Culture, innovation and entrepreneurship

Innovation and entrepreneurship lie at the heart of the modern economy. Yet, while scholars have long examined the economic drivers of innovation and entrepreneurship, less is known about the cultural forces that shape these dynamics. To the extent that the existing literature has considered how culture shapes innovation and entrepreneurship, it has been viewed as a constraining force which limited and hindered the creation of novelty. This is especially true for economic approaches to entrepreneurship and innovation. With this special issue, we highlight the central role of culture in entrepreneurial and innovative practice—what we refer to as cultural entrepreneurship—and advocate that scholars need to take a broader view of culture to emphasise the symbolic meaning systems that entrepreneurs use as tool kits to facilitate their pursuit of novelty. We discuss how the articles of this special issue employ such contemporary approaches to culture, contributing to the development of an exciting scholarly agenda. By drawing on a variety of empirical settings and methodologies, these articles generate novel and provocative insights about cultural entrepreneurship. Leveraging these contributions, we highlight possible future paths and research questions.