary of The Pew Charitable Trusts .

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  1. Problem-Solving Skills Every Entrepreneur Should Have -[SKILLS FOR

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  2. Problem-Solving Skills Every Entrepreneur Should Have -[SKILLS FOR

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  3. Problem-Solving Skills Every Entrepreneur Should Have -[SKILLS FOR

    relationship between problem solving and entrepreneurship

  4. Problem-Solving Skills Every Entrepreneur Should Have -[SKILLS FOR

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  5. Entrepreneurship is about Solving Problems

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  6. Top Problem Solving Skills All Entrepreneurs Should Have

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  1. Factors Affecting Entrepreneurship Growth

  2. Objectives of entrepreneurship and problem's

  3. How to Foster Innovation and Creativity in Problem Solving Processes?

  4. Difference between Problem Solving and Decision Making

  5. Entrepreneurship is to solve the problems #beingentrepreneur #entrepreneurlife

  6. Entrepreneurship|Factors responsible for Growth of Entrepreneurship

COMMENTS

  1. 6.1 Problem Solving to Find Entrepreneurial Solutions

    Entrepreneurs are problem solvers who offer solutions using creativity or innovative ventures that exploit opportunities. This chapter focuses on different approaches to problem solving and need recognition that help potential entrepreneurs come up with ideas and refine those ideas. Two Problem Solving Models: Adaptive and Innovative

  2. Entrepreneurs: How To Become A Better Problem-Solver (In Less ...

    Problems are a way of life. If you aren't encountering problems on a daily basis, then you aren't an entrepreneur! Of course, being a successful entrepreneur requires more than just...

  3. Shared problem solving and design thinking in entrepreneurship research

    Problem solving Shared problems 1. Introduction There is a longstanding debate about the trade-offs between rigor and relevance in entrepreneurship research and about the reduced opportunities for engaged scholarship ( Wiklund et al. 2011; Wiklund et al. 2019; Dimov et al., 2020 ).

  4. Motivating entrepreneurial learning: moderation of problem-solving

    The test results show (1) entrepreneurial optimism, relational support, and environmental friendliness are positively and indirectly related to entrepreneurial learning through the mediation of entrepreneurial engagement; (2) the relationship between entrepreneurial optimism and entrepreneurial engagement is positively moderated by problem-solvi...

  5. The role of problem solving ability on innovative behavior and

    The implication of this study is to prove the relationship between individual 's problem - solving ability considering the characteristics of education in Korea and the opportunity through innovative behavior and various learning strategies to help entrepreneurship education to design better courses for the future It has important implications f...

  6. The Entrepreneurial Mind-Set: A Framework for Problem-Solving and

    Entrepreneurship 4.0 continues to go beyond anything we have seen before, in areas like social entrepreneurship—solving social issues as a nonprofit, for-profit, or hybrid. Additionally, businesses, start-ups, the government, life—essentially all systems—are full of problems and therefore about problem-solving.

  7. Ch. 6 Review Questions

    1. What is the relationship between entrepreneurial thinking and problem solving? 2. What are the key aspects of the two types of problem-solving methods the entrepreneur uses to problem solve? 3. What are the key skills entrepreneurs need to arrive at innovative solutions? 4. What are the differences in the three major types of entrepreneurs? 5.

  8. 6.2 Creative Problem-Solving Process

    Step 1: Clarify. To clarify is the critical step of recognizing the existence of a gap between the current state and a desired state. This can also be thought of as having need awareness, which occurs when the entrepreneur notes a gap between societal or customer needs and actual circumstances.Clarifying the problem by speaking with clients and developing a detailed description of the problem ...

  9. Factors Influencing Entrepreneurial Intention: Focusing on Individuals

    Considering that the complexities and problem-solving processes required for starting a new business demand knowledge of various fields, this study explains individual learning behaviors based on the organizational learning theory to explore and use the knowledge and experience needed for successful start-ups.

  10. Grand challenges and entrepreneurship: Emerging issues, research

    This study discusses how the role of entrepreneurship in addressing the so-called "grand challenges" (e.g., poverty, inequality, pollution, climate change) is evolving and could further evolve, based on the ongoing conversation in the scholarly community. To develop the discussion, we conducted the following steps: (1) a computer-aided semantic analysis; (2) an analysis of the evolution of ...

  11. Entrepreneurial thinking: A signature pedagogy for an uncertain 21st

    Abstract. This paper outlines a pedagogical approach for entrepreneurship education, with a specific focus on students who do not necessarily identify as entrepreneurial. We advance seven essential and teachable entrepreneurial thinking skills (ET-7) to form future leaders: (1) problem solving, (2) tolerance for ambiguity, (3) failing forward ...

