This paper defines and describes entrepreneurial creativity, which is the genera- tion and implementation of novel, appropriate ideas to establish a new venture. Entrepreneurial creativity can be exhibited in established organizations as well as in start-up firms. The central thesis of this paper is that entrepreneurial creativity requires a combination of intrinsic motivation and certain kinds of extrinsic motivationa motivational synergy that results when strong levels of personal interest and involvement are combined with the promise of rewards that confirm competence. support skill development, and enable future achievement.
INTAODUCTION If we trace back the origins of nearly every existing business in the United States, we will find an entrepreneuran individual who pursued an idea, a perceived opportunity for profitably delivering a service or product, regardless of the difficulties that he or she faced. Given the many obstacles that lie in the entrepreneurial pathway, considerable creativity is required. What forms does entrepreneurial creativity take? What motivational states might be most conducive to these forms of creativity? My students, colleagues, and I have spent the past 20 years trying to understand the motivation behind creativity, and the ways in which the work environment can influence it. For the past dozen years, we have focused on creativity in business. Recently, we have turned to a consideration of the motives behind both thc gcncration and the implcmcntation of new ideas, recognizing that somewhat different motivational patterns may be optimal for each. Indeed. recent research suggests that a form of synergy between these different types of motivation may be most likely to lead to entrepreneurial creativity.
We have defined creativity as the production of novel and appropriate solutions to open-ended problems in any domain of human activity; we have defined innovation as the implementation of those novel, appropriate ideas (Amabile, 1983;. Entrepreneurship is typically defined in terms of innovation. For example, Schumpeter (1934) said that entrepreneurial activity involves the carrying out of new combinations, the "creative destruction" of an existing equilibrium within a particular industry. This view of entrepreneurship, widely accepted within the academic community (e.g., . has been elaborated by others, as "the process whereby invention is put into practice, transforming a disembodied idea into a workable and economically viable operation" (Baumol, 1993, p. 9). Thus, entrepreneurship is a particular form of innovation. It is the successful implementation of creative ideas to produce a new business, or a new initiative within an existing business.
Creativity can enter into entrepreneurial activity in many ways. The entrepreneur may have a novel idea for a particular product or service, something that is different from what has been done before and is likely to be seen as useful or desirable by customers. This is what people typically think of when they hear the term "creativity" in a business context. Because they believe that creativity refers only to a high degree of novelty in the generation of the basic idea for the product or service, they may conclude that creativity has virtually no role in many successful entrepreneurial ventures. However, the novelty may be found not in the product itself but in the implementation. For example, novelty may appear in the means for creating or delivering the productthe identification of new market opportunities, or the organization and the systems that are established for bringing the product to market Timmons, 1977;. Additionally, novel and appropriate solutions might be necessary for marshaling resources required for the undertaking: indeed, entrepreneurship is often defined as the pursuit of opportunity without regard to the resources currently controlled . It is unlikely that a given entrepreneurial venture will 18