The Role of Inspiration in the Entrepreneurial Process

Entrepreneurial inspiration may have significant effects on the entrepreneur, the entrepreneurial process and people involved. Yet, the role of entrepreneurial inspiration is currently a largely overlooked phenomenon in contemporary entrepreneurship research. Recent findings in psychology literature indicate that inspiration plays a key part in creative processes and may have significant transformative cognitive, emotional and behavioral effects. Based on these insights we propose to extend the existing entrepreneurial process model of Lumpkin et al. (2004) to include a transformation phase with an element of extension. This is in order to recognize the transformative effects of the entrepreneurial process on both the entrepreneur and others involved. As a consequence of the theoretical development seven propositions and new interesting areas of future research are outlined both concerning entrepreneurial inspiration and the entrepreneurial process in general.