  12. Entrepreneurial mindset shift and the role of cycles of learning

    Entrepreneurial mindset in the entrepreneurship literature. One of the earlier descriptions of entrepreneurial mindset comes from McGrath and MacMillan (Citation 2000) who describe it as individuals who are alert to opportunities, are selective in their choice about which opportunities they pursue, and when they do pursue opportunities they leverage the resources and networks that they have at ...

  13. What Is Creative Problem-Solving & Why Is It Important?

    Creative problem-solving primarily operates in the ideate phase of design thinking but can be applied to others. This is because design thinking is an iterative process that moves between the stages as ideas are generated and pursued. This is normal and encouraged, as innovation requires exploring multiple ideas.

  14. Full article: Design thinking for entrepreneurship: An explorative

    Empirical setting. From an empirical perspective, the investigation was conducted by analysing 50 international participants, who constituted the case studies of the analysis and participated in a design thinking programme related to entrepreneurship named the CREA Footnote 1 Summer Academy between 2015 and 2017. The CREA Summer Academy was a European project conducted among seven countries ...

  15. Relationship Between Entrepreneurship Education, Entrepreneurial

    Findings/Conclusions: Students in entrepreneurship education showed an overall statistically significant increase in entrepreneurial mindset, specifically in communication and collaboration, opportunity recognition, and critical thinking and problem-solving. Moreover, there was a positive association between entrepreneurial mindset gains and ...

  16. Complex Problems in Entrepreneurship Education: Examining Complex

    In opening up the black box of what entrepreneurship education (EE) should be about, this study focuses on the exploration of relationships between two constructs: opportunity identification (OI) and complex problem-solving (CPS). OI, as a domain-specific capability, is at the core of entrepreneurship research, whereas CPS is a more domain-general skill.

  17. Transformational and entrepreneurial leadership: A review of ...

    Entrepreneurship represents a key motor of economic growth, and entrepreneurial leadership (EL) represents a vital constituent thereof. However, its examination remains factious, and integration with the wider leadership literature is fragmentary. EL is claimed by some as representing a construct distinct from extant leadership styles, even though the major contribution made by ...

  18. PDF The role of problem solving ability on innovative behavior and

    purpose, the relationship between problem solving ability, innovation behavior, and opportunity perception was verified empirically. This study was conducted on 203 students who took entrepreneurship education courses at Korean universities. The results of this study showed that problem solving ability positively influenced

  19. (PDF) Cooperation between Social Entrepreneurs and Government to

    Fueglistaller et al. (2016), social entrepreneurship is an approach to solving social problems in an entrepreneurial way. In contrast to commercial or traditional business companies, the

  20. Mediating role of entrepreneurial intention on the relationship between

    Using Ajzen's (Citation 2005) TPB framework, the authors looked into the relationship between entrepreneurship education and students' intention to become entrepreneurs and discovered a substantial correlation between perceived behavioral control or self-efficacy and a three-day entrepreneurship program that concentrated on appraising new ...

  21. 4.2 Creativity, Innovation, and Invention: How They Differ

    Ideation takes time and a deliberate effort to move beyond your habitual thought patterns. If you consciously set aside time for creativity, you will broaden your mental horizons and allow yourself to change and grow. Entrepreneurs work with two types of thinking. —involves a logical, step-by-step process.

  22. Technology, entrepreneurship, innovation and social change in digital

    Yet little research has fully addressed the profound relationship between technology, entrepreneurship/innovation and social change.

  23. The Relationship Between Entrepreneur and Entrepreneurship

    1. Self-Confidence: An entrepreneur is someone who believes in themselves. They know their strength and weaknesses, hence they have confidence in themselves. They know that they can achieve anything only if they have self-confidence. 2. Leader: An entrepreneur knows the importance of leadership.

  24. Relationship Between Entrepreneurship Education, Entrepreneurial

    Findings/Conclusions: Students in entrepreneurship education showed an overall statistically significant increase in entrepreneurial mindset, specifically in communication and collaboration,...

  25. The U.S.-Mexico Border: How Americans View the Situation, Its Causes

    Democrats mostly view the situation as a major problem (44%) or minor problem (26%) for the U.S. Very few Democrats (7%) say it is not a problem. In an open-ended question, respondents voice their concerns about the migrant influx. They point to numerous issues, including worries about how the migrants are cared for and general problems with ...